Campus Martius

Giffels Webster completed this $10 million infrastructure reconstruction project in the heart of Downtown Detroit in late 2003. The Giffels Webster Team completed the construction documents for multiple roadways on time and under budget, including:  Gratiot Avenue, Woodward Avenue, Monroe Street, State Street, and portions of Michigan Avenue and Fort Street, along with new pavement markings within adjacent roadways.  Each of these segments presented different challenges, including the coordination of designs with those for the new Compuware World Headquarters, the new Kennedy Square office building, three new parking structures, and the proposed Campus Martius Park.

The City of Detroit required that traffic be maintained through the project area while the construction of the remaining roadways was completed.  This required the preparation of extensive detour plan and partial road closure plans that needed to be coordinated across all four roadways.  This project was also the first required to prepare pedestrian detour plans, requiring research and development of general pedestrian detour routing plan standards for the City of Detroit.

Due to funding requirements, construction on State Street needed to be bid within weeks of the award of the design contract. Not only were the plans completed and bid, but construction was completed within 90 days. Total construction costs were within 10 percent of the original Giffels Webster estimate with few change orders.

Overall, the project resulted in the creation of an award winning park space and helped revitalize the downtown core.  It also set the tone for large scale infrastructure reconstruction projects in the City of Detroit, particularly related to researching underground building vaults and other encroachments into the public right-of-way.