The urban quarry: the former Stapleton Airport in Denver becomes a high-profile recycling project - C&D Series - Recycled Materials Co

Recycling Today, Dec, 2002 by Brian Taylor

The scope of the project is overwhelming. Six million tons of runway, taxiway and concourse concrete and asphalt. Fleets of trucks, loaders and several pieces of recycling and screening equipment. Hundreds and hundreds of feet of conveyors. Six years to process the material and 10 years to use and market it.

There were probably dozens of reasons why Recycled Materials Co. (RMC), Arvada, Colo., could have backed off from its proposal to recycle the runways, taxiways and parking lots of the former Stapleton International Airport in Denver.

But CEO Ken Buesing, president Mark Wachal, general manager Rick Givan and the company's other leaders didn't back away from the project. Instead, they have followed up on every commitment and turned the former airport into a bold experiment in urban quarrying.

In the second half of 2002, RMC entered its fourth year of concrete and asphalt recycling at Stapleton, continuing on a project that produces up to 5,000 tons of secondary aggregates each day.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

Very few new airports have been built in the U.S. in the past two decades, and thus very few old airports have been taken out of service.

But civic planners in the Denver area made the decision to build a major new airport at a greenfield site and to close operations at the former Stapleton International Airport.

While commercial airport closings are rare, the scaling back of the number of military bases that has taken place in the past 10 years has resulted in several military airfields being de-commissioned.

One of the de-commissioned sites was Lowry Air Base, also in Denver. When this Air Force training center and airstrip was closed and re-developed, Recycled Materials Co. was a key part of the demolition and development process.

"Lowry was a major military base that was scheduled to shut down," says RMC general manager Rick Givan. "At the time it happened, the company was involved in several contracting segments, but the one our president Mark Wachal wanted to focus on was concrete recycling," he adds.

The company was the winning bidding for several contracts at the Lowry site, eventually recycling parts of runways and roadways and builing a sports complex and some of the new roads in the neighborhood being developed at the former air base site.

Givan says the company's experience with the Lowry project helped prepare RMC for the Stapleton project. "We learned a good deal about government applications and proposals, about working with future users and about finding applications for recycled concrete and asphalt," notes Givan.

In the mid-1990s, as construction of the new Denver International Airport proceeded, the City of Denver formed a committee to begin making plans and holding public forums concerning the redevelopment of the seven square miles of land comprising Stapleton Airport.

The committee and the resulting Stapleton Development Foundation consisted of elected officials and citizens from surrounding neighborhoods as well as business owners and executives with land planning experience.

Mark Wachal, with his Lowry redevelopment experience and knowledge of materials recycling techniques, attended the public forums and eventually served with the foundation. His involvement with the foundation ensured that the recycling of demolition materials generated at the airport remained on the redevelopment agenda.

Ultimately, Recycled Materials Co. had to bid against several major contracting and engineering firms in 1998 for the right to remove and recycle the estimated 6 million tons of concrete contained in Stapleton's runways, roadways and parking lots.

"We made a presentation going up against a multi-billion firm that could buy us out with the money in their coffee fund," quips Wachal of the nerve-wracking proposal stage. "They had a nifty PowerPoint presentation; we had some transparencies on an overhead projector, and unfortunately the bulb burned out on the projector."

But David defeated Goliath, with the RMC proposal being accepted. Now, the company was committed to a 6-year demolition project with a 10-year marketing timeframe and to finding a home for 6 million tons of recycled concrete and asphalt.

"We had a public persona of confidence, but, sure, we lost some sleep over committing to finding end markets for 6 million tons of material," says Wachal.

The company was very careful in negotiating the terms of its contract, Wachal says. "It was important to have clearly defined contracts, due to changing administrations and staffs within the City of Denver," he notes.

Despite the contract caution, RMC has assumed a significant risk with its arrangement. "We were the only company who said we view the concrete and asphalt as resources," says Givan. "We aren't charging the city to remove the material, but we needed to have the time and the space to produce and market the materials."

THE SET-UP

The redevelopment of the former Stapleton land has been a playground for Urban planners, who seldom have a seven-square mile parcel of land within a major city to redevelop.