Belvedere awards $3.5 million contract for Beach Road seawall work
- Tyler Callister
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
The Belvedere City Council has unanimously approved a $3.51 million construction contract to repair the eroding Beach Road seawall, which engineers warn could collapse in a major earthquake, flooding hundreds of lagoon-area homes.
At its April 13 meeting, the council voted to award the contract to Walnut Creek-based Gordon N. Ball Construction Inc., with work tentatively set to start June 1.
Gordon N. Ball’s bid, the lowest of three responsive bids, came in about $310,000, or 10%, above the engineer’s estimate. To close the gap, staff identified existing and planned capital-improvement funding that can be reallocated without tapping the general fund: $172,500 from the retaining-wall repair fund, $125,000 from Measure AA sales-tax funds, $33,000 from the city’s road-impact-fee fund and $15,000 from the sidewalk-repair fund, according to Public Works Director Antony Boyd.
Stetson Engineers, the project’s design firm, presented the completed plans to the council in February. The project will drive roughly 550 feet of steel sheet piling into the bay side of the existing seawall, from just east of China Cabin to the Main Street intersection, forming a new structural foundation beneath the wall and a physical barrier against further erosion. Beach erosion has undermined the seawall’s footing over time, causing the wall to rotate and settle and producing visible cracks in both the wall and the adjoining sidewalk. The new piling is designed to stabilize the wall against those forces and improve its performance in a major earthquake, reducing the risk of a breach that could flood the lagoon-area homes behind it.
Read the complete story in our e-edition, or SUBSCRIBE NOW for home delivery and access to the digital replica.
Comment on this article on Nextdoor.