New Vail Mountain Restaurant Built in Tough Conditions
2012 Best Project Award
Small Project (Under $10 Million) Category
The 10th Restaurant
Vail, Colo.
The 10th Restaurant is a ski-in/ski-out fine dining restaurant overlooking the expansive Gore Range and sitting directly below Vail's Look Ma ski run. The restaurant's name pays homage to the legendary soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division.
The building includes high-end interior finishes and extensive millwork and stone throughout the interior and exterior, an under-lit granite bar top, a massive 80-ft custom fireplace and a state-of-the-art culinary kitchen. Since its opening, the restaurant has been almost completely booked despite a slow ski season in 2011. The facility is also designed to host weddings.
The building's structure combines steel, timber and wood frame construction with complex connection details. The reveals of the connections and the finishes had very tight tolerances. All of this was carefully coordinated among the different trades using virtual modeling to coordinate the shop drawings.
Adverse weather greatly affected this mountain project, where afternoon thunderstorms and heavy snow are routine events at 10,000 ft. The project's foundation was covered in 10 ft of snow when work began in April 2011, and over the next three months the site received an additional 86 in. of snow.
The project team shoveled off the initial snow and worked with on-mountain operations to remove additional snow with snowcats and bulldozers from the site's access road. Working together, the team was able to open the road two weeks after the start of construction.
After the road closed at the end of the summer season, the team used ski lifts and snowcats to get workers and materials to the site. The subcontractors worked well together, and even with the many days lost to bad weather, they were still able to meet the original schedule.
In addition to the weather, the high elevation presented other unique challenges. Worker fatigue, extra transportation time, navigation of a difficult road and on-mountain summer activities were other issues that had to be solved.
Key Players
Owner: Vail Resorts Development Co., Avon, Colo.
Architect: Zehren & Associates, Avon, Colo.
General Contractor: Hyder Construction, Denver
Civil Engineer: Alpine Engineering, Edwards, Colo.
Mechanical Engineer: Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers, Lakewood, Colo.
Structural Engineer: Monroe & Newell, Denver
Submitted by Hyder Construction
