Blues Travelers

Growth Drives Improvements
to Blue Diamond Interchange

By Tony Illia

A new $31.9 million interchange is being built to improve traffic flow at the intersection of Interstate 15 and Blue Diamond Road in southwest Las Vegas. It will come just in time as numerous large-scale projects are making this a heavily traveled route.

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Southern Nevada drivers have long sung the blues over the aging, heavily congested Blue Diamond interchange in southwest Las Vegas.

But that will soon change thanks to a new $31.9-million full-diamond replacement interchange at Interstate-15 and Blue Diamond Road
(State Route 604.)

Although the new interchange opened Nov. 1, Las Vegas Paving Corp., the project's local general contractor, still has some miscellaneous contract work left that should finish by this summer.

"When we first started this project, there wasn't much out there," says Ken Mammen, a senior road designer with the Nevada Department of >> Transportation. "Now it's become a heavily traveled major corridor."
Corridor growth has come from a battery of new projects.

The Silverton Hotel-Casino at 3333 Blue Diamond Road completed phase one of a $150 million expansion in late 2005, adding a 165,000-sq-ft Bass Pro Shops retail outlet and a 30,000-sq-ft casino. It's also planning another 300-room hotel tower, a parking garage and 30,000 sq ft of additional meeting and convention space.

Focus Property Group's new 3,000-acre, 12,500-home Mountain's Edge master-planned mixed-use community at Blue Diamond Road and Rainbow Boulevard, just west of the new interchange, will be home to 32,500 people upon build-out in 2010.

Other nearby developments include Thomas & Mack/Majestic Realty's 424-acre, 5.5-million-sq-ft Beltway Business Park, an office/retail/industrial mixed-use project, and Juliet Cos.' $110 million, 590,000-sq-ft Blue Diamond Crossing at Blue Diamond Road and Valley View Boulevard.

"The southwest is clearly the next frontier of major development in the [Las Vegas] Valley, including housing, retail, office and industrial," says Robert "Tim" Snow, president of the Thomas & Mack Development Group, a Las Vegas-based commercial real estate developer. "Although the Beltway is vital to the valley's future, the Blue Diamond corridor is equally important."

The new 292-ft-long, 182-ft-wide Blue Diamond overpass plays a key role in the corridor. The 10-lane bridge has a 65,700-a-day vehicle capacity or 69% more than the previous 45-year-old, two-lane structure. It features eight travel and two turning lanes, plus sidewalks, fencing and new signals.

It's located roughly 200 ft south of the previous overpass which was demolished by Penhall Co., Anaheim, Calif., using backhoes with pneumatic attachments.

The new three-span overpass consists of 52 structural steel girders, weighing up to 45,000 lbs. each, with a 9-in-thick cast-in-place concrete deck and a 16-ft-high roadway clearance.

Erection was tricky because NDOT didn't allow any shutdowns of I-15. Las Vegas Paving subsequently staged work on halves, and built temporary roadway to keep traffic moving. The structure uses a total of 1.23 million lbs of reinforcing steel and 6,500 cu yards of concrete.

The interchange realigns Blue Diamond Road to connect with Windmill Lane for better traffic flow.

"The realignment allowed the contractor to build the new structure without interference," Mammen says. "And it now ties in at Las Vegas Boulevard and Windmill Lane for a full four-way stop; whereas before, it tied in with a small cross street forming a 'T.'"

The interchange permits traffic in all directions with 600-ft-long on-and-off ramps ranging from two to four lanes wide. Because it is the first major bridge structure greeting northbound I-15 motorists, NDOT identified it as a gateway structure to the southwest valley.

The project has elaborate graphics that include desert relief animals along the 240-ft-long abutment walls. A graphic artist spray-painted details and shading for authenticity. Wall murals feature rattlesnakes, bighorn sheep, horses, a lizard and other native scenes.

There is also decorative rock landscaping by ValleyCrest Cos. of Calabasas, Calif., as well as metal desert scenery attached to the sidewalk fencing.

"We created special fiberglass form liners for the abutment walls which each required five separate pours due to the complexity of design," says Josh Mendenhall, Las Vegas Paving's project manager/engineer. "It took eight hours per pour to ensure the walls were blended properly with no lines or visible patch work."

The project required 8,200 tons worth of asphalt paving, plus 9,200 ft of I-15 barrier railing, 22 high-mast lights and new sidewalk and gutter. Las Vegas Paving additionally relocated two waterlines and a sewerline, while installing 7,000-ft of new reinforced concrete pipe and box culvert.


The job had 300,000 cu yds of excavation, most of which was crushed onsite and used as aggregate road base. The excavation also helped create a future 45-acre floodwater detention basin at Windill Lane and Decatur Boulevard.

Las Vegas Paving self-performed all of the paving, excavation, underground and concrete work.

"By performing the work ourselves, we can keep costs under control while better managing the schedule and project quality," Mendenhall says.

NDOT, meanwhile, is planning $100 million worth of Blue Diamond Road improvements by widening the rural two-lane road into a major eight-lane thoroughfare from the new interchange at I-15 west to Rainbow Boulevard.

Construction work is expected to take place over the next 24 months.

Key Players

Owner:
Nevada Dept of Transportation

General Contractor:
Las Vegas Paving Corp.

Subcontractors:
Penhall Co.; ACME Electric; ValleyCrest Cos.;
Utah Pacific Bridge & Steel; Steel Engineers Inc.

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