For More Information Contact:
Joe Harwood, 341-1879
Eugene Water & Electric Board

Aug. 18, 2009

Building walls at Roosevelt facility going up Wednesday

A little over one year after launching initial site and excavation work, the Eugene Water & Electric Board on Wednesday morning will begin raising precast concrete walls into place for two of the three primary buildings at its new Roosevelt Operations Center.

Construction on the $83.5 million development started in July 2008, and the project’s general contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, remains on schedule for a November 2010 opening. The project remains on schedule and on budget.

With the arrival of two boom cranes to the 52-acre site, construction crews will begin tilting up the concrete panels that will form the south walls of the electric and water operations center, along with all walls for the warehouse.  This work is expected to last four or five days. In mid-September, crews will raise the walls for the remainder of the operations building and also set the walls for the fleet operations facility. Other facilities include covered vehicle storage and a materials storage yard.

“Watching the walls go up will be a watershed event of sorts for us,” Ken Beeson, EWEB’s project manager. “This phase moves us very close to the halfway point.”

In addition to the general contractor, which directly employs about a dozen workers, there are more than 40 subcontractors that will employ a peak workforce of approximately 260 workers. EWEB estimates about 220 of those workers, roughly 85 percent of the project’s total workforce, are employed by Lane County companies.

Designed for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by PIVOT Architecture of Eugene, the operations center will include several sustainable design features, such as enhanced building insulation, a bioswale to treat storm water, on-site wastewater treatment, solar water heating, a solar (photovoltaic) power array, and significant wetlands preservation and enhancement. LEED is an independent certification program operated by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Once the facility is complete, maintenance and operations personnel will relocate. EWEB customer service and administrative employees will remain in the existing headquarters building along the Willamette River near downtown Eugene.

EWEB is Oregon’s largest citizen-owned public utility. Created as a municipal utility in 1911, EWEB serves more than 86,000 electric customers and provides water to nearly 200,000 people and businesses in the Eugene area.