What’s the Dirt: Excavation Briefly Hits a Wall, Uncovering a Piece of Hospital History

Bigger machines, louder noises, deeper digging: June and early July on our tower construction site were filled with activities that are shaping the future of Shady Grove Medical Center. At the same time, crews busy excavating unearthed a sizable piece of our past: a large retaining wall that was part of the hospital’s entrance before our Garden Tower was built.

“After they struck it, they started digging around it to identify the total length, depth, and impact,” said Brian Champa, Director of Project Management for Adventist HealthCare who is helping lead work on the tower. Turner Construction Co. team member Denzel Golden created a drawing showing the wall’s location across the construction site and noting its dimensions: 18 inches thick, 10 feet tall at its highest point, 125 feet long. The footing, or the concrete supports under the wall, ran 2 feet deep and almost 5 feet wide. 

 “Once we started to plot this out, we referenced old drawings for the hospital and saw what it was!” Brian said.

The unexpected find meant extra demolition work for the construction team, which was already working to remove areas of concrete and rock on the tower’s site. Things got noisy at times as crews used a hydraulic hammer to break things apart. Once the demo was complete, rubble was hauled away so crews could finish excavating the tower site. Soil from the excavation is being used to help raise the eastern side of the site for construction of the tower’s second floor. This process of filling in low-lying areas is known as cut and fill.

The next major tower milestone will be construction of a huge crane in late July that will help the building’s structure take shape. The crane will sit alongside the ambulance driveway and rise high above the hospital campus, with a hook height of more than 165 feet. Crews are already laying the foundations needed to stabilize the massive crane once it arrives.

Other recent progress on the tower includes:

• Installation of a sanitary system and repairs to asphalt at the four-way intersection with Medical Center Way and Medical Center Drive.
• Continued pipe work near our Surgical Services equipment storage areas.

To keep up with our tower’s construction or get a peek at what’s going on at the site via our Construction Cam, bookmark the project website at AdventistSGMC.com/NextLevel.