Port, Tribe Sign Development Agreement

Tacoma - DBM Contractors Inc. recently completed the erection of a 120-ft. long, 260-ton steel girder bridge that completes a section of the Sounder Train route for Sound Transit here. The bridge erection and placement was part of a $9 million contract to complete a crucial section of track for Sound Transit.

To minimize the construction impacts on Portland Avenue, one of Tacoma's busiest roads, DBM assembled the bridge on a site adjacent to its final position.Once assembled, DBM utilized a hydraulic skid system that DBM designed for moving container cranes to launch the bridge over the roadway to mobile cranes positioned to move the bridge for final placement. The entire move was completed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and required the use of three mobile cranes to lift and set the bridge in place.

DBM worked with general contractor Stacy and Witbeck, Inc. of Portland, Ore. Fought & Company, Inc. of Tigard, Ore., fabricated the steel and the cranes were provided by Ness Cranes of Seattle. The 1.27 miles of track were completed on November 19th, 2003.

Auburn Receives Funds For C Street Improvements

The City of Auburn recently received $2 million in federal Economic Development Administration grant funds for improvements on C Street Southwest.

The section of C Street, between Ellingson Road and Fifteenth Southwest south of downtown Auburn, is where the Safeway Corporation's new $46 million distribution center is taking shape on 116 acres of former Boeing Company property.

The funds will be used to strengthen and improve C Street to a four-lane public roadway capable of supporting the volume of traffic and the weight of large trucks carrying goods to and from the Safeway facility. Safeway's contribution to the street project is $1.2 million; the City of Auburn will contribute $800,000.

Initial plans for the 1.3 million sq. ft. Safeway facility call for a 760,000-sq.-ft. dry-goods warehouse, a 515,000-sq.-ft. refrigerated warehouse, a recycling center, trucking department, dispatch office, fuel station, truck repair shop, and administration center. The project will bring 1,000 jobs to Auburn; 800 of them transferred from the existing distribution center in Bellevue, Wash. Another 200 jobs will be created locally. Another 800 indirect jobs will be created throughout the region, 200 of them in the Auburn area.

Already, the project has created hundreds of local construction jobs that could bring in as much as $38 million in wages directly at the site each year, and another $9 million in revenue for local businesses.

The center is scheduled to be operational in April 2005.