Heads Up

St. John’s College, 2006

A big investment, tight spaces and a strict deadline. Throw in a pond, a waterfall, and a requirement that everything look just like it did 50 years ago, and you’ve got the construction project from… well, let’s just say it could present a real challenge.

The location is St. John’s College, a beautiful campus in a bucolic setting amid the foothills above Santa Fe, where 450 students live and study the classics. Footpaths wind through courtyards, up and down steps, and past adobe and brick buildings built in the 1950s, designed using traditional Santa Fe architecture. Nature is everywhere, from the roadrunners in the sagebrush off the plaza, to the spectacular views of the surrounding hills.

An important part of this campus is the pond. Located in the center of the college, it is an integral part of the school, but one that was showing its age. It was leaking for one thing–and the waterfall didn’t fall anymore. It hadn’t for years. St. John’s had pictures of the waterfall, back when it worked properly. Everyone agreed that the waterfall should be rebuilt, just like the pictures showed, with new rocks, plants and fish. The plazas and courtyards around it needed upgrades, too.

All in all, it was a big and expensive project. St. John’s contracted with Design Workshop, a landscape architecture and planning firm in Santa Fe. A year and a half of drawings and discussions later, the project was ready to move forward. Lockwood Construction, another Santa Fe company, was contracted to do the work. Lockwood, in turn, hired Heads Up for the pond and landscape work.

Materials were purchased and crews hired. Everyone waited for the students to leave. The entire project had to be completed in the slender timeframe between graduation and the start of fall semester. Because the pond and the courtyards were right in the middle of campus, no work could be done when classes were in session. When the campus was finally empty of students, the crews moved in. “It was a tight, tight space,” said Patrick Chavez, Project Manager with Heads Up. “We were working in interior courtyards in a short timeframe. We don’t generally do ponds as big as this one, either. There were a lot of subcontractors working on different parts of the project—all of us in this small area with steps and tight turns. We all really had to work together.”

Heads Up and Lockwood broke up the pond’s concrete basin and began to install a huge new liner and re-build the waterfall. Gradually the reality began to match the old photographs as the waterfall took shape. Heads Up planted new trees, shrubs and flowers around the pond and courtyards. 20,000 square feet of concrete would be replaced by individual bricks.

And then it began to rain… and rain and rain. The summer monsoons turned the dirt and the empty pond to rivers of mud. All anyone could do was hope for sunshine and work like crazy in between downpours. Lockwood Construction’s Project Manager Bill Greenhalgh had nothing but praise for Heads Up Crew Leader Richard Perce. “Heads Up did a bang-up job of meeting our needs,” he said. “We met all our deadlines– despite all the rain. Richard was very accommodating. A lot of subs will tell me why they can’t do this or that, but not Richard. He got things done and he got them done right.”

The project was completed before the students returned to campus. “It exceeded our expectations,” said Drew Gilliland, Director of Facilities and Operations for St. John’s College. “The students were very positive.” “Everyone stayed focused,” added Patrick. “And the result is absolutely beautiful.”