Commercial and Industrial Projects

A luxury hotel, resort, and spa, Bacara is a 73- acre  development encompassing bluff top and valley terrain in Santa Barbara.  The hotel offers 360 rooms; the 42,000 square foot spa has 41  rooms.  Development of the site involved construction of two bridges to span the Tecolote and Bell Creeks in order to provide access to the site.  For the bridges, our personnel performed a foundation investigation which involved subsurface exploration, laboratory testing, and engineering and geologic evaluation of the data.  They provided design recommendations regarding channel scour, H-Piles, corrosivity, lateral loads, settlement, and Caltrans seismic design criteria.  Due to archeological constraints, recommendations were developed that would not entail major earthwork. During construction, we provided observation and testing of grading operations and lime treatment operations.

The expansion of the Chumash Indian Casino involved the staged construction of a temporary casino, the demolition of the existing casino, and the construction of a new permanent three-story casino, as well as two five-story parking structures, a four-story hotel and spa, a new Tribal Hall and Health Clinic, and infrastructure including over two miles of roadway improvements and utility installation, the bridges, and a wastewater treatment plant.  The first five-story parking structure provides 1,000 parking spaces.  It is supported on a drilled, cast-in-place caisson foundation system, with a precast/prestressed concrete superstructure.  The second five-story parking structure encompasses 500 parking spaces and utilizes a conventional continuous and spread footing foundation system, with a post-tensioned ductile moment frame concrete superstructure.  The new 190,000 square foot three-story casino  utilizes a conventional continuous and spread footing foundation system, cast-in-place post-tensioned concrete suspended slabs, and a FEMA structural steel moment frame.  The 80,800 square foot, four-story hotel and spa structure utilizes a conventional continuous and spread footing foundation system, with a post-tensioned ductile moment frame concrete superstructure.  The wastewater treatment plant is constructed of cast-in-placed reinforced concrete on a raft foundation.  Two of the bridges are of prefabricated structural steel, and one is a cast-in-place post-tensioned bridge with abutments founded on drilled caissons and a box girder bridge deck.  The infrastructure improvements included roadway improvements, modifications and improvements to existing water, sewer, storm-drain, and high voltage power-utility systems, flood protection improvements, and landscaping. Earth Systems Pacific provided all geotechnical services, materials testing, and special inspection for the project.  Our soils engineering investigations included subsurface exploration, laboratory analysis of samples, geotechnical engineering and geologic analysis, and development of recommendations for foundation and seismic design criteria, grading and sitework, pavement, and drainage around improvements.  During the construction phase of the project, we performed observation and testing of soils during grading, and special inspection of concrete, masonry, and steel. 

The Celite Corporation, a World Minerals company, operates two diatomite mines in Lompoc, California. The Lompoc deposits are the world’s largest source of diatomite being mined today.  The Company's products are used in an array of industrial applications including functional additives for the paint and coatings industry and high performance mercury sorbents for mercury removal from industrial and municipal water, crude oil and other petroleum hydrocarbons.  Earth Systems Pacific has provided a full range of services for the Celite facility including consultation regarding geotechnical factors; soils engineering investigations; and compaction testing, foundation excavation observations, special inspection of concrete, welding, and bolting. Projects within the facility for which we have provided services include: a railroad observation pit, a mill building addition; warehouse modifications, kiln expansion, and the crude conveyor project.

The Court Street Project is a three-story complex encompassing commercial, retail, and office space.  It houses such tenants as Abercrombie & Fitch, Pottery Barn, and Banana Republic, as well as a salon and a restaurant, and features a central plaza and a wide curving stairway.  The first story is of concrete construction with concrete columns and a spanning structural slab; the second and third stories are of steel post and beam construction with steel stud infill and concrete decks. Basement retaining walls and concrete and steel shear walls are included. The project is in the heart of the San Luis Obispo downtown district, surrounded on three sides by major traffic arteries, which had to remain open during the construction period.  Challenges associated with this project centered on keeping the site accessible during earthwork operations, keeping sidewalks accessible for heavy pedestrian traffic, deep excavations near the property line, preserving cultural and archeological resources, maintaining the integrity of the adjacent structures and improvements, and conducting work within an area of restricted space and limited access.  Also, as the remnants of the older buildings were removed, the presence of hazardous materials associated with past usage of the buildings was discovered.  This resulted in the removal of the affected materials, which required excavations up to 20 feet deep.  Additional project elements included demolition and removal of an existing parking lot, retrofitting and augmentation of an existing underground creek wall, and construction of a caisson foundation embedded in bedrock.  Earth Systems Pacific’s scope of work for the project included a soils engineering investigation, providing preliminary geotechnical recommendations to guide the development of project plans and specifications.  During construction, we performed grading observations and testing during earthwork operations (including full-time observation during the backfilling of the deep excavations), special inspection of caisson construction, special inspection of steel, and special inspection of concrete.

Our firm has provided geotechnical and testing and inspection services for several structures at the U.S. Borax and Chemical Plant in Boron, California. The Bulk Storage Facility features two 150-foot diameter domed concrete product containment structures, with a subterranean reinforced connecting tunnel, feeder vaults, and adjacent truck parking. A 100-foot high pile-supported transfer tower was constructed to feed product into the domes. A new Rail Spur and Railroad Car Scale House was constructed and 8,000 linear feet of existing railroad was repaired and/or replaced. Our most recent work at the plant is for the Tailing Reprocessing Project which involves several buildings, overhead conveyor systems and supports, and screen structures. This new facility will process waste material to obtain usable minerals such as borax.

Currently under construction, the Haas Automation Manufacturing Plant in Oxnard will be a 415,000 square foot structure of concrete tilt-up construction. It is designed for a 500 worker capacity; automated machining tools will be produced at the manufacturing plant. Our firm was retained to perform a soils engineering and geologic study of the site, which is on the Oxnard Plain and is characterized by soft alluvial soils and a shallow groundwater table. Our studies addressed these geotechnical and geologic constraints and provided mitigation measures to be taken during construction. These entailed the importing of approximately 150,000 cubic yards of soil to raise the building area and adjacent site in order to achieve proper drainage. The importing and placing of approximately 5,000 tons of rock was also required to stabilize the foundation excavation bottoms before fill placement.