Community Comes Together for Renovation Project

The 430 dug pilot holes for the support structures.

When the town of Norwood Young America, Minn., decided to renovate its
105-year-old pavilion, it turned to a group of hard-working volunteers and a trio of Bobcat® machines.

Mark McGowan, a businessman from Minneapolis who had previous experience in uniting community members to renovate historic structures, directed the project. He formed partnerships with local businesses who could provide the necessary restoration services, including excavating, plumbing, electrical, and roofing.

“We had nearly 60 business partners in this venture,” McGowan says. “The support has been incredible.” This all-volunteer project required much assistance from the local community and larger businesses such as Bobcat Company, who worked with a local dealer to provide use of compact equipment.

No Easy Task
One of the biggest challenges, if not the most important, was lifting the 134-ft.-by-40-ft. building to excavate below and prepare a new foundation.
“This is the largest wooden building ever lifted in western Minnesota,” McGowan says.

The team expected excavation below the pavilion to be a difficult task. For this reason McGowan enlisted assistance from Paul Lano, co-owner of Lano Equipment of Norwood, and Bobcat Company for use of two compact track loaders, along with a 430 compact excavator.

“In order to raise the building, it needed two 7-ft.-deep, 140-ft.-long trenches; one left and one right of center,” says Lano. “The long I-beams
would go through these trenches to raise the building.”

The digging began in early April with some initial assistance from business partner Ken Polifka, owner of Polifka Excavating. Polifka’s large excavator dug an entrance pit where the two compact track loaders would begin their underground excavating task. The T250 and T300 worked in tandem to excavate the trenches underneath the pavilion.

“The Bobcat loaders performed very well with a bucket full of clay, going up a grade,” McGowan says. The T250 and T300—operated by Dewey Hormann, owner of DH Excavating, and business partner Jim Green, owner of ProBob—loaded their buckets with the dirt and then exited the trench.

A challenge with the soil composition made the track loaders a must on this project. “The soil consists of very, very dense clay,” McGowan says. “Pockets of water are commonly trapped in the clay-based soil, making
the excavation difficult.”

“We don’t believe any other machine would have been able to work in these soil conditions,” Lano says. “Wheeled machines would just not have been able to do it. And the height requirements prohibited use of a crawler tractor, so the track loaders were the ideal machines to go underneath the building.”

Thirty new support structures were built to serve as the building’s foundation. The 430 excavator dug 26 pilot holes for these supports. “The compact excavator was needed to get around the beams supporting the building and to dig the new pilot holes,” Lano says.

To learn more about the Norwood Young America pavilion restoration project, visit www.nyapavilion.org.

Two compact track loaders excavated and moved soil around the pavilion site.