FORMA

Like a Topping Out. Only everyone’s got their feet on the ground and there’s not a crane or an ironworker in sight.

FORMA gathered yesterday among the trees and bees with our Progressive Design-Build team members from Mithun and the City of Shoreline to mark a major milestone in our work at Kruckeberg Botanic Garden. Part of a larger contract to program, design, and deliver a wide range of improvements and installations in multiple phases at eight City parks–the primary objective at Kruckeberg is connecting the upper garden to the lower garden, which FORMA carpenters are achieving via a beautiful, switchbacking, elevated walkway.

Composed of Alaskan Yellow and Western Red Cedar, the 600 LF boardwalk is 6′ wide, fully ADA accessible, and sits lightly on this steep slope in its delicate environment thanks to a structure of 150 diamond piers. With four 4 piles to each pier, that’s 600 piles, folks–each one hand-driven due to the impracticality of navigating heavy equipment around the tight confines, steep slopes, protected trees, and critical root zones that characterize our site.  

 With the final beam of the boardwalk framing signed by team members and set in place–ergo yesterday’s Bottoming Out ceremony–we’re in the homestretch at Kruckeberg; over 3,600 man-hours self-performed by FORMA crews to date.

Although the park has remained open throughout construction with our team’s careful coordination to ensure the safety of the public, the new boardwalk and the rest of our improvements at Kruckeberg are on schedule to be complete and re-opened to park-goers at the end of July.

Meanwhile, we’ve also been hard at work sprucing up Ridgecrest Park, which is set to welcome back dogs, kids, picnickers, handballers, frisbee-throwers, and kite-flyers later this month. To stay abreast of upcoming milestones and grand openings at each of these eight rejuvenated parks, head over to the City’s website.