Site prep for Citizens campus nears finish

Mountains are being moved in Johnston – at least in a figurative sense.

Initial site work for the proposed Citizens Bank campus near the intersection of Greenville Avenue and Route 295 is approaching completion, and the scope of the project is on a level rarely, if ever, seen it town.

“They’re currently taking this hill down. You see the big rocks, those we’ll start blasting next week. There’s a lot of rocks, blasting will be interesting next week,” Matthew Sabetta, a project engineer with Dimeo Construction, the company that will serve as construction manager at the site, said during a guided tour of the property Tuesday afternoon.

Nearly two-dozen construction vehicles – many larger than the average house – and the same amount of construction workers have transformed the location from a wooded lot into a full-blown work zone. Bulldozers, dump trucks and backhoes with jackhammer attachments dot the site in a flurry of activity preparing for initial foundation work.

“We’re going to be mostly done with the site work by late September, that’s when the foundation work will start, so I would put us at three-quarters of the way done with pre-site work,” Sabetta said. “We will be starting at least one foundation before September, that’s our goal.”

All current work is still in the hands of the property developer, Premier Development, which is utilizing DiGregorio Corporation for the project under the direction of Citizens Bank.

In March, the bank announced plans for the new corporate campus on the approximately 123-acre site. Slated for a 2018 opening, the facility is expected to house more than 3,200 employees. The project is planned to include new highway on- and off-ramps.

“When all is said and done, there will be approximately 420,000 square feet of office space,” Sabetta said, adding that the project budget is approximately $220 million.

So far, the plan is said to be moving according to schedule. The most significant hurdle thus far has been the four-acre onsite landfill, historically known as Tucker’s Dump, and its remediation. Nearly 60,000 tons of material will be excavated to clean the site.

“There were some materials that were toxic, so what we did was we mixed them with phosphorous, a natural compound, until they were at acceptable levels and then we shipped them out to be taken to Rhode Island Resource Recovery,” Sabetta said. “All the materials that were toxic have already been taken out, so now we’re going under the landfill and testing those soils to make sure they’re OK. You’ve got to be careful what you leave behind.”

With the majority of the material from the former landfill having been removed, tests on the subsoils are being conducted. Marked out in a grid pattern with flags, each five-foot-square of the grid has to pass inspection. Hoffman Engineering and DiPrete Engineering are taking those soil samples for testing.

“I would say it’s pretty much what we expected to find. There were no huge setbacks, but obviously the landfill was a challenge,” Sabetta said. “We were mostly concerned about lead. We didn’t want to start moving lead around if it was in high concentrations. We basically just found scraps of metal and piles of old car parts, things like that.”

Most of the site’s other excavated and uncontaminated material will be placed near the 295 side of the property, where a temporary runoff pond is being constructed.

“Throughout the entire construction process any runoff will go there. Once the construction is over, we’ll get rid of the pond and create the sports fields there,” Sabetta said. “We’re crushing the little rocks and taking them for use as fill elsewhere. We’re trying to keep these materials on site, so everything that we’re taking out we’re trying to move to the other side.”

Nearby high tension wires, which run parallel to the site and will not be a part of the campus, presented a concern to Citizens Bank, but electromagnetic field testing was conducted by a specialist who found no health risks to those onsite. Water trucks also visit the site regularly to spray for dust.

“With all of these trucks running around all day, we don’t want anything getting too airborne, so multiple times a day the water truck comes and it waters all the major paths the trucks follow,” Sabetta said.

The current construction site entrance on Greenville Avenue will eventually become a secondary entrance for the campus. Work on the main entrance has yet to begin.

“That’s something that was going to start later in project,” Sabetta said. “Right now, the engineers are currently in the design phase with the federal government, so they’re trying to figure out what kind of ramps [from 295] they want.”

While some nearby residents have been outspoken about the project, as of yet there have been no protests, and those residents who have visited did so out of curiosity or to inquire about progress.

For Sabetta, a graduate of Cranston High School West and Worcester Polytechnic Institute who interned with Dimeo for two years prior being hired full-time this May, the project presents unique opportunities.

“It’s incredible. I’m actually really lucky because many people in their entire career may never see a project starting like this and go all the way through to interior finishes. Not many people see this stage. This has a big community impact,” he said.