Client: Willing Company, Portland, Oregon
The Willing Parking Lot occupies a City block in downtown Portland with an existing pay parking lot operated as a holding use until the site is ultimately redeveloped as a high rise office building. The existing parking lot was supported by 4-foot to 18-foot high retaining walls on three sides.
The retaining walls were over 100 years old, built from ship ballast and were beginning to fail. The City required that the existing walls be lowered to a safe height and parking restricted until the walls could be reconstructed.
The walls were considered historic by the City of Portland and the replacement walls were required to be approved through a design review process. The project team evaluated various replacement wall systems (traditional cast in place concrete, soil nailing/slope anchors, and shorter reinforced CMU walls) configurations to determine the optimum combination of construction cost verses parking lot revenue.
The selected CMU option was clad with stone veneer to replicate the appearance of the existing wall. Stone from the existing wall was reused as veneer as well as incorporated into the landscape design of the lot.
CESNW provided project management, land surveying, land use planning, civil engineering, and construction management services for this project. CESNW prepared construction documents for grading and erosion control plans, storm water treatment system to the City’s Storm Water Manual, reconstruction or rehabilitation of existing parking lot pavements, sidewalk replacements, curbing for drainage and reconfigured the parking lot to meet current City standards and new wall configuration.