Willow Grove Park Mall

At the Willow Grove Park Mall in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, the mall owner is retrofitting an area of the mall previously leased by a large store into a modern movie theater.  The existing store has a concrete retaining wall approximately 600 feet long and as high as 34 feet that supports parking lot outside the store.  As part of the retrofit, two floors of the store that is currently supporting the retaining wall need to be removed.  In order to provide proper support of the retaining wall during the retrofit, EEI designed 218 soil nails to be constructed through the existing concrete wall that extend as much as 70 feet into the soil behind the wall.  Fifty-one of the soil nails needed to be separately designed to work around obstructions such as stair towers, elevators and electrical panels that would remain during the retrofit.  EEI is currently near completion of load testing each of the installed soil nails.