BOMA muses over wall repair
Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen mused over solutions to repair the wall off North Campbell Station Road during a workshop Thursday, Aug. 9.
“Obviously, the Board’s aware of the Campbell Station wall, and the fact that some of the manufactured (podium) stone that was on there — that was part of the (Tennessee Department of Transportation) project many years ago — started delaminating probably about a year ago or so,” Town administrator David Smoak said. “So, Bud (McKelvey, Public Works director) and his crew took all of (the stone down).
“We had an engineering firm go out and review the wall,” Smoak added. “Structurally, the wall looks great. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do — hold the dirt up there.
“The question is how do you want to go back and make the wall look in the future. We need some kind of consensus on what you want to do with the wall.”
McKelvey offered several options for the board to consider:
• A painted finish, which would cost $41,224;
• True cement stucco with ruff finish, costing $88,224;
• Face profile stone costing $91,760;
• Rectangular profile stone, costing about $100,500;
• Manufactured stone (Lickem Stickem), costing $116,224;
• Stack stone, costing about $145,700; and
• Stack stone with large profile, costing about $145,700.
With the first option, he said, “painting is going to be a little bit harder than just painting it.
“Every 2 feet, there is a Styrofoam joint with metal on each side of it. That’s going to be a problem,” McKelvey added. “If we paint it, the rust is going to go through because of the metal.”
He pointed out the splotches in the wall are from the mortar that came off the back of the stone that actually did stick, but the rock came off. Those splotches will have to be smoothed.
Board members favored placing wainscoting on one portion of the wall, placing true stucco on the other and topping it with a cap.
However, Smoak suggested, “We can go out there and look.”
“If you use a true stack, and you only do it so high, then you are cutting those costs down and you are saving by doing stucco,” McKelvey said.
“You will definitely want something to break it up,” Darryl Smith, Town engineer, said about the look of the wall.
“The wall is huge.”
“Each one of those (wall) panels is 22 ½ feet, clear space between column to column,” McKelvey said. “And it runs from 8 feet high to 14 feet. There are seven sections that are 14 (feet) and then it tapers down.”
Alderman Bob Markli suggested hiring a landscape architect on the project.
“We want to make it look right,” he said, adding he also would like to see the columns “beefed up.
“It bugged me from the day it went on, those columns didn’t look structural,” Markli added. “It looked like a big thing sitting on a little tiny base.”
