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The Business Journal of Kansas City - May 9, 2005

SUBTERRANEAN SNARL: CITY SEEKS SOLUTIONS TO MAZE OF
UNDERGROUND UTILITIES
Rob Roberts

Staff Writer

Downtown Kansas City streets are more congested below the surface than above.

That's what engineers and contractors are finding as they transform a dozen downtown blocks into sites for a new 18,000-seat arena and an $850 million entertainment district.

"There's old trolley tracks, old utilities that are undocumented, building foundations that extend out under the street," said Kevin Honomichl, president of Brungardt Honomichl & Co. PA. "It's just incredibly congested, and it's going to be difficult to find the space to put more underground structures in place."

Honomichl said the firm had been appointed as a "telecom system design guru" by HNTB Cos., whichhas the contract for street design in the entertainment district.

If the Kansas City Council approves the financing, Honomichl's firm will design a network of city-owned conduits to be placed under the streets in the seven-block district. The conduits would allow new fiber-optic lines and coaxial cables to be extended through the entertainment district and adjacent arena site in the future without tearing up the pavement.

"It's a very proactive, forward-thinking idea," Honomichl said.

Black & Veatch is conducting a study to determine how much conduit should be buried, how much it would cost and how much the city could expect to recoup by leasing the underground space to service providers.

The study is expected to be completed by mid-May, Honomichl said, and shortly thereafter, the city will have to decide whether to greenlight the project. That's because the reconstruction of all streets in the entertainment district will begin in the summer, he said.

"They're putting in new concrete pavement with a decorative finish that will be consistent with the atmosphere being created by the entertainment district," Honomichl said.

Even if that were not the case, he said, the streets would have to be replaced because "they're getting trashed with all the utility relocation going on."

To coordinate the flurry of relocation activity, Kansas City's Capital Improvements Management Office (CIMO) has been holding weekly meetings with representatives of city agencies, contractors and utility companies involved with the entertainment district and arena projects.

"I'll put in a plug for CIMO; that was a really good idea," said Clint Robinson, a project manager for Black & Veatch.

Robinson has been promoting the idea of installing a conduit system in the entertainment district being developed by The Cordish Co.

A similar system was installed in Cordish's Power Plant Live entertainment district in Baltimore. But Robinson knows from his utility-relocation efforts in conjunction with Cordish's Kansas City project that finding space for the conduits here could be a subterranean pain.

One of Black & Veatch's jobs has been to assist in the relocation of sewer and steam lines from the alleyways to the roadways in the entertainment district. Some telecommunications providers also had to move their lines out of the alleys.

"Downtowns used to be designed with alleys so that deliveries to buildings could be made at the back," Robinson said. "The idea was that you shouldn't clutter the streets, so they used the alleys for some utilities, too."

Today, downtown real estate is too valuable to maintain alleyways within redevelopment projects, meaning all of the utility, telecom and other underground service lines must be crammed under the streets.

"And the streets were already crowded," Robinson said.

David Peck, CIMO's project manager for the entertainment district, said you can go about 20 feet under Downtown's streets before hitting bedrock. Thus, there would seem to be plenty of space for new lines.

The problem, Honomichl said, is that existing lines are buried 4 feet or 5 feet deep across the entire width of many streets, making it difficult to place new lines below them.

"There's just a big tangle under there," he said, "including a lot of abandoned lines where they buried a new line but didn't take the old one up. So you get in there, you find these undocumented lines or pipes, and you have to figure out what they are and whether they're active before you cut them."

Before any active line is disrupted, a replacement line must be in place, said Blake Ellis of Burns & McDonnell, the city's arena project manager.

Otherwise, imagine the stink -- literally and figuratively -- that would be caused by cutting an AT&T cross-country fiber line and a large sewer line that run through the arena site.

Peck said the redevelopment projects have provided a good opportunity to eliminate another, very real odor problem in Downtown. Among the underground utilities being replaced, he said, are old stone-lined channels still used to transport both raw sewage and stormwater.

Installing separate sewage and stormwater lines in the area will eliminate odors and reduce the city's cost of treating stormwater at its sewage treatment plants, he said.

In addition to replacing sewers, Peck said, the city is upgrading water lines in the area.

"Some of the water mains are so old that the valves don't work anymore," he said. "So you have to dig up the old line you're trying to abandon, put a new valve in to shut off service, do your work, then tear the old line out."

The new water lines being installed Downtown aren't bigger around on the outside, Peck said.

"But I could show you one we pulled out," he said. "There's calcium an inch thick on the inside. It looks like a coral reef."

Ellis said one benefit of redeveloping such a wide swath Downtown is that "we're upgrading all of our utilities in the area with 2005-era stuff."

Another benefit, he said, is that all the new lines going into the ground are being mapped meticulously so that future excavators will face fewer surprises and disruption-of-service lawsuits.

The importance of that mapping effort becomes apparent when you consider the number of telecommunications companies wanting to extend service to Downtown.

Twenty-six carriers have lines within a fiber-optic superhighway that runs adjacent to the Bryant Building at 1102 Grand Blvd. And who knows what the future will bring.

"It wasn't five years ago that we thought Wi-Fi wouldn't be anything meaningful," Honomichl said. "Five years ago, voice over Internet was just a concept. Today, people have that service in their homes.

"So it's inevitable that new technology is coming that we can't even imagine right now."

REACH ROB ROBERTS at 816-421-5900 or rroberts@bizjournals.com.