Best Parking Innovative Use
Description
The Seven Oaks Parking Structure design team led by GDA Architects, LLC for the new Seven Oaks Commercial Office Buildings West of downtown Austin on Bee Cave Road faced challenges with steep topography, limestone stratum. This laid just one to four feet below the surface. This required a 30-foot vertical rock cut excavation to provide the building pad for the new precast parking garage to accommodate 517 vehicles. Harvey Cleary, the projects contractor teamed with Legacy Precast early on to come up with a solution to build the two bay, six-level parking structure 30 feet in the ground. After analyzing various scenarios, the team opted for building a temporary road for crane and truck access into the basement of the parking garage. This was in lieu of a much larger crane sitting outside the footprint, which would interfere with site traffic and the tower crane for the office building.
Key design features
Key design features include vehicle access to the parking garage on the third level only via a precast bridge. Pedestrian access included two walkways on the third level and a tunnel from level B-2 directly into the building. The project utilized architectural precast concrete for spandrels and wall panels with two different finishes and gray as cast concrete for the columns and other structural components. Typical precast products and systems, such as: field-topped double tees allowed for a uniform and consistent field installed concrete topping, which eliminated over 20,000 lineal feet of caulking and maintenance of double tee joints for the owner. In addition, the field topped double tee system improved the user experience for a smooth ride by eliminating the caulk joint bumps every twelve feet.
Innovations or accomplishments using precast concrete
By teaming with Legacy Precast early in the process, the Seven Oaks Parking Structure contractor was able to provide a cost-effective solution for building the precast parking garage in the side of the hill and 30 feet in the ground.
- Precast Manufacturer – Legacy Precast LLC Brookshire, TX
- General Contractor – Harvey Cleary Austin, TX
- Precast Concrete Engineer – Spannbeton, Inc. Austin, TX
- Architect – GDA Architects, LLC Dallas, TX
