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How to Build a Shopping Development Retaining Wall

Project Name

The Prado Redevelopment #77

Customer Name
Sembler/Balfour Beatty

Design / Specifying Engineer
Soil Reinforcement Design, Inc

Block Manufacturer
Piedmont Precast

Wall Installer
MSE Site Solutions

Project Location
Sandy Springs, GA

Year Built
2008

Project Scope

The Sembler Company, known for shopping developments across the United States, was re-developing an outdated shopping center near the upscale Sandy Springs, Georgia community. As part of the project, the former development was completely razed. In its place, a 345,000 sq. ft. re-development project was being built.

"This thing goes from 992-foot elevations where Target is located down to 940, a drop of 52 feet," Jeffrey Fuqua, president of Sembler, told the Sandy Springs Reporter in March of 2007. "Essentially there are four projects centered on the four level deck at different grades. It is one of the toughest sites we’ve ever worked on geographically."

Atlanta Redi-Rock producer Piedmont Precast was building two Redi-Rock walls near the Prado to allow for lane expansion of the roadway.

After seeing the Redi-Rock walls across the street, the general contractor, Balfour Beatty PLC, called Piedmont Precast to discuss an alternate to a cast-in-place wall on the lower side of the Prado. The wall needed to be 25 feet tall with a 2:1 slope on top. Borings discovered the cut was full of rock. In spite of these difficult conditions, Soil Reinforcement Design, Inc was able to design a Redi-Rock wall 26 feet tall at the highest point with only 6 ft. of geogrid using Redi-Rock's type-1AT geo-connector. The wall utilized Redi-Rock’s 28 in. series blocks in the cobblestone texture.

Redi-Rock proved to be a more cost effective solution than cast-in-place for the Prado development’s needs. The wall had to be built entirely from the front of the site and was installed in about two weeks. The wall extends about 220 feet, encompassing about 3,300 sq. ft.

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