By Seth Daniel
Workers can be seen near the slurry wall foundation, while a pile driver can be seen preparing for the slab foundation where the retail/restaurant and function hall wing will be sited.
The slurry wall foundation that supports a majority of the Wynn Boston Harbor building is nearly completed, more than a month ahead of schedule, and work crews are in the process this week of digging out the parking garage area.
“The slurry walls are nearly done,” said Greg John on Wynn Boston Harbor. “The cranes you saw here in August when we started are now coming down and they’ll be bringing in the steel cranes soon. The big thing that is going on now is digging out the foundation. That will take them through November. The iron cranes will be arriving in December…By the first of the year, you’ll be seeing cranes bringing steel in and the structure going up.”
In August, Chris Gordon, president of Wynn Massachusetts Design and Development, indicated that they had targeted a finish for the slurry wall foundation some time in late November. Now, with that done one-month ahead, the hope is to get a jump on the winter and the erection of steel.
Already, the 16 cranes that dotted the landscape to accommodate the huge, oval slurry wall foundation have been reduced to nine cranes.
The final piece of slurry wall on the northern-most edge of the site is currently the only piece that is left to pour.
A slurry wall is a concrete barrier foundation that works on the principle of pouring the foundation into forms, and then digging out the foundation later. While such techniques were once questioned, the method is now considered superior to a traditional formed foundation. Slurry wall techniques were used extensively on the Big Dig tunnels with great success.
Already, excavators have begun digging out the front door area of the building and the west side and east side. They will continue digging down three stories and then meet in the middle. Once that is done, a floating slab will be put in place to form the bottom of the garage structure.
As they dig out the dirt, lines of 30 train cars are being filled at a time, sitting on a spur a the western side of the site. Those cars, once filled, are able to be sent out over the commuter rail during off-hours to a disposal site – reducing the numbers of truck trips by an estimated one-third.
Trucks are also being filled regularly with the contaminated soils from the middle of the garage. Those trucks are subjected to a wheel washing system at the edge of the site, prior to getting on Route 99.
So far, throughout the trucking and railroading of soils, there has only been on complaint regarding truck trips – and that came from a truck that had gotten off-course.
At this point there are 300 workers on site, mostly from the Derenzo and Trevi Construction Companies – which operate very specific crews of workers to perform slurry and excavation work.
Wynn Boston Harbor indicated that, beyond the ongoing construction work on land, they are prepared to begin dredging the harbor on the water portion of the project in 2017.
Despite the positive construction timeline right now, Wynn officials indicated that they are serious about counting down the days.
“When Bob DeSalvio says we are opening in June of 2019, he isn’t kidding. We are going full out to get Wynn Boston Harbor open and are counting down the days,” said John.