Editorial: Cracking confidence

Cracking concrete is spurring some concern at the city’s new recreation center.

“We’re not overly concerned about the cracks as they are right now,” Mark Hecker, assistant director of parks and recreation, said of the many cracks that have appeared in the concrete at the city’s new Sports Pavilion Lawrence.

The real question, however, is: How concerned will the city be about those cracks a year from now, or, better yet, why wasn’t the city more concerned about a construction oversight that apparently led to the cracks?

Both the architects and city officials are quick to say that the cracks that have developed in the recreation center’s concrete mezzanine don’t constitute a structural problem, but the cracks nonetheless are unsightly and have raised some community concerns about the quality of construction at the center, which was built with an unusual no-bid contract. If cracks are appearing just weeks after the center’s opening, what other problems might surface down the road?

An architect for the project told the Journal-World that the cracks were “shrinkage cracks.” All concrete cracks, he added, but joints often are cut in concrete to control where that cracking occurs. Those joints were called for in the Sports Pavilion project but were not made because a “subcontractor did not realize this in time before the concrete fully hardened.”

So someone (a city-hired inspector or project manager?) decided that rather than require the concrete be torn out and redone to specifications, the city should let it go and see what happened. Hecker noted that the concrete work is under warranty for a year, but acknowledged that any repair work now likely would require cutting out and replacing sections of concrete which would be disruptive to the center’s operations. How much better would it have been to correct this error during construction rather than to go back and correct it after the facility was complete and in use?

Early reviews on the new recreation center have been overwhelmingly positive. People like the facility and appreciate the opportunities it provides for local and regional recreation activities. Hopefully, that bright future won’t be marred by ongoing concerns about the quality of the center’s construction or, worse yet, costly and inconvenient repairs.