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As published in the North Bay Business Journal, Feb. 21, 2005: Kenwood Estate A successful businessman wanted a quiet weekend retreat in the beautiful hills above Kenwood. An Italian-style villa was designed to rest upon terraces that conform to the contours of the site. The villa's pavilions and wings joined in a geometric arrangement providing magnificent views of Sonoma Mountain and the surrounding hills "The house was a spectacular design, but we had to build it on a solid rockpile," remembers Jay True, vice president of Jim Murphy & Associates. "We discovered very quickly that it was going to be impossible to provide a smooth, level base for the terraced pads. Every place we started digging, we hit rock." The JMA team, working closely with the architect, developed several alternative scenarios for dealing with the hillside rockpile. One scenario - the most expensive one - involved blasting out the rock where holes were needed for the swimming pool, wine cellar, and foundations, and then hauling off the blasted rock and bringing in usable rock to create the terracing pads. "That would have been the obvious - and probably typical - solution," says JMA superintendent Jeff Wollmer. "But we came up with a better one, and saved the owner about $150,000 in the process." There was no way to get around blasting away the rockpile where areas had to be dug out. But then the JMA team brought in a crushing plant, which crushed the blasted rock into smaller, smoother, consistently sized rock that could be compacted evenly for the terraced foundations and as backfill for the driveway and parking area. "Basically, we turned bad rocks into good rocks. There was nothing wrong with the rock in the ground - it is solid and structurally sound. It was just in the wrong place, and in the wrong sizes," says Jeff. Other savings occurred as well. Since nobody had to be hired to haul away the blasted rock or to bring in new rock, that meant no big trucks with heavy loads had to be coming and going on a fragile hillside. That was a state-of-mind savings for the owner. "Owners and architects should be able to ask their contractor to come up with creative ways to solve problems, cost-efficiently," says Jay. "We saved money for the owner, true enough, but we also protected the exquisite environment where his private retreat is located. That's an important part of our job."
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