City of Hickory sues 3 contractors, designer over collapsed arches

HICKORY, N.C. — The city of Hickory is expanding its lawsuit over the arch collapse at the City Walk to include the designer, Channel 9 learned Friday.

Our partners at the Hickory Daily Record got hold of new court documents showing the city claims the design was faulty and there were a lot of missteps.

The 40-ton wooden arches came down on North Carolina Highway 127 during bad weather in February. The cost to put them up was $750,000.

The city of Hickory is also suing three contracting companies.

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The lawsuit filed in April states that the city said crews made mistakes while putting together the arches.

“The Arches were negligently and/or improperly designed, fabricated and/or installed such that they failed to conform with the applicable standards of care and/or terms of the contract and collapsed as a proximate cause of negligent/improper design, fabrication, and/or installation,” the lawsuit said.

Hickory is suing Neill Grading & Construction Co., Dane Construction and Western Wood Structures.

According to the lawsuit, the city said they hope to recover costs that have and will continue to be incurred by the city as a result of the arch collapse. The lawsuit also said the city is entitled to a complete refund of the money paid, as well as damages suffered as a result of the collapse.

The Hickory mayor said the arches were manufactured by the Oregon-based company Western Wood Structures. Their more than half-a-million dollar price tag accounted for about 5% of the total $14.3 million contract that Hickory awarded to Neill Grading for the City Walk.

Neill Grading previously sent a statement to Channel 9 confirming it was under contract with the City of Hickory but said it had no direct involvement in the design or manufacture of the arches.

Neill Grading said it subcontracted the design and construction of the pedestrian bridge, the bridge end walls and the decorative wooded arches to Dane Construction, which then hired and subcontracted the design of the decorative wooded arches to Western Wood Structures in Oregon. Neill Grading said that once the arches were manufactured and shipped by Western Wood Structures, Dane Construction installed the arches under the supervision of NCDOT’S third-party construction administrators and inspectors.

Back in February, Channel 9 learned the arches had problems in spring 2021, which was when the mayor said workers heard popping noises when they tried to raise the second arch.

The city had said the splintering issue was “repaired with adhesive, clamps and self tapping screws.”

Dane Construction told Channel 9′s Dave Faherty that Western Wood Structures completed the repair work and got it inspected and approved.

“At this point there are no indications that the repair contributed to the structural failure,” Dane Construction said.

After the collapse, the city said it would not be conducting an independent investigation into how it happened. The city maintains the project was never finished and Hickory never took ownership of the arches.

According to the lawsuit, the city of Hickory wants a jury trial.

Channel 9 has reached out to the companies named in the suit for a response, but we have not heard back at this point.

(Watch the video below: ‘Couldn’t get stopped’: Driver slammed into fallen Hickory arches on his way home)

‘Couldn’t get stopped’: Driver slammed into fallen Hickory arches on his way home

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