Hunt Midwest Building 45A Cave Shale Removal

Project OverviewDescripción del proyecto

Mined from a 270-million-year-old limestone deposit, SubTropolis is a 55-million-square-foot artificial cave buried 160 feet beneath Kansas City, Missouri. As the world’s largest underground business complex, SubTropolis is home to more than 55 international, national, regional and local companies, totaling roughly 2,000 daily employees. In the last decade, Emery Sapp & Sons (ESS) has completed countless services for Hunt Midwest as its operations continue to expand subterranean commercial real estate. Most recently, ESS excavated more than 200,000 cubic yards of shale from the Hunt Midwest 45A Cave in preparation for vertical construction.

Working underground is not without challenges, however, including confined overhead space, oversized equipment, high levels of dust and debris — plus complete darkness and an extremely loud environment. ESS mitigated these obstacles by implementing an innovative method of excavation by utilizing a milling machine used as a surface miner to excavate the shale and load it — all in a single process.

Given our client’s desire to keep operations and materials below the surface – and due to the extremely low overhead height of the ceiling in the disposal area – ESS obtained belly dump trucks designed to release material without requiring standard overhead space. With a leeway of just 1.5 feet, our crew successfully removed 165,000 cubic yards of soft shale and 48,000 cubic yards of hard shale from the cave.

Due to the high volume of activity at Subtropolis, our crews continue to work diligently to deliver 45A Cave on schedule and prevent interferences with the daily operations of local businesses. ESS is grateful for the partnership shared with Hunt Midwest and looks forward to opportunities for further collaboration. This work is expected to reach completion by Summer 2024.