Sometimes a grassy hill is all you need to transform a community.

If you venture to 550 Shrewsbury Commons Ave, Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania right now, you’ll see a modern shopping center on an impressive expanse of land along with other buildings, roads and parking lots. But it wasn’t always that way.

Not long ago there was just a hill there. Which, to most builders, poses a real challenge: it was large and it didn’t possess any flat areas to build on.

However, with the utility and power of segmental retaining walls, this obstacle soon became a striking feature — rather than a problem.

The owner and developer built and used segmental retaining walls throughout the property to hold up the necessary roads, parking lots, building and signs before turning it into a commercial center. Today, the shopping hub exists and thrives because it is anchored by this particular product: segmental retaining wall units, or SRWs.

For this project, Cornerstone 100 retaining wall units were used, produced by York Building Products. Strata geosynthetic soil reinforcement was used as well.

The largest segmental retaining wall used ascends to an exposed height of 39 feet (12 meters), making this project truly grand and impressive.

You can see both clearly in the aerial drone footage below:

For information on CornerStone 100 retaining wall blocks, click here. For more information York Building Products, click here. For more information on Strata, click here.