The parking structures are becoming a necessary and expensive element to development and campus designs as in today’s market the land is scarce.
We are helping the owners prioritize their decisions with the projects which are facing more and more questions and challenges requiring expert advice and direction.
Creating a finished product which meets the financial goals without sacrificing the entire project’s design intent can be challenging whether it is choosing between surface parking and a car parking construction.
Especially when the parking structures are expensive and typically the least attractive element on a project some of the owner considers parking a necessary evil.
Surface parking is the least expensive option as the budget typically drives decisions. The valuable real estate is eaten up by this problem. But with days, car park construction in Sydney is in a rising demand.
Depending on the number of stalls, the foundation conditions, the number of levels below the grade, the structure’s efficiency, façade design, accessibility, connectivity to adjacent structures or campus, and the current market conditions, a car park construction can cost anywhere from $12,000 per stall to $40,000 per stall.
So how and where do you initiate from?
The Requirements of Code
You need to initiate with the minimum requirements with multi storey car park design. For each municipality the required number of stalls varies and on a number of spaces per 1000 square feet of interior occupied space basis, this is typically calculated.
The owner may decide to target 3.3 spaces per 1,000 square feet and that is a certain municipality may require a research-and-development facility to have between 2.5 to 4.0 parking spaces per 1,000 square feet. The parking structure will need 330 parking stalls if the building has 100,000 square feet of interior occupied space.
Local Geography
Based on the location of the project, labor costs, municipality requirements, project timing, and material costs will all differ. Which framing method is the best for the construction such as precast concrete, cast-in-place concrete, or structural steel will dictating according to where the project is located?
It is worth considering the option in preliminary discussions on occasion subterranean parking structures are built using structural steel although you rarely see a standalone structural steel parking structures.
Impacting the cost of the concrete versus steel, each region could have its own labor requirements and union labor agreements which may come into play.
Geotechnical Report
To clarify what is underground, a geotechnical report will help in a lot. A geotechnical report is similar to that of a wizard’s crystal ball where the ball helps us to see into the future and this also allows us to see what is underground.
Understanding the soils conditions helps to alleviate unforeseen costs and clarified the design requirements when roughly 60-70 percent of the structure’s costs are spent on the structural components. To significantly increase the building costs, poor soil conditions could require specific foundational requirements.
Efficiency
Per parking stall the efficiency related to the structure’s shape and square footage. Allowing for efficient drive aisles, turning radii, and parking stall sizing, a uniform rectangular parking structures is the easiest to build with the car park design layout. It helps to maximize the number of spaces and drive aisles as he straight edges are easier to construct.
The number of cars per level, the types of structures, can be dictated by the size per stall and this can impact the overall budget. The structure will be more expensive with a unique shape which is more difficult to build additionally.
Number of Levels: If you have a 27,000 square foot site which needs to park 500 cars after running the math. It ultimately equates to higher cost so the goals is to always to minimize the required square feet per stall are more levels results in more materials.
Structural Framing: Short-span and long-span are the two types of structural framing. Between the columns, each span-type refers to the distance.
As compared to the long-span where each of the column is located every 60-feet with the structural beams which are running over the stall and drive aisles as short-span typically locates one column every 60-feet.
The short-span are less efficient than the long-span designs as more columns take up more space hence more square footage per stall as they are less efficient than the long-span designs.
Fascade
You should direct the design and construction team to design a bare-bones concrete structure if you are maintaining a low budget is the main goal. If it is at the main entrance of your campus or development there are options to dress-up the parking structure.
It does come with a price tag when it comes to the architectural upgrades. As the project team to give you a menu of architectural upgrades with rough estimates for each option before you make any decisions.