ForConstructionPros.com

If you build it, they will come. That’s what the developers of the new 850,000-square-foot Metropolis shopping center in Plainfield, IN, are banking on. As one of a growing number of trendy lifestyle shopping centers, the open-air mall outside Indianapolis was built in a little more than 10 months and officially opened October 29, 2005.

At a price tag of $127 million, Metropolis was designed to boast an atmosphere with enough excitement to lure the likes of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, from their comparatively dull city of the same name to a stimulating locale for shopping, dining and entertainment. And if that didn’t occur, at least they would entice shoppers from Plainfield and parts of Western Indiana who previously had to travel into Indianapolis to shop at a large center.

The birth of Metropolis required the involvement of multiple construction contractors, including Milestone Contractors, L.P. The Indiana-based company, which employs more than 1,200 seasonal construction personnel, specializes in asphalt paving, highway and bridge construction, utility work and site development. Milestone was hired to build Metropolis’ parking lots and interior paths and roadways, as well as repair an existing road nearby. Milestone began work at the site in June 2005.

A blanket assessment of Milestone’s job would show that they laid 48,000 tons of stone and 37,585 tons of asphalt on the site, in addition to curb construction. On nearby Perry Road, in front of the mall, another 8,478 tons of asphalt was laid. But numbers alone don’t tell the tale. The outdoor mall concept created some fairly unique paving layouts.

“The whole project was rather odd-shaped,” says Chad Warren, Milestone’s asphalt job superintendent at Metropolis. The center’s set-up required not only the standard parking lots and roads surrounding the mall, but several interior roadways weaving through the various clusters of retail stores.