J. Bennett Johnston Waterway Visitor Center

Client: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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On most projects, all engineers have to do is concentrate on such technical issues as load factors, tensile strength, and slope stability. It’s a rare firm that can combine a mastery of the finer points of engineering with the ability to design for people--but that’s exactly what ABMB did as project manager for the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway Visitor Center at Grand Ecore, near Natchitoches, Louisiana. It’s one of two visitor centers designed by ABMB on this 236-mile waterway, which is administered by the Army Corps of Engineers.

ABMB played a major role in this project from beginning to end. We wrote the Design Development report for the center and then served as project manager working with a long list of contractors that included architects and landscape architects, mechanical, electrical, sanitary engineers, geotechnical engineers, and even an interpretative designer. We also conducted the survey, did all the site civil design including the foundation and drainage, and designed the structural foundation of the building. At every step of the way, the firm considered the way visitors to the center would be affected by the technical choices we made.

 “We were very concerned about how people’s experience of the center and the Red River would be affected by the work we did,” says project manager Dennis Passman. “Our job was to build public support for the Corps’ civil works mission, to educate the public about the Red River Waterway, and to make the visitor’s experience at the center the best possible.” 

Even such basic considerations as where to place the building itself were driven by the view it would afford of the river. It sits on a bluff 80 feet over the Red River at Grand Ecore that was used as a site for an artillery battery during the Civil War—and in Louisiana such panoramic vistas are rare enough that you want to make the most of them.

The 4,800-square foot center, built at a cost of $2.5 million, offers exhibits on local history, ecology, archeology, and a variety of other subjects including a replica of an enormous prehistoric whale fossil found in the Red River near Montgomery.

“We learned about all kinds of interesting things outside of engineering when we worked on this project,” Passman says. “It was a great experience.”

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