Regional Market Report: Imperial and Coachella Valleys

Playing Catch-Up
Housing boom means infrastructure projects on the rise

By Greg Aragon

After five years of rapid housing growth, the Southern California desert valleys of Coachella and Imperial are playing catch-up with infrastructure construction.

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“Commercial and retail construction continue to be fairly strong after the dynamic [housing] growth that we’ve had,” says Fred Bell, executive officer of the Building Industry Association, Desert Chapter of Palm Desert. “We see on the horizon about another two years of sustained commercial growth, and on the municipal side, we will be fairly heavy for the next three to five years to catch up [with housing].”

Bell says the two valleys, with a combined population of about 600,000, have added 40,000 new rooftops since 2002 “and with that comes a need for the service and industrial sector to come in behind and that is what we are seeing.”

One of the largest and most ambitious endeavors currently underway in the region is the $285 million All-American Canal Lining Project, which will pave with concrete 23 mi of an 80-mi earthen waterway.

“We are working on the most porous section of the canal to capture an estimated 67,700 acre ft of water per year that is lost to seepage,” says Kevin Kelley, spokesperson for the Imperial Irrigation District, which manages the canal for the federal government.

Built between 1934 and 1940, the canal transports about 3.1 million acre-ft of water per year from the Colorado River near Yuma to the agricultural industry of the Imperial Valley. The canal runs from the U.S. Border with Mexico to the city of El Centro, where it feeds into four smaller canals that irrigate more than 630,000 acres of cropland and provides drinking water to nine cities.

The canal lies entirely in the U.S., but because the seepage goes underground across the border, Mexico is seeking water compensation from the U.S. The proceedings are ongoing but will not affect the lining project, Kelley adds.

After breaking ground June 5, the project is currently beginning to move dirt. When complete in late December 2009, crews will have excavated about 30 million cu yds of primarily sandy material.

The project consists of building a new 23 mi-long parallel canal along side the existing canal, allowing the current unlined section to remain in service during construction. When the new segment is fully lined with concrete, the original portion will be used as a reservoir, Kelley says.

Omaha-based Kiewit Pacific is the general contractor for half of the project. And a joint venture of San Diego-based-Coffman Specialties Inc. and Burnsville, Minn.-based Ames Construction are working on the other half.

“The project was split in order to save time and money,” says Kelley. “By using two contractors, we are able to accomplish this [project] within an aggressive schedule.”
Another large water project is the $23 million expansion of the Activated Sludge Plant and Dewatering Facility in Indio.

The existing facility, which was built in the 1970s, has a current wastewater treatment capacity of 8.5 million gallons per day, which, with the expansion, will increase to 13.5 mgd.

“[The plant] needed rehabilitation and we needed to expand capacity for some time,” says Rex Sharp, general manager of Valley Sanitation District, owner of the project. “The equipment is relatively old and used up and there are better technologies out there that are more efficient.”

He says the recent housing boom in the Coachella Valley has caused the district’s customers to grow to more than 60,000, which translates to a three percent increase each year over the last five years. “Without expanding, we would have exceeded capacity by 2012,” Sharp adds.

The project, which broke ground in October of 2006, is currently about 55 percent complete. It is scheduled to finish in May of next year. A $25 million phase two of the project will go to bid in November.

City of Industry-based Lee & Ro Inc. is managing construction and engineering and W.M. Lyles of Fresno is serving as general contractor.

On the education front, Coachella Unified School District is keeping up with growth by spending more than $230 million on two schools currently under construction and planning two more. Over the past five years, the district of 18,000 students and 23 schools has seen an annual increase of five percent each year.

This investment is highlighted by the $34 million expansion and conversion of Bobby G. Duke Elementary School in Coachella from an elementary into a middle school.

“I think the [local] school districts are playing catch-up,” says Pam Touschner, a principal with the Palm Springs office of WWCOT, the project’s architect. “There is lot of housing going on here and when you have new homes, you have students that need to go to school, and I think the two go hand in hand.”

Touschner says education projects account for about 50 percent of her firm’s work in the Coachella/Imperial area, where it is currently involved with 10 school projects, totaling about $130 million.

The 85,000-sq-ft Bobby Duke project broke ground in October of last year and is wrapping up construction by the end of this month. The 1,200-student institution is scheduled to open for a class of seventh-graders next month. Next year, it will welcome eight-graders.

WWCOT modernized the 1950s school by giving it a new Spanish mission-style design and adding five new buildings, including an administration building, multipurpose room and a state-of-the-art kitchen. Twenty-seven classrooms are being remodeled and 20 new ones added.

Bernards of San Fernando is serving as construction manager.

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