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Bids are being invited for Malibu’s movie-star mountain tunnels, which are in need of a makeover before their next close-up.
Los Angeles County will open bids April 10 for cleaning, coating and installing new steel liners in the two Kanan Dume Road Tunnels (T2 and T3), which run through the canyons above Malibu.
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Photos: zev.lacounty.gov |
| The famed tunnels on Kanan Dume Road, including the ones known as T3 (above), are getting new liners. |
The project, with an estimated value between $7 million and $9.5 million, involves cleaning and lining 119,175 square feet of existing metal surfaces in the two tunnels. The steel will be abrasive blast-cleaned and coated with a two-coat waterborne acrylic system.
The existing coatings contain lead; containment will be required. The project also includes installing new steel liners and applying 76,379 square feet of membrane waterproofing.
Falling Liner
The reinforcement is needed to address the tunnels’ decades-old gunite lining and steel ribbing, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky recently blogged about the project.
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| The tunnel interiors will be reinforced with new steel liners. |
“We did some inspections and found that some of the existing liner was coming down,” Lance Grindle, assistant head of Public Works’ Design Division, told Yaroslavsky. “I don’t think anybody got hit, but the potential was there.”
Another problem, according to Yaroslavsky: Water is seeping into the tunnels in rainy weather. The project will also include a new drainage system.
Charlie’s Angels and Hyenas
The tunnels opened in the late 1960s and have had momentary glimpses of fame in Chrysler or Mitsubishi commercials, and in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, reports Yaroslavsky.
“But their biggest star turn came in the final scenes of Deep Impact, in which they doubled as an Ark-like cave for residents of Planet Earth hunkering down in hopes of surviving a massive comet strike,” he writes.
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| The tunnels donned a post-apocalyptic look for their role in the 1998 action movie Deep Impact. The scene included more than 1,000 extras and more than a few wild animals. |
The two-day shoot drew more than 1,000 human extras as well as “lions, jaguars, hyenas, alligators, pythons, kangaroos, ostrich, buffalo, camels, elephants, zebras, cattle, chickens [and] birds,” said Yaroslavsky, citing Film Scouts.
Solicitation Amended
The liner replacement work on Kanan Dume’s T2 and T3 tunnels is expected to begin in September and conclude in August 2013. A later project will target the Kanan Dume T1 tunnels.
The county had initially sought bids on the tunnel work last year, Yaroslavsky said. But the original solicitation had to be amended several times, and when the bids came in, each of the four lowest bids had “some level of discrepancy, clerical error, omission, vagueness or mistake,” the Department of Public Works told the Supervisors in a letter.
Reported by Paint BidTracker, a construction reporting service devoted to identifying contracting opportunities for the coatings community. Visit us on Facebook!
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