Valley River Center Seismic Upgrade Inspection in Eugene, Oregon

Location: Valley River Center, Eugene, Oregon
Client/Owner: Bridgeway Contracting, for the shopping center’s owner
Partners: The project’s engineer of record; City of Eugene
Year: 2019
Size/scale: Seismic upgrade and tenant improvement of a former two-level department store, converted for a bowling and entertainment tenant
JBE services: Special inspection and testing through construction: micropile grouting, reinforcing steel, concrete placement, shop and field welding, epoxy anchors, shotcrete, high-strength bolting and re-tensioning of post-tension cables; core sample review; final summary letter to the city
Sector: Commercial & Retail

Gutted interior of the former department store at Valley River Center before the seismic upgrade

The challenge

A former department store at Valley River Center was being turned into a bowling and entertainment venue. Before the new tenant could move in, the empty building needed a seismic upgrade: new micropile foundations, new shotcrete walls tied into the existing structure, and openings cut and filled in the floors.

Work like that is only as good as what gets buried in it. The grout in a micropile, the bars inside a wall and the tension in a floor cable can’t be checked once the concrete is placed. The City of Eugene required special inspection of each of those steps as it happened.

Project photos

What we did

Bridgeway Contracting brought us in as the special inspector. Over three months in the summer of 2019 we were on site as the work reached each inspection point, often several times a week.

We watched the micropiles being grouted and checked the reinforcing steel in the pile caps, the new walls and the floor infills before each pour. We inspected shop and field welds and high-strength bolted connections in the new steel. We observed epoxy anchors being set into the existing concrete, the shotcrete being placed on the new walls, and the re-tensioning of the post-tensioned floor cables. In September we reviewed core samples taken through the finished work.

Where something didn’t match the approved drawings, it was reinspected after the contractor corrected it.

The result

Our inspections ran from June 13 to September 9, 2019. We issued the final summary letter to the City of Eugene that September, stating that the inspected work met the approved plans, revisions and RFIs. The building went on to open with its new tenant.