“In addition to increasing community gathering opportunities and enhancing the quality of life for current Midtown residents, the park is an economic development catalyst that has attracted new development to Midtown,” says Marlon Marshall, director of engineering and construction for the Midtown Redevelopment Authority (MRA). “Parks help to maximize the long-term value of real estate because businesses and residents are willing to pay a premium to be near parks.”

With nearly 10,000 residents, Midtown is one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Houston, but there was a significant lack of parking space. To address the parking issue, the MRA developed their “super” project—the Midtown Park and Garage.

The vision for the full six-acre mixed-use project that includes the underground garage was developed by the MRA board, staff, and design team consultants along with community and stakeholder input. According to Marshall, the goal was to create a premier urban park space in the heart of Midtown to become the focal point for the community and function as a catalyst to attract new development to the Main Street Corridor.

“With the addition of parking to the project, there was a need to add a parking design firm to our team,” Marshall says. “We had recently engaged with Walter P Moore as our consultant engineering firm on successful mobility and roadway infrastructure projects, and we were fortunate to have access to the Walter P Moore Parking Services Group to guide us through the development of the parking garage.”

Though there were numerous iterations to the project design, all parties involved in the Midtown project partnered together to meld the structures in an effort to preserve the integrity of the park’s purpose and view corridors.

“Because of the complexity of the structure and simultaneous construction of multi-family housing in the grounds, immense collaboration was required from all parties,” says Brian Lozano, director of parking services at Walter P Moore.

One challenge of the project was how to host a living, sustainable park above a below-grade parking garage. Walter P Moore structural and diagnostic engineers worked closely with parking engineers to design an operationally efficient garage while allows the park’s trees to also grow and thrive. According to Lozano, after consulting with the landscape architecture firm Design Workshop, large trees were planted throughout the park that needed over five feet of clearance from the soil to the top of the structure to allow them to grow. To ensure this was possible, the lid of the garage was sloped to allow for proper clearance for the grass blanketing the lawn space, and a greater distance to sustain the trees.

Because the 400-space parking garage lives under the park, an intricate system of under slab draining capabilities, robust waterproofing, pumps, and a rainwater vault serve to self-water the landscape. The system also prevented the garage from flooding during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Rainwater is collected through a piping system in the garage before it is pumped into a 70,000-gallon irrigation vault underground.

“The grounds are sustainable because the rainwater is used to water the lawn and planting areas,” Lozano says.

The team planned for the impressive rainfall that often hits the Houston area—as was the case with Hurricane Harvey—and integrated a backup plan. According to Lozano, when the vault is full, the water bypasses to the water features, which circulate and produce waterfalls under the bridges and other areas throughout the park.”

The design of the entrance to the underground garage is raised and angled to allow for height space. As a result, the top side of the sloped entrance to the garage operates as a portion of the off-leash dog park.

“Since the start of construction at Midtown Park, there have been six new private development projects announced within three blocks of the park,” Marshall says. “These ongoing, planned, or recently announced redevelopment projects include mixed-use residential/retail, multifamily residential, and office projects which will generate an estimated $338 million in new taxable value in Midtown.”

Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University, located in the heart of Richmond, Virginia, recently modernized its urban medical campus. Part of the project included a new multi-level parking structure that serves the VCU Health Adult Outpatient Services Pavilion and Massey Cancer Center.

Designed to provide safe and convenient access as well as accommodate patients, their families and VCU medical staff, the garage has a total of 1,109 spaces within 12 levels—two below-grade and 10 above-grade. One unique aspect to this garage are the 150 valet spaces that are located below-grade via a single entrance and exit in order to ease the transition from a vehicle into the hospital for Massey Cancer Center patients that require specific needs.

The garage is a critical hub for the hospital; therefore, the garage was designed with two entrances/exits for the self-park levels.

The above-grade garage is a park-on-ramp single-threaded helix to maximize the number of parking spaces within the narrow structural footprint. This section of the garage connects to the VCU Hospital at Level 1.

One design aspect critical to the VCU garage involved the reduction of traffic congestion at the entrance and exits to the garage. To accomplish this, improvements were made to the adjacent roadways and access to the garage was controlled through turning movement restrictions. Furthermore, the below-grade valet level can only be accessed by an express ramp. The valet drop-off/pick-up zone provides ample space for vehicles to queue inside the garage itself. This also reduced on street traffic congestion that previously occurred at five separate valet locations located on the hospital campus.