Large Dirt Pile On Hospital Construction Site For The Last Year Now Ready To Be Used

Large pile of dirt on north end of construction site

A year ago we posted about an enormous pile of dirt, 70,000 cubic yards of earth, enough to fill more than 20 Olympic-size swimming pools, on the north end of the Children's Hospital construction site.

At that time, Tim McKey, Project Superintendent with Sellen Construction, told us that early in the design phase of the project a concern was raised by the hospital about ways to reduce the construction impact on the surrounding neighborhood, including reducing the amount of trucks coming and going to and from the site.

Thus, Tim said that a decision was made to retain as much of the foundation excavation material as possible on site and incorporate it into the design, rather than trucking it off, thus keeping 80 to 100 trucks a day off the roads for approximately a month.  The dirt has since been stockpiled, for future use on the site.

And in the next week, the Visqueen cover will be removed to start regrading. The dirt will be used to contour the site around the new building and create surface parking lots, rain gardens and planting areas.

About half the dirt will remain in place to form an inpatient/visitor parking lot.  The rest will be used at the north end of the site for the helistop, emergency department parking lot, a shuttle turn-around and an elevator from from the inpatient/visitor parking lot to the Giraffe entrance of the existing campus.

For questions about the construction, call 206-987-6197 or email construction@seattlechildrens.org.