When the snow melts and the weather warms, we all know what that means here in Michigan: construction season! As you drive around, please watch out for construction workers and our seasonal state flower, the orange road cone.
The Local Land Development team had a busy winter preparing for construction season. We are fortunate to be working with our clients on a number of exciting projects around West Michigan. The projects cover all areas of our core services and represent a wide range of clients and market sectors.
On the municipal side, we recently completed two MDOT Local Agency projects in the City of Grand Rapids and provided construction oversight services on College Avenue in the City of Holland. We are currently working on two projects in the Holland Heights neighborhood, both of which should be constructed this year. This work includes a significant reconstruction of Country Club Road, with road widening for safety, realignment of a stream, stormwater quality improvements, and public utility replacement. Additional municipal project work includes three-quarters of a mile of water main replacement around the corner into the Legion Park area of Holland Heights.
We teamed with TowerPinkster again this year on a number of successful projects within the following school districts: Byron Center Public Schools, Cadillac Area Public Schools, Caledonia Community Schools, Fruitport Community Schools, Godfrey-Lee Public Schools, Lowell Area Schools, Mona Shores Public Schools, Muskegon Public Schools, and Oakridge Public Schools. Project improvements include brand-new schools, building additions, athletic facilities, parking lots, and traffic circulation areas, and a myriad of other site upgrades.
We also provided a wide variety of services, such as land survey, mobile LiDAR scanning, environmental permitting, and many facets of civil engineering through the feasibility, design, construction, and post-construction phases of the projects. Project challenges included site earthworks balancing, EGLE permitting, design of public utilities, and stormwater management design. As we continued to work with TowerPinkster, we have honed the coordination and timing necessary for project efficiency and success.
Many local business and industries have been growing this year, and our team has been busy providing support to facilitate that growth. We have been or currently are working with Tommy’s Car Wash Systems, Gentex Corporation, Dollar General, Koops Automation Systems, By-Pas International, Hope ABA, Whole Foods, Magna International, Metal Flow Corporation, Impact Fab, Wesco, and many other entities. Some projects entail building small additions onto existing sites to accommodate growth, while others involve work on new facilities or franchise locations as the business expand into new markets. Our services generally include master planning, land survey, local permits and approvals, utility extensions, stormwater management, and construction phase services.
We also had the privilege to provide services to local non-profit agencies, such as Jubilee Ministries, Lakeshore Habitat for Humanity, Safe Harbor, Upward Bound Ministries, and 70×7 Recovery Ministries. We appreciate the opportunity to provide these services to our community.
In addition, we have been working on a number of housing projects in the surrounding communities. These range from simple land divisions with private driveways to single family residential plats to PUDs for multi-family residential housing. Many have required public utility extensions, public road construction, stormwater management with 433 agreements, and EGLE permitting. We have also been involved with preparing the conceptual layouts, land surveying, assisting with rezoning and local approvals, obtaining state and local permits, project bidding, construction support and observation, as-builts, and project close-out documentation.