If you have driven by the SouthWest Station area lately you will have noticed that the parking lot in front of the restaurant area is dug up – again. The soils in this area are terrible. They are unstable, mucky and sinking. Slowly sinking. The buildings in the area, including the parking ramp, are built on concrete pillars that provide structural strength down to the bedrock. The buildings are not sinking. The parking lot, however, is not built on pillars. It is sinking. Next time you’re at D-Brien stand outside on the sidewalk outside the front door and look north toward the parking ramp and imagine that the parking lot was level and only about six-twelve inches lower than the sidewalk you are standing on. When it was originally constructed six years ago, it was.
The sinking ground creates several problems. It means the parking lot is constantly changing, which means it takes more maintenance than a typical parking lot. The sinking ground has also affected the underground utilities, such as the water and sewer lines. They are sinking too, but not at the same rate as the parking lot. This is a problem.
What’s going on in this photo is an attempt to fix the sinking problem. The contractor has excavated a 10-12 foot hole outside the D-Briens deli. They are removing the poor soil from the hole and replacing it with tons of shredded tires. Yes, shredded tires. The City did something very similar across the street from SouthWest Station at Purgatory Creek Park. Before we started working in that area, it was a mucky, swampy mess. It had very poor soil as well. The City’s contractor removed a great deal of soil and replaced it with tons and tones of shredded tires. Then, a new soil mix was placed on top of the shredded tires and landscaped to the beautiful park that you see there today.
The shredded tires provide a layer of subsoil material that, for lack of a better term, “floats”. It doesn’t sink. But it doesn’t pollute either. It’s been a successful solution for the City at Purgatory Creek Park. I think it just might work at SouthWest Station too.
