While two engineering firms had evaluated the Sesquicentennial Park at the northwest corner of Court Square in downtown Graham to “develop an opinion as to any safety concerns” but found few immediate hazards, based on documents that Graham city officials furnished Wednesday in response to a public records request by The Alamance News.
However, a subsequent site visit by the city’s engineers with Alley, Williams, Carmen & King (AWCK) of Burlington painted a dire picture, based on a letter that the firm sent Graham city manager Megan Garner on February 11, 2026.
Garner received the letter the day after Graham’s city council experienced an unprecedented turnout for its monthly meeting, on February 10, and heard an outpouring of unanimous opposition to the majority’s split vote in January to relocate the park to a parking lot along West Elm Street.
In April 2021, engineers from SKA Consulting in Greensboro conducted a site visit and observed “minor differential settlement” in a brick planter and in brick masonry walls in several locations, which appeared to have been repaired, leading the engineers to conclude there was ongoing settlement.
SKA’s engineers also determined that masonry plumb lines for the pergola – removed from the park on Wednesday – had “no signs of cracking or distress” and the steel structure had recently been checked by city staff “and found to be level,” based on a letter that the firm sent Graham public works director Burke Robertson on April 20, 2021.
“It is our professional opinion that the Sesquicentennial Park site and structures are safe to operate as intended and do not pose an immediate safety concern,” Conrad B. Ehrhardt of SKA Consulting wrote in his letter to Robertson, adding that the city should continue to monitor the site for changes that “may warrant remedial measures.”
ECS Southeast, an engineering firm based in Charlotte, conduced a site visit in November and December 2024 to collect soil borings and determine whether there were any “environmental concerns” related to potential remediation and “material haul-off” related to potentially backfilling the soil in order to shore up the park’s sinking foundation.
ECS Southeast engineers wrote in a January 2025 letter to Robertson that soil collected at the site appeared “reusable for reuse as engineered fill,” though samples of “lean clay” and “elastic silt” had a low expansion potential.
However, ECS Southeast’s engineers noted “the [sand elastic silt] soils are moisture sensitive and will rapidly degrade as the moisture increases,” though the soil contents “did not appear excessively wet at the time” of their site visit and analysis.
Meanwhile, Jorge Rodriguez-Sam, a project architect for AWCK, warned in his letter to Garner on February 11, 2026, “Sesquicentennial Park must remain closed to the public until the [below ground] conditions are properly remediated.”
Though AWCK’s engineers were unable to pinpoint the exact reason why the park foundation appeared to have started settling at a faster rate, Rodriguez-Sam wrote, “The park currently does not meet minimum safety standards for public use. The current conditions present clear trip hazards and [don’t comply with state building codes or accessibility requirements].”
Rodriguez-Sam concluded that excavation of the site would require “bracing the existing building foundations (property to the north) [i.e., the commercial building located at 106 North Main Street and owned by Jason Cox] to prevent lateral and vertical movements and damage.”
The firm’s project architect also recommended that the construction of a storm drainage system precede any future development of the property.
Though the council initially seemed to have reached a consensus earlier this month to obtain new estimates for the cost to repair Sesquicentennial Park, assistant city manager Aaron Holland said Wednesday morning that wasn’t the case.
“That consensus was not received,” Holland told the newspaper. He said that councilman Bobby Chin had asked during the meeting on May 12 to have the firm that conducted soil sampling for the potential new park site, at 129 West Elm Street, to evaluate the conditions at Sesquicentennial park.
“When he made that comment, I mentioned that we would have to pay them to come out to do that…and the conversation to do so ended,” Holland said Wednesday.
That portion of the discussion at the May 12 meeting wasn’t fully audible; and while the meeting was video-recorded, it had no audio, due to what Graham city officials later attributed to a failure of the city’s audio equipment.
“The ultimate consensus,” the assistant city manager said Wednesday, “was to break down the park [as soon as possible] and make it stable, store the bricks, remove the clock so it can be repaired and moved to City Hall.”
