The Clover Island Lighthouse

Work

The Clover Island Lighthouse

America’s First Lighthouse in 50 Years: Engineering the Port of Kennewick’s shoreline restoration plan

DCI Engineers provided structural design services for this U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse equipped with certified navigational aids. The project is a 62’ tall freestanding lighthouse structure, which was built as one of the central parts of the enhancement of public spaces along the waterfront of the Columbia River. This structure is the first lighthouse to be built in the U.S. in almost 50 years.

Location:

Kennewick, Washington

Service:

Structural

Industries:

Government & Municipal

Primary Material:

Concrete, Steel

Project Highlights

Concrete base was structurally challenging due to the change in radius of the structure.
Tilt-up concrete system was used over cast-in-place concrete to gain material economy of a constant wall thickness and gain economy in form usage.
Contains a 44’-tall concrete base and 18’-tall steel cupola that houses the actual beacon and navigational aids.
Finite Element Software was used for the steel cupola in order to fully understand the stresses in the materials as well as their anticipated deflections under load.
A spiral staircase was provided inside the concrete base to provide access to the navigational aids and observation platform.
Staircase is supported on a center column and is not attached to the walls of the structure, which required consideration of unbalanced loading conditions.