CINCINNATI – Contractor crews have wrapped up construction of a two-year, $17.6 million project to stabilize a large swath of the hillside along Columbia Parkway. The project’s footprint extends over two miles on the uphill side of the parkway from Bains Street near downtown to just east of the William Howard Taft Road-Torrence Parkway intersection in East Walnut Hills.

“The team of Beaver Excavating Co. and Geotechnology Inc. was outstanding,” said John Brazina, director of Cincinnati’s Department of Transportation & Engineering (DOTE). “The quality of their work is excellent, and the project was completed on time and within budget amid a challenging environment.”

DOTE began developing a long-term stabilization plan for the parkway in the spring of 2019 following a series of landslides in multiple locations along the uphill side.

Landslides in the area began increasing in frequency and significance in recent years, peaking in the winter and early spring of 2019. The threat to public safety also was increasing with mud and debris frequently spilling over existing retaining walls onto the roadway, prompting emergency closures along the five-lane thoroughfare that carries approximately 30,000 vehicles a day from the city’s east side into downtown.

The parkway was built in the late 1930s as a Depression-era public works project situated along a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. Mitigation efforts in the 1990s helped reduce the impact of landslides on the downhill side of the parkway but didn’t address the uphill side. 

City council approved funding for an emergency mitigation project in late spring 2019 and it started to take shape that summer once Canton-based Beaver Excavating was selected as the prime contractor.

Beaver and its design engineer Geotechology Inc. proposed a dual solution of soil nailing for the steepest sections of the hillside and additional retaining walls in areas that are less steep.

Soil nailing is a stabilization technique in which steel rods, known as “soil nails,” are drilled deep into bedrock to hold them into place. Crews terraced the steepest parts of the parkway, drilled the nails 30 feet to 50 feet into bedrock, installed a heavy metal mesh laced with landscaping fabric and grass seed overtop to secure the hillside.

In all, more than 3,600 nails were drilled into the hillside in the steepest locations, and three new retaining walls were built in the other locations.

Beaver began construction in December of 2019 and finished its part of the project this week.

The two westbound lanes where equipment has been staged during construction will remain closed a few more weeks as crews repair inlets for drainage, install and repair wiring for light poles and repave.

 

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