Lankershim Boulevard, Los Angeles Civil Engineering Project Starting

Our latest Civil Engineering project in Los Angeles is on Lankershim Blvd.

The latest project involving Civil Engineering will be working on grading plans in Los Angeles for the developer, Chandler Partners.  The project is called Lankershim NoHo Mixed Use, and is more specifically in North Hollywood in the NoHo Arts District 4 blocks away from the MTA Redline Subway Station.  The first part of the project will be demolishing multiple buildings sitting between Fair Ave., Otsego St., and Lankershim Blvd. in Los Angeles.  From there a new 5 story complex will be built.  The whole property ties into those 3 streets which makes placement of the building more critical than normal.  There will also be a street widening taking place.

This will be our first project in Los Angeles that uses the new LID requirements on something that is not small residential.  To meet the new more strict stormwater guidelines, we will propose planter boxes to collect the stormwater.  The new LID requirements want us to take an area of the roof and to build roughly 5.5% of that roof area as planter boxes in the ground.  The water will collect into these planter boxes which act like a pool.  The water is able to infiltrate the soil and stay on site as much as possible.  If the storm is too big, these planter boxes will overflow into a pipe that will lead to the street through the curb face.  The difference between a larger project in Los Angeles compared to the smaller residential is that the area of planter boxes needed is greater.  This has also been changed from the previous SUSMP requirement where the area required was less.  More stormwater being held on site helps with cutting down on water going into the storm drain system.  This also allows more stormwater to be clarified through the planter boxes and any water eventually reaching the storm drain system is much cleaner.

Civil Engineers do not have too much to work with regarding Green Codes and LEED.  But underneath almost every new project in Los Angeles Civil Engineers are quietly and almost invisibly making storm water much more clean.  Most people do not know that the storm drain system leads directly to the ocean unfiltered.  That is why there are blue stamps on storm drain catch basins and inlets saying do not dump dirty water into the storm drain.  In the end this clean stormwater reaches the ocean and is much better for the community as our ocean water and beaches can be slightly less contaminated.  Civil Engineer’s greening of new construction may not be pretty, but civil engineering is responsible for making our future a little bit brighter.

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