Hopke Wins a Landmark Project

A landmark award indeed for W.B. Hopke. In October 2022, W.B. Hopke was awarded its largest project ever for the installation of sanitary, storm and water infrastructure at the Landmark Mall Redevelopment/West End Infrastructure project in Alexandria, VA.

Utility infrastructure began in spring 2023 and will continue through 2026 at the re-envisioned West End Alexandria, formerly known as Landmark Mall. The project situated between 395, Duke Street and Van Dorn Street in Alexandria, Virginia takes up approximately 13 new city blocks.

The initial infrastructure work will be managed by a joint venture between Clark Construction and Foulger-Pratt. The anchor for the new development will be the new location of Inova Alexandria hospital, which will be built by Clark Construction, and will include a cancer center, a specialty care center, a parking garage and a central plaza. This portion of development will constitute over 1 million square feet of new development. Inova Health System is investing $1 billion to create this new medical campus and Inova expects its new campus to employ more than 2,000 healthcare workers and deliver in 2028.

West End will also include three new residential buildings with 1,117 new units, 45 of which are designated affordable housing, all developed and built by Foulger-Pratt. The remaining blocks of West End Alexandria will include a new office tower with about 120,000 square feet of space, more than 215,000 square feet of retail space, two blocks of townhomes, a new fire station replacing Fire Station 208, new committed affordable housing and a new transit hub anchoring the City’s new bus rapid transit network, DASH and Metrobus. For Hopke, the wet utilities project, which is estimated to take more than 3 years to complete, has already begun. Hopke has 2 crews on site now and will have several more crews on site in the upcoming years to meet the project deadlines.

Project manager, Paul Cloutier said, “There are several phases to a project this size and we have already begun work for the infrastructure which will include 4 precast detention vaults and a CIP Concrete Sand filter installation. To date, we have already capped-off the existing lines and started digging for vault 4 which will be approximately 20′ deep in ground and then tied into existing lines. We have started digging in the garage and laying pipe in the front side of the garage. It required us going down 19 feet deep, 35 feet wide at the bottom and 80′ wide space at the top with 5′ leggings.”

In early April, Hopke will begin work with the installation of a 98-piece vault built by StormTrap and will also start on the 300-foot-long sand filter installed inside the existing parking garage. Hopke’s objective is to complete all of the work inside the existing parking garage first. This will allow the City of Alexandria to activate their temporary transit hub inside the existing parking garage. Currently, there is a temporary bus loop that has been established just off of Van Dorn Street until the current work is completed in the garage.

Eventually the project will include 4 large detention vaults, 8,500 feet of storm main with 168 new storm structures, 5,500 feet of sanitary main with 35 sanitary structures, and almost 7,000 feet of new water main. Hopke will continue to provide updates throughout the project.

W.B. Hopke would like to thank Estimator Charlie McClellan, who helped us to win this new project award, as well as Senior Project Manager Paul Cloutier, Superintendent Jimbo Cloniger, and Foremen Carlos Hernandez and Francisco Pineda and their crews for getting us off to a great start.

References

Rappahannock Media LLC, https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/first-phase-of-landmark-mall-redevelopment-approved-in-alexandria/article_30b30460-861a-11ed-9a8d-73effe793cf0.html, accessed April 2, 2023.

ALXNow, https://www.alxnow.com/2022/10/03/developer-opens-up-about-next-steps-for-landmark-mall-redevelopment/, accessed March 21, 2023. Cover image via City of Alexandria.