University of Pittsburgh - Olympic Sports Complex

Independence Excavating recently started mass earthwork activities at the University of Pittsburgh on the Olympic Sports Complex. The Olympic will add new baseball, softball, and soccer facilities with grandstands and athletic field support buildings. The project is an urban redevelopment of the former Terrace Village neighborhood, which was formerly owned by the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh. The project contains two major components; including mass cut excavation and mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) retaining walls, as well as installing the site storm water sewers.

The mass excavation activity contains a cut of 130,000 cubic yards through varying layers of hard shale and soft weathered clays and has to be hauled off through downtown Pittsburgh streets. A key success in this project from the start has been increased production directly tied to efficient hauling of material to the dumpsite. The MSE wall system is made up of two tiered walls together soaring to 40 feet tall around the edge of the site, and at the bottom of the site a wall which retains the softball grandstands. Independence contracted with Walltek Design Build Inc., and proposed a more cost effective wall solution to the owner. At full production, the walls will require 30,000 cubic yards of excavation, 2,000 ton of aggregate as back fill placed daily, and when finished will contain approximately 50,000 ton of aggregate back fill. The Pitt-Olympic Sports project is a fast pace schedule slated to be complete in July 2009.

The Pitt Olympic Sports Complex is located in the City of Pittsburgh's Hill District. "The Hill" was the police precinct, which stood as the namesake and general background of the series "Hill Street Blues". Steve Bochco, a series writer for the show, attended nearby Carnegie Mellon University and based his writings on the area. "Let's be careful out there."