A once a vacant lot with a troubled past as a dump site is now a beautiful new People’s Organic restaurant.
The corner of Prairie Center Drive and Valley View Rd. sat vacant for years due to poor soil conditions and a lack of interested developers wanting to take on the task to correct it, but luckily that didn’t shy the team behind People’s Organic away.
The task of preparing the site to support a building began with creating a Geopier system by drilling 108 holes, 3 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep in the soil. Crushed rock was poured into the hole and rammed down with a hydraulic hammer. This Geopier system strengthens the soft, loose soil with dense rock columns.
Once the soil was ready to support a building it was the middle of winter, so a heated tent enclosure was built in order to begin the footing and shell work. In addition to the difficulty of building in winter, a wet spring added delays to the schedule. Despite the slow start and the weather delays, the project was successfully completed in the summer of 2014, on time with the original construction schedule.
WCL Architects designed the space which includes a large open kitchen, a curved bar featuring curved glass shelves, bright colors, a drive-thru, rain gardens and a (soon to come) fire pit.
