Project Spotlight - French Creek Recreation Complex

Site History

The Project Site has a varied and multi-faceted land use history. In the 1930's the site included portions of an inter-urban trolley rail line. The majority of the site was used predominantly as agricultural land up to the 1950's. In the 1960's, portions of the property were used as a borrow site for construction of IR90/SR2. The site was briefly used as a recreation park up until the early 1970's with a 30 acre and 38 acre lake that were both approximately 25 feet deep. In the 1970's the site began to be used as a storage facility for fly ash, which is a residual waste material produced in the combustion of coal. The property was purchased from a local utility company by the City of Avon and in 2004 began a creative site redevelopment planning process. The Design Phase for the French Creek recreation Complex began in 2008. The baseball stadium opening for play 12 months later on June 2, 2009 on schedule and under budget, with a sold-out capacity crowd of over 5,000.

Project Description

A. 5,000 seat capacity independent league stadium; cost: $12 million

• Started June 2008 and completed June 2009; home of the Lake Erie Crushers

B. YMCA of Greater Cleveland; cost $12 million

• Started December 2008 and completed April 2010

C. Infrastructure Improvements; cost $8 million

• Started May 2008 and completed 2009.
• Includes 4,600 LF of concrete roadway; 1,500 parking space stone and asphalt parking lot, site lighting, sanitary sewer, waterline, and storm sewer

D. Other major projects completed at this site is as follows:

• French Creek Bridge Replacement; cost $800,000
• Traffic Signal Upgrade at SR 611 & Miller Rd.; cost $175,000

Bramhall's Role

Bramhall was responsible for all civil/site engineering, infrastructure design, value engineering, construction administration including continuous critical path construction determination to condense the construction timeline from 16 months to 12 months, private utility company coordination including gas, electric, telephone, and cable, weekly progress meetings, change order review, pay application review, construction staking and construction inspection, OEPA compliance storm water pollution prevention inspections, as-built drawing preparation, coordination of government agency permitting and compliance with Ohio Environmental Agency Division of Solid and Infectious Waster Management, Division of Surface Water, Division of Drinking Water, US Army Corps of Engineers, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Coordination of Wetland Investigation and Delineation, Coordination of Phase 1 & 2 Environmental Site Assessments, Dedication Plat, Private Utility easement preparation, and the continued development and layout of the site for future use.