DenverInfill Blog

Work on the project has concentrated on one relatively small space for the past several weeks. Gone for now are the days of having activity scattered throughout the project area: light rail tracks, new stations, new streets, new sidewalks, etc. All of those have been completed. Now the work is confined to excavating the second portion of the bus terminal and building infrastructure inside the first portion.  Below is a photo from earlier this week that I took through a window inside Union Station.

It appears that the excavation work is nearly completed. Foundations are being built for the second set of elevators, stairs, escalators, and for the train tracks that will lay on the roof of the bus station. In the center of the background of the photo just below and slightly to the left of Glass House, notice the large sheet of vertical plastic with bright lights behind. You are looking at the lights inside of the first portion of the bus terminal. The vertical steel beams in the foreground support the shoring wall that is immediately behind Union Station.

It’s difficult to get a perspective from the photo. I’ll try to help. The scale of the hole is similar the first section: the same dept (about 28 feet), the same width, but a little shorter. I’m guessing that the first section is about 75% of the total length of the bus terminal.

caisson [kā-sän] noun. A watertight chamber used in construction work under water or as a foundation.

The pieces of equipment in the photo above are building caissons for the train bridges that will be part of the roof of the bus terminal.  (I had to look up the definition of a caisson.) There will be eight sets of tracks (Amtrak, Ski Train, commuter rail) requiring four bridges. As we know, trains can be pretty heavy so the bridges will require deep, sturdy foundations. Therefore, the caissons.

Don’t forget tonight’s event at the convention center. See Ken’s post below.

There is good news to report. The hole is drained and excavation work on the bus terminal has resumed. A variety of factors caused long delays in getting the pumping and filtering systems in place. The ground water is contaminated with substances in addition to those found in the first phase, the clean water standards have gotten more stringent, and very few labs in the country are equipped to perform the required testing. The delays are not expected to impact the Spring 2014 completion of the project. Here is a shot that I took on Tuesday before the snowstorm.

The walls/seats are being installed around the planters near the light rail station. Here’s another photo from Tuesday. It appears that the walls are being installed along the inside edges of the foundations to maximize clearance between the planters, as suggested in some DenverInfill comments.