Parking for Park Cities

For Dallas' New Baptist Church, the Challenge Was All Underground

By Tonie Auer

An aerial view shows the limits of the parking garage while under construction. (Photo courtesy Austin Commercial LP and John Bird Photography.)

Building a three-story building atop a three-story underground parking garage isn't easy.

Add to that, the project's proximately to a busy metropolitan highway near a residential neighborhood and you've got more than a few logistical hurdles.

For Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, growing pains led church members and leaders to hire Austin Commercial LP of Dallas to build a 315,000-sq.-ft. underground parking garage and a 70,000-sq.-ft. building on a site that was formerly the church's parking lot.

The $33 million project began in April 2004. The underground parking garage was handed over in September and the church building is scheduled for completion in the spring, said Monica Schoenemann, senior project manager for Austin Commercial.

Schoenemann said the job was difficult because the site was bordered by a residential neighborhood on one side and Northwest Highway on the other. There also were access restrictions and city mandates, she added.

"About 52,000 cars travel Northwest Highway every day and that is our way in and out," Schoenemann said.

"The Texas Department of Transportation would never allow us to shut down a lane of the highway, so we built a little frontage road 15 ft. wide, and that was where all our deliveries arrived. When a truck pulled up, we'd have to pull material off quickly. We'd try to flag traffic and keep people out of the lane next to us. But, just one lane over, cars are going more than 55 mph."

Additionally, the city passed ordinances limiting work on the project from 7 a.m to 6 p.m. and no Sundays. Also required was an 8-ft. fence around the entire project to shield it from the neighbors and no construction parking in the surrounding neighborhood. Workers were bused in from east of Interstate-75, Schoenemann said.

"I've done parking garages before, and some of them have been huge," she said. "I've even done some partially below grade, but this one is 35 ft. deep."

The garage was eventually built beneath the city roads, Shoenemann said. Some roads were removed and replaced during the construction project because the parking garage was taken out to the edges of the property.

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The completed garage can accommodate 750 cars compared to the 174 parking spaces the church previously had, said Greg Boyd, church member and project director/chairman of the construction committee for the church.

The garage has an underground tunnel approximately 16 ft. wide leading from the garage to the sanctuary, said Kip Jameson, project architect for F&S Partners of Dallas.

"Because the church is located in a planned development zone, the amount of land coverage they could have was limited," Jameson added. "We had to go through several calculations with the city, and that is what led to the placement of the parking garage underground. That way, we could maximize the footprint and comply with the zoning."
Making the entire project fit on the site and allotting space to accommodate as many cars in the garage as possible was the first priority for the architects, Jameson said.

The architects had to design some deep and wide transfer beams to carry the load of the building down through the garage using post-tension transfer beams running the length of the building, Jameson said.

"Because there was only a small amount of room to work in, we had to accommodate a tremendous amount of staging," he added. "It was a monumental challenge sitting a building on top of the parking garage. Structurally, it was an interesting project. We were also limited on how tall we could build. The city capped our height."

Boyd said the church was simply out of space in several critical areas of its ministry and there also was a vast shortage of parking.

The three-story building is adjacent to the existing campus and will match its Georgian style of red brick with white trim. It features 30,000 sq. ft. of space for preschool on the first floor, approximately 26,000 sq. ft. in the form of a grand hall on the second floor (with seating for 1,200) and 14,600 sq. ft. for youth programs on the third floor.

As churchgoers come and go to and from the garage, elevators will open primarily on level one into a 5,000-sq.-ft. commons area, providing them with a foyer-style space for socializing.

Austin Commercial is also installing a new elevator in the main sanctuary.

"That is unique, too, because the church was built in the 1950s with all plaster construction," Schoenemann said. "So any noise reverberated within the whole church.

"We're coordinating with the church on the sound. We've had to saw out five slabs to put in a five-story elevator in the existing church and chapel where events such as funerals and weddings are taking place."