Published Nationally ®
Southeast Edition
June 19 2019
$3.00
Vol. XXXII • No. 13
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded 1957.” 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215-885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • www.constructionequipmentguide.com
Inside
Gulf Shores Town Weathers Legal Storm for Project
Booming S.C. Paving Industr y to Create 1,000 Jobs…8
By Giles Lambertson CEG CORRESPONDENT
Ascendum C elebr ates Two Milestones…26
TDOT’s reconstruction of Interstate 440, from Interstate 40 to Interstate 24 in Davidson County, includes removing substandard pavement and providing three lanes of travel in each direction for approximately 7.6 mi.
Jef f Mar ti n Hosts Bi g Sal e fo r Blanchar d …7 6
Table of Contents ................4
TDOT’s Largest Contract Heads Toward 2020 Finish
Truck & Trailer Section ........ By Brenda Ruggiero ......................................31-34 CEG CORRESPONDENT
The largest construction contract in Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) history is currently underway near Nashville, utilizing the unique process of rubblization, which is new
Attachment & Parts Section to the area. According to the project website, the reconstruction of Interstate 440, from Interstate 40 to ......................................36-37 Recycling Section ........42-53 Business Calendar ............74 Auction Section ............75-77 Advertisers Index ..............78
Interstate 24 in Davidson County, includes removing substandard pavement and providing three lanes of travel in each direction for approximately 7.6 mi. The project also is intended to address congestion and improve safety along the entire corridor. The project involves replacing deteriorated concrete with asphalt throughout a 7-mi. corridor, removing an elevated grass median and adding a third through lane in some areas so the corridor will have three through lanes in each direction. The existing deteriorated concrete material will be used in the new asphalt roadway. The prime contractor is Kiewit Infrastructure South Group, for a full dollar amount of $152.9 million. The Design-Build contract was awarded on Aug. 1, 2018, and the contract see TDOT page 66
Situated at the water’s edge of Biloxi Bay on the southernmost flank of the United States, Ocean Springs, Miss., is a community of 17,000 people and two beaches. Since 2010, East Beach — the smaller of the city’s sand-and-water recreational areas — has been embroiled in a legal challenge over the building of a sidewalk. “I’ve never been involved in a case that has gone to the Supreme Court on three occasions and spanned almost 10 years,” says Robert Wilkinson, senior partner of the Pascagoula, Miss., law firm of Dogan & Wilkinson, which represents Ocean Springs. He has worked with the city for 30 years and calls the drawn-out legal affair “certainly unusual.” Nicknamed the City of Discovery, Ocean Springs was hit with a lawsuit in 2010 when a pair of property owners discovered that the city planned to construct a walk between their front yards and the sand. This was at least curious because a two-lane roadway and a seawall already separated the properties from the beach. Nonetheless, the pair of homeowners earnestly sued to stop the project, claiming it would encroach on their view and their property. It wasn’t a case of two residents naively resisting change: Each of the complainants brought a legal background to the challenge. Clyde Gunn III was an attorney and David Neil Harris Sr. a local chancery court judge. They successfully filed a motion for an injunction to bar the city from leasing property on which to build the walk and the case moved to Jackson County Chancery Court. An initial ruling gave solace to the property owners and was keyed to the mean high-water line in 1973 as stipulated by the Public Trust Tidelands Act. This began a back-and-forth between the chancery court and the Mississippi Supreme Court on the question of who holds title to the sand beach. Successive appeals by the city see PROJECT page 66