NEWARK – Landmark Science & Engineering received the Grand Conceptor award for design of an innovative channel restoration project constructed at the Avenue North mixed-use development in Fairfax, Delaware. The project received top honors at ACEC Delaware’s 2021 Engineering Excellence Awards’ competition in the $1,000,000 and below construction category at the Engineers-Week Banquet hosted by NSPE-DE/Delaware Engineering Society on February 25.
Project team members Keith Rudy, project manager; Joseph Marvasi, civil designer; and Patrick Honeycutt, vice president of development for the owner and developer, received the award from ACEC Delaware’s president, Brian Bolender. Also recognized for their contributions are Craig Smith, for state and federal wetlands permitting and Martha Durand, for native landscape design.
| PHOTO COURTESY OF LANDMARK SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
The channel restoration was completed for Delle Donne & Associates, Inc., the owner and developer of Avenue North, a 1.86 million square foot mixed-use redevelopment of the former AstraZeneca U.S. headquarters in northern Delaware. Civil engineering site design was required to restore the severely eroded, earthen, stormwater channel that sustained a large loss of tree canopy in the forested area. The project was completed in September, 2020, and has resulted in a natural, sustainable, reduced-impact site feature with visual appeal.
Structural and vegetative measures were designed for long-term bank stabilization. Reuse of site rock, geotextile fabric, live willow stakes, and native landscaping were used to protect the banks’ steep slopes. An innovative, two-tiered gabion basket structure that mimics a scour hole and weir was designed to reduce velocity and inflow energy from up to 120 cubic feet per second of peak runoff piped underground from a roughly 60-acre developed drainage area. The project involved federal and state wetlands permitting conducted by Landmark’s environmental scientists.
“We are extremely pleased that the project will provide improved water quality and a reduction of risk to downstream infrastructure, while adding value and a visually striking feature to the owner’s property” said Keith A. Rudy, the project manager and executive vice president for Landmark.
