Pouring Concrete at Wilshire and La Brea

The giant BRE Properties mixed-use project underway at Wilshire and La Brea has both friends and foes. Adding 480 units of housing onto the single city block will no doubt add traffic and humanity to the busy intersection, but could also help make the stretch of Wilshire thrive with new business and livability in an area that has long been feeling tired and worn.

But whatever your thoughts on this kind of massive urban infill, the sheer magnitude of putting down the roots for such a large-scale infrastructure can’t be ignored. We’ve all passed by the expansive hole at Wilshire and La Brea, then noticed the web of thousands of segments of rebar being woven into forms, the cranes flying materials over the site, and the place crawling with crews in construction hats.

Then, over the course of one day in March 2012, Bernards Brothers Inc, general contractor for the project, sent 520 concrete trucks to the site, pouring 5200 cubic yards of concrete into place. Even better, Bernards Brothers, which looks to be run by three brothers out of San Fernando, put together a time-lapse film on the concrete pour, set to a tension-filled musical score that makes you think something big is about to happen. And it does. The job gets done in a day.

Even if you’re not a construction crew junkie like me, you may just find this two minute video fascinating. The long tendrils of concrete being poured from cranes above, the minuscule looking workers crawling over the site, the muddy boots sloshing through the wet mess, the ominous big wheeled trucks. You just gotta love it. Of course, you may not have loved it if you lived close by, when at 3 am the 520 trucks began lining up along Wilshire, rumbling and ready for the job. But it did get done in a day.