United Sports in West Bradford Township recently broke ground on an expansion of their outdoor facilities. The improvements include the construction of a new artificial turf field, additional parking, three above-ground stormwater basins, and two subsurface infiltration beds under the turf field. In addition, United Sports will erect a seasonal dome over one of their existing turf fields so that teams can continue to play on one of the premier turf fields during the colder months of the year. Since the groundbreaking, Lyons & Hohl has been moving dirt at a record pace!Take a look at a few pictures below and visit our friends at Lyons & Hohl (https://www.lyonshohl.com/projects/united-sports) to see some of the photos they have also taken.
After months of planning, designing, and building, the addition for the Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School is complete and will be open in the fall! The team at D.L. Howell & Associates had the pleasure of teaming up with KCBA Architects once again to work on another project. This addition adds an additional 7,610 square foot six-classroom to the existing school. This addition allowed the school district to remove a modular classroom building and replace it with a new learning space. In addition to the new classroom building, an additional 26 parking spots have been added adjacent to the existing school. Due to the presence of a floodplain on the property, the stormwater management design was broken into two facilities, a subsurface infiltration bed beneath the new parking and a rain garden at the end of the addition.
As I am sure many of you have set aside some time in your busy schedule to read another weekly D.L. Howell newsletter, I am writing my newsletter during, you guessed it…LUNCH. In today’s busy world, lunch is often overlooked as we work to get that submission out before a deadline or jump on another Zoom call. But how often is a kid asked what their favorite class is and they reply, “Lunch”? Our initial response is probably along the lines of, “Oh, he must hate school.” Maybe he just understands the importance of lunch and being properly fueled for the second half of his day.
I come to you today to remind you to eat your lunch! ‘Why?’, you ask. Let me give you a few reasons why you should make sure that you don’t miss lunch.
Five Good Reasons to Take a Lunch:
(1) Fuel – Eat something smart and healthy. Do not run out and pick up a sandwich that has the word ‘Fat’ in it, that’s just going to put you to sleep or worse… (2) Networking – Whether it is running out to pick something up with a few coworkers or taking a client out to lunch, use your lunchtime to step away from the grind and check in on someone. (3) Reset – Take the time to reset and finish the day strong. Step away from the digital screens and give your eyes a chance to relax. That email will still be there in 15 minutes for you to answer after lunch. (4) Stretch your Legs – Get your lunch to-go and take a walk to get some blood flow back in your legs. Too often, we sit at our desk for hours and a quick walk will help add to that afternoon energy to get us to that 5 o’clock whistle (or later) (5) Stress Relief – What is less stressful than lunch? Do something that won’t stress you out (unless you are trying to decide on a place to go for lunch, that might be stressful)
Well, I have finished my lunch and finished my newsletter, so until next time, keep grinding and remember to take a break and eat some lunch.
Over the past nine months, the team at D.L. Howell & Associates had the pleasure of teaming up with KCBA Architects once again to work on another school project. This time the project was located in the West Chester Area School District at Westtown-Thornbury Elementary School in Westtown Township. The team worked together with the WCASD and Unruh Turner Burke & Frees, to secure Land Development approval, NPDES approval and a Special Exception from the Westtown Township Zoning Hearing Board. While the school has been located on the property for many years, it is located in a zoning district where a school is permitted as a Special Exception.
With this project, a new 7,610 square foot six-classroom addition will be added to the existing school. This addition will allow the school district to remove a modular classroom building and replace it with a new and more permanent learning space. In addition to the new classroom building, the plan proposes to provide additional parking for 26 vehicles adjacent to the existing school. Due to the presence of floodplain on the property, the stormwater management design was broken into two facilities, a subsurface infiltration bed beneath the new parking and a rain garden at the end of the proposed addition.
The entire team looks forward to the start of construction this summer!
As many of our loyal subscribers know, we provide numerous plan approval updates and during construction updates, but what about a completion update? Today, I bring you a summary of a recently completed project in Uwchlan Township, located at 101 Gordon Drive and 100 Welsh Pool Road.
D.L. Howell & Associates worked with EKahn Development to secure Township and DEP approvals for the construction of a 184,000 square foot manufacturing facility for the USSC Group, a global manufacturer of seating solutions. Prior to the construction of the new facility, the property was a large parking lot serving the existing building for a previous tenant. The site design consisted of a subsurface stormwater system to manage any increase in stormwater runoff, a rain garden to provide water quality for the parking lot runoff, landscaping, and also expansion of the existing driveway to PennDOT Route 100.
During the construction, D.L. Howell worked closely with the construction team consisting of High Construction and Berg Construction to help ensure that it would be a successful project.
I know you were all looking forward to another newsletter with an update on a project that you have already read about three times or maybe you were looking forward to reading about the infamous leaking locks on the Panama Canal (D.L. Howell Blog, J. Brewer, August 2015), or how about another newsletter about drones! For this week’s newsletter, I am going to go with something a little different and hopefully useful to all of our fellow professionals working in an office environment.
It’s that time of year again when there is that one person in the office that we will call ‘Patient Zero’ or ‘RBV.’ He comes into the office and is obviously sick, well, obvious to everyone but himself. To him, it’s ‘just allergies’ or a ‘tickle in my throat,’ but to the rest of us, it’s a contagious common cold.
I am not a doctor, but with a little research or Googling, I offer you the following tips to help prevent you from getting sick or spreading your ‘allergies’ to the rest of us:
Person cleaning hand with anti-bacterial hand disinfectant sanitizer dispenser in public mall in Japan
Don’t try and be a hero and come to work when you ‘feel like you got hit by a truck.’ Do us all a favor and stay home, rest, and recover.
If you still want to be a hero and try to impress with your dedication to the job. Go into your office and put yourself into isolation. And don’t come out at lunchtime and ask if anyone wants to go to lunch.
Hand Sanitizer and lots of it! Here at D.L. Howell, we have hand sanitizer in every room you go in. Some of us use more than others, and some like to bathe in it.
Fist bumps instead of handshakes (or hugs).
Cover your mouth with your inner arm, not your hands. This will ensure sanitary fist bumps.
Wipe down your work area. It’s incredible what you wipe off your mouse, keyboard, and phone.
Hopefully, we can all follow these steps and keep everyone healthy and working hard through the cold and flu season. And don’t worry next week we will provide you with an ‘engineering’ newsletter that you have all come to enjoy!
On Wednesday May 29, engineers from D.L. Howell and Associates attended the groundbreaking for the Flats at Kennett luxury apartment complex on Millers Hill Road in Kennett Township. The event was well attended by the developer’s team, project consultants, Kennett Township officials, and local news media. The D.L. Howell engineering team worked closely with High Associates, to ensure that the project approvals from Kennett Township, Chester County Conservation District, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection were received in a time frame to allow for construction to commence this summer.
The project consists of three buildings and a total of 175 luxury apartment units ranging in size from one to three bedrooms. Several luxury amenities are proposed including quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances, a fitness center with state-of-the art equipment, under-cabinet lighting, an outdoor pool and fire pit with conversation area, a yoga studio, a pet spa and a bike storage facility. The project is planned to be completed next year.
D.L. Howell is proud to have been a part of this exciting project and we look forward to working with High Associates on additional projects in the future.
