Barbara Lawlor, Nederland. It won’t be long now.
The Nederland community has almost grown accustomed to the mounds of gravel in the shopping center parking lot, the massive broken up chunks of concrete, the dust and the ratcheting sound of jack hammers. The repaving of the parking lot has been an arduous process over the winter, and, except for this past weekend’s sludge storm, progress has gone smoothly.
Project manager Robert Place says he expects the finish date will still be the end of May, with, of course, the caveat “depending on the weather.”
Dillon Developers, owned by Heath Dillon, has worked diligently through this inconvenient time for business owners and shopping center customers, moving earth and concrete from section to section to allow for parking access.
If anyone understands how the mountain community works and how an excavating company needs to work with that community, it is Heath Dillon.
Taking on the parking lot contract was a huge but risky move for a small, locally run business. Especially during a mountain winter.
Dillon lived in Gilpin County until he was five years old when he moved to Nederland and attended Nederland Elementary School. His stepdad, JR Reynolds, owned an excavating company and Heath grew up knowing how to operate machinery.
While in high school, his dream was to become a journalist; writing has always been easy and enjoyable for him. He had his own column in the school newspaper, “Dear Shabby,” and wrote football stories for the Mountain-Ear.
But by the time he was 16, Dillon was a full-time track loader operator. “I knew what I was doing and had my own jobs digging water lines and foundations.”
After high school he was picked as one of two candidates to work on the Western State college paper. He thought excavating could always be a fallback job for him. After two years of school he decided to take a break, and drove a snowcat at Eldora Mountain Resort.
By 1995, he was working with JR at High Country Excavating. He never got to be a journalist. He became a project manager, discovering that one of his favorite things was final backfill at the end of a job, knowing he had completed something he created.
One of his first independent projects was the development of Lincoln Hills Subdivision, turning 300 lots into seven. It was one of the largest lot boundary eliminations in Gilpin County, all contained in 12 acres. The planned shotgun houses were to sit on lots located on the steep mountainside. In 2008, the last lot was sold and Dillon moved to Vermont for a few years, working in excavating and landscaping.
When JR’s business was closing after 39 years, Dillon returned to Nederland, rented JR’s equipment and reopened as Dillon Developers. When he was contacted about the parking lot project, it was first described as a “patch the worst parts” job. “That didn’t make sense. We decided to do the whole thing and do it in winter because that summer is when the ground water is high. That’s why we used the gravel, so we didn’t have to worry about the concrete freezing.”
He says he has worked on projects that were as big as this, but has never been the one in charge before.
Groundbreaking occurred before Christmas, with a six-month deadline. It was doable but at first it was difficult because the work was so public. As his crew closed off parts of the parking lot and a Tebo Mountain gravel pile blocked the entrance to some of the businesses and Facebook comments took on a negative attitude, Dillon knew he had to forge ahead and get the job done as efficiently as possible.
“There were a lot of growing pains during the process. From the beginning, it was sketchy, a gamble. The last pour got us to 65 percent completed and over this last weekend I had six rental machines waiting for the snow to stop.”
But he couldn’t have asked for a better setup, working in his home town. Last week, before the snow began to fall on Thursday, he accomplished one of the most satisfactory facets of the project. With Tebo Developers, the Town of Nederland, and Boulder County Public Works Department as partners, he rented a mobile recirculating crushing plant from Power Screening LLC in Henderson and began systematically moving large concrete chunks from the shopping center to the future Town of Nederland Public Works site. There the concrete was crushed into gravel to be put back into the parking lot.
The numbers are huge: 180 dump truck loads of demolished concrete produced 2,200 tons of gravel and 60 percent byproducts, class 6 road grade, that will have a use elsewhere.
The processor is an engineering marvel, says Dillon. There are five conveyor belts with top teeth, crusher jaws, a screen deck and a vibrating, recirculating belt that sends material back around again if it is too big.
The processor cost $10,000 a week to rent, and fortunately the snow held off until the last day of the rental period. Getting it to the site was no easy feat. Weighing 105,000 pounds, the machinery had to travel in the early morning hours and needed multiple permits to move it. The price of the crusher does not include the trucks and heavy equipment needed to feed it, but Dillon says that in the end it will save money, eliminating the trips to a landfill.
“We redirected 200 dump truck loads in this green excavation effort.” He and his son Gavin walked to the top of the large processed gravel pile and fist-pumped the air, calling it “Mount Recycle.”
With many days of warmer than usual weather, the work has progressed on schedule. In fact, he says he would have been in trouble had he counted on plowing snow for a living this winter. He and other local contractors have benefitted from the project: Toma Construction and Indian Peaks Electric are just a couple of mountain contractors involved.
“I feel really good about doing this, so far from landfill. It makes sense to do something as crazy as what we’re doing, considering the less impact on the environment and the less use of energy and fuel.”
Project manager Place says that Dillon had a great idea; that the repurposed concrete as a viable product is an impressive environmental aspect of the project. “I am pleased that the crushed stone was approved by the technical engineers and we didn’t have to import it. I am pleased with Heath and the overall operation.”
Place says last weekend’s storm was a setback; that there was to have been a major pour this week; but it would just happen in two phases now. The finish date is still the end of May.
“We appreciate the community’s patience. Heath is doing an admirable job of keeping as much of the parking lot as accessible as possible.”
For more information about Concrete recycling or Dillon Developers, contact Heath Dillon at (303) 258-3125.
