Event - October 20, 2012

EHDD/Nibbi Design-Build Monster Sandcastle at Leap Contest

For the 2nd year in a row, Nibbi Brothers General Contractors teamed with EHDD Architecture in the 29th annual Leap Sandcastle Classic on Ocean Beach in San Francisco. The Leap Faithful–Nibbi’s warehouse team and Superintendent Brian Burke–arrived at our designated 20 x 20 plot of sand  in the early morning fog to set up camp and to unload the shovels, buckets, watering cans and other tools. EHDD arrived shortly thereafter, bringing fire-engine red t-shirts, a miniature model of the sandcastle and a big pink box of doughnuts.

Nibbi’s early morning crew was joined by Evelyn Wickers (Director of Human Resources) and her husband, Michelle Bennette (Engineering Coordinator) and family, Kieran Daly (Assistant Project Manager) and Jill Lonergan (Marketing Manager) and her husband.

Together with 30+ students, parents and teachers from Junipero Elementary School in San Francisco, the team hauled bucket after bucket of cold, salty water from the ocean to pour onto a giant mountain of sand.

After three hours of shoveling, tamping, sculpting and raking the super-soaked sand, the team had built a monster sandcastle in line with Leap’s 2012 theme: Things That Jump! The sandcastle, designed with input from Junipero Serra students at a charrette the week prior to the contest, consisted of a giant bed with a castle-like headboard and with jumpy critters (frogs, bunnies, etc.) atop. Emerging from underneath the bed was a fanged, multi-tailed, dragon-like creature–ready to pounce when the lights went out.

The main point of the Leap Sandcastle Classic is to raise a big pot of money for Leap so it can continue providing arts programs to San Francisco elementary schools in a time of continuing budget cuts. However, the end result is typically a great time on a glorious day on a beautiful beach with the iconic Cliff House (which Nibbi renovated a few years ago) in the background.

This year’s event raised nearly $250,000 for Leap. Nibbi would like to thank the following sponsors (also partners on the EHDD/Nibbi Exploratorium project):