Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center
PICP Makes Performing Arts Center a Win-Win
Every Project Starts with a Purpose
The City of Pinellas Park is a vision. With its small lakes and nearby blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico, swaying palm trees and frequent festive gatherings, this beautiful Tampa Bay suburb is enjoyed by its nearly 45,000 residents. The City of Pinellas Park also had a vision—an eye to find an innovative solution for a community gathering space but with low impact development (LID) benefits.
The parking was next to a youth soccer field, but the property’s flood zone status added complication when the project team evaluated this option. If the planners were to use this space, they would need to convert the soccer field into a small detention pond to accommodate stormwater management needs and as a result, the community would lose a valuable amenity for its youth.
The Solution
Solving for Style, Function, and Durability
The solution was to use permeable interlocking concrete pavement (PICP) to build a usable parking area with a built-in stormwater detention system underneath. This approach preserved the existing soccer field while creating a durable, attractive and ADA-compliant parking area for the performing arts center and adjacent park.
“I feel it’s more environmentally friendly any time you can build with two functions,” said Dan Hubbard, Director, City of Pinellas Park Public Works – Facilities and Project Management Division. “In this case, the low impact development means there’s less discharge into surface waters in the county.”
For the Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center, permeable pavers proved to be a highly effective best management practice for controlling stormwater runoff, eliminating the need for detention and retention ponds and sewer pipes.
Low impact development is a leading Best Management Practice design strategy used to reduce the negative impacts of traditional development on watershed areas and receiving waters. The goal of LID is to mimic predevelopment hydrology by infiltrating, filtering, storing, evaporating and detaining runoff close to its source.
Permeable pavers create a pervious surface that allows water to infiltrate the ground, naturally filtering pollutants and replenishing groundwater reserves. With this design, the permeable parking lot limits the 25-year, 24-hour discharge rate to the site’s predevelopment levels.
Construction of the parking area took place over three months and included over-excavation of two feet of unsuitable subgrade soil and replacement with clean fill. A non-woven geotextile layer was installed, followed by eight inches of #4 stone and a four-inch layer of #57 stone to form an open-graded aggregate reservoir. Once compacted, two inches of #89 aggregate were added as a bedding course for the Belgard® Eco-Holland pavers, which were hand installed and compacted into place. A small aggregate was then swept into the joints to lock the system together.
The Result
A Lasting Impression:
The Final Transformation
Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center was the county’s first PICP project and only the second to be permitted by South West Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD), which closely monitored it using several imbedded single ring infiltrometers that were installed during construction. These test rings feature a tube on top that shows at what rate the water is drawn down.
“The project was good not only from an environmental perspective but also that we’ll never have to repave it or restripe it since the parking lines were done in white pavers,” Hubbard said. “Architecturally, it’s really nice. It’s a win-win.”
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