Wednesday, September 17, 2008

How Many Engineers Does It Take....

Years ago, when the new University Town Center was first being built, myfather said that he was glad that his construction company hadn’t gottenon that job. I was confused, because I thought that it would have beena good job for his company, but he went on explaining, and then Iunderstood. He told me that they were building the shopping center onbackfill, and that eventually it would all start to sink, maybe evenslide down the hill. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. EveryoneI asked about it said that it was a rare possibility that it wouldactually happen, and if it did it wouldn’t be anytime soon. Just the other day, I opened up the Dominion Post to find an articlethat proved my father right. The parking lot of the Target is alreadybeginning to sink, and the store is suing the company that put it down. Now I see why my father was glad that his company didn’t get that job. But, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Stores in other locations have had to torn down completely and builtback somewhere else. Tell me, just how smart is it to build on landthat you know isn’t going to hold what you’re putting on it?

SP

1 comment:

JG said...

Funny story. At the University of Kentucky, where I did my undergrad degrees, they built a state of the art new library. It was huge and gorgeous and really expensive. We got a book endowment that was second only to Harvard (although they were ahead of us by like, tens of millions, so no getting out of second place any time soon).

The problem? The engineers who designed it forgot to calculate the weight of all the books. So, it's sinking into the ground as well, and they'll have to spend a lot of money figuring out how to keep propping it up.