Category: Award of Excellence in Parking Facilities
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 Rams Head Center, University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
http://www.walkerparking.com |
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| The 700-space garage is inconspicuous because of its roof, which consists of a grassy plaza with wide, brick-lined walkways. On one side of the plaza facing Ridge Road is a two-story brick structure that houses a dining hall and a sports café called The End Zone. On the side of the plaza bordering the stadium is a two-story recreation center.
Because of the bowl-shaped gulley over which it extends, the plaza serves as a grade-level bridge for anyone walking there from South Road. That single feature may be the most distinctive about the complex, and one that has produced the multiple benefits that has made it a linchpin project of the campus master plan.
Now, instead of navigating steep hills, walkers, bikers and the wheelchair bound traverse a vegetated plaza constructed on top of a three-level parking deck. Eventually, 20 acres of surface parking will disappear from campus and be replaced by 10 acres of new buildings including parking decks and 10 acres of new green space.
When you stand up there on the on the plaza and look around at the building, you are standing on connective tissue in the campus master plan that connects north and south campus on a level walking route, Howes said.
Of course, the Rams Head Center is also designed as a destination point where students come together to eat, to play, to work out or just to hang out. The dining hall opened last month, along with a grocery store on the ground level of the garage facing Ridge Road. The recreation center, which will open this summer, will feature three basketball courts, an elevated indoor track and more than 70 fitness machines, along with a two-story climbing wall and an aerobics room.
Howes said the beauty of the project, from a purely aesthetic point of view, is that it replaced an unsightly patch of asphalt with an architectural jewel melded to its natural surroundings.
From a practical point of view, the deck also provides twice the number of parking spaces as the lot it replaced.
But beyond a place to park cars, the Rams Head Center is part of the far-reaching goal of creating the same level of social vibrancy and natural beauty to south campus that already exists on north campus in quads such as McCorkle Place and Polk Place. |
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| Walker Parking Consultants is the largest parking consulting firm in the nation. For over 40 years, we have been driven to find innovative and integrated parking solutions.
Our parking experts are in the business of finding cost-effective solutions to your parking challenges. Our engineers, architects and planners have studied, designed or restored over 5000 parking facilities and guided thousands of owners, developers and operators to improved parking performance and revenue. |
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Walker Parking Consultants |
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