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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As we drove down the 10 freeway from Los Angeles towards the Premium Outlets in Cabazon I kept thinking about native plants.
The native plant thoughts happened because we started to enter the new larger subdivisions heading towards Palms Springs. On both sides of the freeway subdivision after subdivision of nice new housing. But what sticks out? No plants seem to be alive. These nice new houses with people living inside have dead plants wrapping the properties. Plants are used for multiple purposes on developments. One is the obvious, and that is for looks. Who wants to stare at ugly concrete for miles on end. So landscaping is used to break this up and make the property look better. Next is that we like to be green and having landscaping helps with global warming as compared to blacktop that takes in all of the sun’s energy. And then we have a reason Civil Engineer’s use for landscaping, to help protect slopes and land from eroding prematurely. Now why did I bring up native pants? Because California native plants can exist in California without any special watering or sunlight requirements.
So what makes a plant native to California? California native plants grew in California prior to European contact. These native plants are at the center of the state’s ecosystem and natural communities.
I keep seeing pictures of houses with ivy and palm trees. Palm trees are the staple of California, which have been imported and are not native. As my typical thought process goes I started by wanting to get some new shoes at the outlets and got all the way to thinking about subdivisions falling apart to how scarce water is in Southern California. The simple fact is that Palm Trees require an abundance of water, which was one of the main reasons they were imported to Southern California. What better way to showcase the famous aqueduct than plant trees to show the engineering feats? But then the palm tree is basically useless for anything, it doesn’t grow fruit or create shade.
This is why new subdivisions are supposed to be using approved native plants. Native plants can survive properly in the California environment and give our ecosystem balance. Water consumption will reduced, the landscape will look better, and there is less maintenance involved with native plants. There is a lot of talk about going green and using native plants is the way of making sure that our state stays green.
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I had to do some research for a new job at the LA City Department of Building and Safety and couldn’t believe how nice it was today in Los Angeles. This started with me wanting to play around with my new HTC Evo LTE cell phone and seeing if I could use the Google Voice Navigation to get me to the building. I tried many different words and none of them lead me to the right address. Even though I couldn’t get this feature to work correctly, at least the phone kept recognizing what I was saying and tried to find what I wanted.
So I arrived at the building and wasn’t sure which station on the 4th floor I would need to go to first as I had multiple questions for a grading plan. So I started to make the rounds. The only annoying part about this, is that each time you hit a station you have to wait at least 10 minutes, but more like 30 minutes. So I asked my question and was told to go somewhere else. I ended up doing this 4 times. Needless to say when I finally arrived at the final station I was given very quick and precise advice. I was pleasantly surprised by this which made all of the waiting and walking back and forth worthwhile.
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I decided to take a walk around to see how the public transportation is after a Lakers game.
I had already seen how packed the Blue Line stop on Flower Street is after a Kings game. I was disappointed to find that the station and trains were pretty much empty. I wonder what this says about the differences between the fans of each sport? I hope that the engineers coming up with the new stadium are paying attention to what is really happening during major events in Downtown Los Angeles.
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What an exciting project to hear about as a Civil Engineering company.
I came across the EIR notice ENV-2011-0585-EIR in the mail today. I decided since most people don’t know what these are I should make a scan of the notice. It’s a good quick read, but will take me some time to flatten the folded letter to get a more legible scan. Most people reading will be more interested in the maps. As it seems like many Southern California residents aren’t sure where the stadium will be going. EIR AEG Stadium
If you want to take a look at the entire draft go here, http://cityplanning.lacity.org/eir/ConventionCntr/DEIR/index.html.
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When I see properties half built on hillsides, this example in Mount Washington, I always wonder, what happened here? Hillsides can cause big problems if the proper due diligence hadn’t been completed. Such as proper soil testing, making sure the grading plan will actually work, or a number of other possibilities engineering wise. Not to mention all of the financing issues when trying to build during an up and down economy. These properties normally stay like this for many years creating a huge eyesore. At the same time this engineer will try to get the camera out to document these types of developments gone wrong.
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