Auburn, Wash. - The Seattle office of Turner Construction has been awarded a contract to build a $95 million distribution center for Safeway in Auburn, Wash.

Turner Construction is the general contractor for the project. The architect is SLL/Leo A. Daly of Minneapolis, Minn. Completion is scheduled for March 2005.

The 1.2 million-sq.-ft. distribution center will be comprised of 10 buildings, which includes a refrigeration warehouse, grocery warehouse, recycling center, truck maintenance garage, and administrative, office and support buildings.

Water Reclamation Plant Contract Awarded to Slayden

Truckee, Calif. - Slayden Construction Inc. of Stayton, Ore., has been awarded a $51.5 million contract to expand a water reclamation plant in Truckee, Calif., just three miles from the Northstar ski area on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.

The general contractor began building the facility in January and will finish in August 2006. The project consists of several phases, the largest of which involves a $30 million biological nitrogen removal system. The system will remove all traces of nitrogen from the treated water and reduce the amount of salt entering Pyramid Lake, the Truckee River's terminus.

The expansion also will allow the Tahoe Truckee Sanitation Agency to process 9.6 million gallons a day compared to the 7.4 million gallons the plant currently can handle.

Peak construction employment is expected to reach 120 as Slayden Construction tackles an array of challenges - including weather and strict environmental regulations - that accompany the project. Crews are working at 6,000 ft. elevation at Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The projects involves extensive cold-weather concrete construction and involve the use of a wide variety of temporary environmental controls, including numerous heat exchangers for the concrete pours and tenting to protect the concrete from large snowfalls.