Client
City of Lakeland
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Location
Lakeland, Florida
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Project Costs
Construction: $1.7 million  Engineering: $200,000
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Start Date
September 2004
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Completion Date
September 2006

Scope

Lake Morton is a 40-acre water body, forming one of the City of Lakeland's cultural and recreational showpieces.  It is located in the City's Historic District, annually hosts one of the state's best art shows (Mayfaire), and has a large population of easily approachable native and exotic waterfowl which attract many people to the lake.  The birds include a population of elegant mute swans, the City's popular symbol.  These large birds had overgrazed the edge of the shoreline causing it to steadily erode with an average of 15 feet of land lost around the lakeshore.  BCI designed, permitted, and supervised the rebuilding and stabilization of more than a mile of shoreline around the lake.

The project required a unique combination of factors to achieve construction on task, on time, and on budget.  These included the design of several aesthetically pleasing treatments desired by the community and conceived by the architect, including native stone boulders, vintage brick retaining walls with special "swan ramps," native wetland vegetation, and turf.  The turf, which was desired on more than half of the shoreline, offered a special challenge because that was exactly the type of shore that had been eroding in the past.  BCI had to "swan-proof" the lawn along the lake edge.  We did this using a special turf-reinforcement mat under the sod.  This mat had a weave that the swans could not pluck apart and that would hold the shore together even if the swans continued to destroy the grass exposing the mat to the sun and waves.  Project construction required partial-lake drawdown to expedite reclamation of the lost shoreline sediments, drainage pipe extensions and invert reductions, careful ground control in an area frequented by children and the young-at-heart, and close coordination between the construction crew and engineering team. 

This close cooperation, based on a high level of trust and mutual understanding among design and construction team members, led to about $400,000 worth of savings in materials and labor versus a more conventional approach with a divided design and construction team.  BCI's permitting support included obtaining approval for innovative use of the lake water for turf irrigation, a partial lake drawdown, and wetland mitigation.