Retaining wall cracking at new Carver High School

Mike Haskey mhaskey@ledger-enquirer.com Dr. Marlon Scott offers the inspiration during the dedication ceremony Saturday afternoon in the school's gymnasium. 09/01/12

MIKE HASKEY mhaskey@ledger-enquirer.com Buy Photo

During a routine check last summer, an alert Muscogee County School District employee discovered hairline cracks in the 53-foot-high retaining wall beyond the new Carver High School's softball field.

Now, those cracks have multiplied and some of those gaps are more than 1-inch wide, but a year's worth of inspections and negotiations has forged a plan for repairs, which are scheduled to start next week.

"I was just doing my job," Rexon Byrd, the district's senior project manager, said with a shrug as he showed the Ledger-Enquirer the cracks Wednesday.

Carver was rebuilt on its Eighth Street site and reopened last August. Freeman & Associates of Columbus and Balfour Beatty Construction of Atlanta are partners as the project's main contractors. Gardner Spencer Smith Tench & Jarbeau of Atlanta is the architect. The $37 million project was funded by the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax voters approved in 2009. Beyond the 225,000-square-foot, 67-classroom building, the project gave Carver the baseball and softball fields it had lacked.

To clear land for those fields, construction workers had to flatten a hill. The dirt that piled up had to be contained, so a retaining wall was built along the rear of the property facing Illges Road.

And this isn't a ho-hum wall; it's five stories high and about two football fields long -- keeping the Delmar Apartments 30 feet away safe from an avalanche.

So what at first looked like only a cosmetic concern turned into a significant problem as the cracks in the bricks and the gaps between the blocks grew.

"The cracks in and of themselves are not structural," said Bobby Hecht, the district's construction director. "The facing of that wall is just a shell.

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Retaining wall cracking at new Carver High School