Heritage Point Park Project
Heritage Point Park, located in the City of Signal Hill, CA, was opened to the public on July 8, 2022. The project is in the City of Signal Hill at 1900 E. Burnett Ave. The park property is co-owned by the City of Signal Hill and Signal Hill Petroleum, which operates active oil wells on their portion of the property. The General Contractor was the Conservation Corps of Long Beach (CCLB), and Atlas Green Works (AGW) acted as their Project and Construction Manager Consultant. Mr. Larry Smith performed both functions.
The Park is part of the City's trails master plan and connects the community south of the park to Hilltop Park. Park development on the City property included a drainage system designed to infiltrate precipitation that lands on the site through a series of bioretention basins that capture runoff through underground drains, adjacent walkways, and driveway. Excess water during major storms that leaves the site flows through a parkway drain and into a dry well. Any sediment that makes it through the parkway drain is captured in the primary chamber of the storm drain, which is cleaned out regularly.
Other elements in the park include natural stone retaining walls that line the meandering concrete walkway/trail lined with light bollards, and associated rest areas that include basaltic stone benches and interpretive signage. A monument sign announces the park/trail location at the corner of E. Burnett St. and Cherry Ave.
One major challenge was the amount of site elements, including underground drainage, electrical, and irrigation, that needed to be constructed within a narrow 60 ft. wide right-of-way owned by the City of Signal Hill and surrounded by oil well infrastructure with underground pipelines crossing this right-of-way. As could be expected there were a number of unknown site conditions associated with oil well underground infrastructure that needed to be abandoned and rerouted, along with schedule impacts associated with the needed Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP) access during and after construction to service active wells.
There were other challenges that are not uncommon on these projects such as navigating the design changes and value engineering to either address unknown or unforeseen conditions or related to constructability. The presence of oil well related underground and above ground infrastructure required not only the abandoning and re-routing of that infrastructure, but also required re-design of existing construction elements, the addition of other elements not in the original plans all while doing the value engineering to ensure that the project did not exceed the original contract budget and was completed in time to satisfy funder requirements.
The project broke ground in September 2021 and was substantially complete by the end of June 2022. It was completed on budget and within the funder deadline requirements.
Total budget = $2,500,000.