Best in Parking - Medical
Children’s Medical Center Plano Parking Garage
Description
The Children’s Medical Center Parking Garage is a 640-space garage designed to service the future expansion of the existing Children’s Hospital in Plano, Texas. The garage features a unique curved layout that is designed to align with existing service roads and the overall geometry of the hospital’s campus.
Project Timeline
The contractor (Vaughn) and design team partnered with Coreslab in June 2021 to provide Design Assist services early in the design process. This effort continued through October 2021 when the IFC Set was issued allowing Coreslab to efficiently transition to full-scale Drafting and Engineering while minimizing the number of RFIs and coordination required during this
time.
Coreslab made its first submittal in an impressive nine weeks and jumped right into production in January 2022. Production concluded in March 2022 and the erection of the precast took place from March to May 2022 realizing the fast-track schedule envisioned during the early design stages.
Key design features
This project showcases several unique design features to achieve the aesthetic of this one-of-a-kind garage. Trapezoid-shaped double tees create the segmented curves that make up the radiused footprint. The dynamic façade of the main elevation is comprised of barrier cables, vertical metal fins, and CMU cladding elements.
On the ramped elevation, kinked spandrels were designed to accommodate speed ramps with transition slopes. Finally, at the stair box, notched bearings in perpendicular stair walls allow the long, punched openings that span both faces of the exterior corner.
Accomplishments
The garage was designed to remain fully functional for decades to come, by structurally planning for a pedestrian bridge and a variety of future solar canopies. Though this project contains many unique features, precast concrete showed itself to be the ideal solution to achieve max efficiency, meet the scheduling demands, and realize the elegant and atypical design of this garage.
Precast concrete components
This project consisted of over 700 pieces of precast concrete, including 115 beams, 112 columns, 49 spandrels, 92 wall panels, 14 stair risers, and 340 double tees creating roughly 175,000 square feet of the elevated deck. Production concluded in March and the erection of precast concrete was concluded in two short months achieving the fast-tracked schedule envisioned in the early design stages.
- Precast Manufacturer: Coreslab Structures (Texas) Inc. – Cedar Park, Texas
- Architect: HKS Architects, Inc. – Dallas, Texas
- General Contractor: Vaughn Construction – Irving, TX
- Precast Engineer: Unintech Consulting Engineers, Inc. – San Antonio, TX
- Engineer of Record: Walker Consultants – Houston, Texas
PCMA Associates
