FEATURED PROJECT: Grant Street Pier

Grant Street Pier

Thompson Metal Fab in Vancouver WA was honored to fabricate the mast, base, and anchors for the keystone community project known as the Grant Street Pier in downtown Vancouver. The cable-stayed, cantilevered pier is the crown jewel of the city’s new downtown Waterfront Park.

This project fell under the Buy America Project which required all products be melted and manufactured in the USA. The mast had to be custom manufactured through a detailed extrusion process because no mill in the USA makes pipe off the shelf in the size required (24-inch diameter, 2 3/8-inch thick).

The base and anchor structures were hot-dip galvanized before being painted (along with the mast) to WSDOT standard specification. Painting on top of a galvanized surface is unusual, but necessary due to the corrosive nature of the marine environment.

Highlights

• The mast is 74 feet long and weighs 54,000 lbs
• The mast pin is solid steel and is 2 feet long and 7 inches in diameter
• The project was AESS Category 3 (Architecturally Exposed Structural Steel) so the first 20 feet of the mast had to be 100% smooth
• The structure required two anchor blocks at the front (8’x1.5’x6’) and two anchor blocks at the back (6’x2’x3’) which weighed 2.5 tons each
• The structure was delivered whole to the site and ready for install