Construction crews will need to blast through rock to build the underground parking garage slated for a 359-unit apartment building and Harris Teeter grocery store at Wisconsin Avenue and Battery Lane.
Developer StonebridgeCarras, the same company doing the Lot 31 excavation and blasting at Bethesda Avenue, said last week that crews have completed underground utility work around the 8300 Wisconsin site and are ready to start excavation.
Donohoe Construction Company crews are now on the site, which is being prepared with sediment and erosion control measures, according to a release. Workers are also building foundation piles that will be drilled along the property line.
Drilling is scheduled to begin this week and will last five to six weeks. Dump trucks will also begin to haul material off the site this week. StonebridgeCarras said preliminary tests indicate there will be about five months of periodic blasting to get through dense rock. That blasting is scheduled to begin in late July.
StonebridgeCarras said notice to the community will be sent out. Some near the Lot 31 parking garage and apartment project said they were caught off guard when Clark Construction crews began blasting there in December.
The utility work over the last six months that led to detours and bumpy patches in the Battery Lane and Woodmont Avenue intersection was to allow Pepco to replace the overhead power lines with underground ones. Pepco is planning to transfer poer from the overhead electric lines to the underground lines in late June.
StonebridgeCarras hopes to have the excavation done in January. Then, crews will erect construction cranes and start to pour concrete. The building is expected to top out at the end of 2014 and the entire project is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2015.
Photo via StonebridgeCarras
