Project Overview
Granville, New York is a picturesque village on the border of New York and Vermont, with the Mettawee River running through this quaint New England community. The original Church Street bridge was built in 1920 and was used to cross the Mettawee River at this exact location for more than a century. Residents now rely on this crossing to connect their village, and city officials have been planning to improve the community's infrastructure while maintaining minimal disruption to residents since 2019.
The expedited schedule and elimination of disruptive operations offered by precast concrete strongly influenced officials to choose an all-precast solution for the bridge reconstruction. Prefabricating materials and transporting them to the site allowed for minimal disturbance to the residents and minimized the number of trades required on site.
After meticulous planning, work on the site began in August 2021, and the precast concrete installation took a little over two weeks to complete. Construction was completed and the new bridge was opened to traffic in November 2021.
Precast Solution
This project involved the complete replacement of the highly traveled Church Street bridge over the Mettawee River. The existing structure was a cast-in-place concrete arch bridge with a span of 94 feet.
The Church Street bridge is one of Granville's landmarks, constructed over a century ago. It serves an important purpose, as it is one of two bridges allowing vehicular traffic to cross the Mettawee River. While the new precast bridge has the same span as the original, the structure has been enhanced using stone-textured precast headwalls and retaining walls on the bridge's approaches. The new bridge has an out-to-out width of +/- 34 feet.
The Fort Miller Co., Inc., who fabricated the precast concrete for this project, took special care to honor this historic bridge, which served as a neighborhood landmark, by incorporating the old structure's arched design into the new bridge. Furthermore, the bridge's arch shape made for an extremely efficient design. Fort Miller fabricated a total of 14 half-arch sections weighing 54,000 pounds each that were connected with a closure pour at mid-span. Fort Miller produced 12 match-cast headwalls and 25 precast approach wall units: all with a custom formliner finish. The custom stone formliner finish provides visual interest to the bridge and encourages the community to continue viewing it as a landmark structure.
Close collaboration between The Fort Miller Co., Inc. and Ray Sprague, PE from James H. Maloy, Inc. who was the project manager for the general contractor enabled the contractor's team to set the precast units perfectly, keeping construction on schedule.
This project illustrates precast concrete's versatility and ability to transform aging infrastructure into structures deserving of being designated as landmarks. The new precast concrete bridge will serve the village for another century while requiring minimal maintenance and providing inhabitants with dependable infrastructure. |