Type: Higher Education
Project Name: Lot F-29 Parking Garage & Fire Substation
City: Urbana
State: Illinois
Client: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Features: 765-car spaces on six levels with a 10,500 square foot fire substation.

Description: The state-of-the-art Lot F-29 Parking Facility and Fire Substation is constructed to accommodate hourly, daily, special event, and long-term parkers composed primarily of University faculty, staff and employees while the fire substation component provides a facility in a central location within the University that lessens emergency response time thereby increasing life safety to the campus community. Special event parking is provided for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign sporting events and other evening or weekend University functions.

The unique four-bay wide split-level structure contains approximately 765 cars on six levels of structured parking and also houses within it, an Urbana-Champaign Fire Department substation of approximately 10,500 square feet. The parking facility incorporates a single helix design with combination of one-way and two-way traffic in four bays of sloped parking with flat ends. The split-level design allows integration of a site context that slopes significantly from corner to corner. Safety features include two glass-backed elevators, glazed stair towers, emergency phones on each level and open stair and elevator lobbies. A University parking office, electrical room, storage and equipment room, meter repair room and emergency generator room along with the Fire Substation are located on the first level.

A pre-cast skin applied to the cast-in-place post-tensioned concrete structure, utilizing a combination of ?thin-brick? and colored panels for the exterior fa?ade, was incorporated into the design of the parking facility. The pre-cast fa?ade spandrel panels are offset on the east and west elevations to allow sufficient passage of light while hiding sloping floor lines behind. The Fire Substation combines a steel frame and post-tensioned concrete structure with a brick skin to match the parking facility. DESMAN Associates is the Architect and Structural Engineer of Record and Parking Consultant with Peoria-based Architect, Phillips Swager Associates, serving as architectural design consultant for the fire station. General Energy Corporation of Oak Park, IL served as MEP consulting engineer.