Type: Municipal
Project Name: Elm & Wyman Parking Facility
City: Rockford
State: IL
Client: City of Rockford

Features: 350-car space, two-bay wide parking facility on six supported levels plus grade with 7,000 square feet of ground level commercial/retail space.

Description: Built for monthly permit and daily transient parkers, the Elm and Wyman Garage is one in a series of city-owned parking facilities to be constructed in the Central business District. A total of 7,000 square feet of commercial/retail space is provided on two ground-level sides of the garages. A glass-backed stair tower and elevator tower provides passive security. A rich mixture of reddish-brown face brick with buff-colored architectural precast concrete was incorporated into the exterior façade design. Although it has a capacity of only 350 total parking spaces, the garage is seven levels high due to the very challenging site constraints. Using a single-helix ramping system with two-way traffic, basically a square-shaped “donut”, allowed for the design of an open-air core up through the garage, thus allowing natural light to permeate each level of the garage. Liquid glycol is pumped through a piping system in the concrete floor at the bottom of the open core. This chemical acts as a melting system for snow that is pushed of each floor into the core area. The parking facility received the 1994 A.I.A., Northern Illinois Chapter Award for Excellence in Design. Desman is the Architect and Structural Engineer of Record and Parking Consultant.