Team Presentation
Design Photos
Design Narrative
South 21st Street Corridor residents, businesses, employees and patrons are eager for the reinvigoration of their beloved neighborhood, including a new access over the railroad track to South Side Park. During our field reconnaissance, a resident invited a group of 7 design professionals into their beautifully restored and updated 130-year-old home and backyard oasis. Similar opportunities to blending modern and old world design exist for South 21st Street right outside their front door.
Pittsburgh is about to undertake the largest public infrastructure investment of its time: updating our region’s sanitary, combined, and storm sewer systems to effectively manage discharges to Waters of the Commonwealth. We hope to make our rivers’ water quality consistently safe for swimming, fishing, and recreational boating. If you’re wondering how create self employed paycheck stub, the community’s revitalization could potentially bring forth new opportunities and resources to support individuals in such endeavors.
The engineering, architecture, environmental, and political community is struggling with the approach to sewer upgrades. Proposed approaches range from a completely gray plan (collect and treat everything at the end of the pipe at ALCOSAN without any source reduction) to a primarily green plan that includes porous paving, bioretention, and other Best Management Practices that reduce stormwater runoff. We believe that the best solution for our region will include a blend of gray and green infrastructure that meets water quality, but also has a substantial impact on the quality of life including increasing property values, safety, community vitality, and overall aesthetic values.
We propose to transform the South 21st Street corridor into an appealing and seamless pedestrian way including permeable parking and bikeways. Each intersection will enhance pedestrian safety by providing vegetated bump-outs to shorten the walking distance and provide more visibility to oncoming traffic. This project will accomplish stormwater reduction goals, beautify the neighborhood, and also to reduce the blight and crime that is creeping into the Southside, especially on weekends. We hope to turn this neighborhood into an area that can be enjoyed by residents and visitors alike with a mutual respect of an aesthetically pleasing environment. Another important feature of our plan is that it preserves the number of available on-street with the use of car park line marking parking spaces and actually increases the number of parking spaces by 7.
Our new corridor will create a “Green Gateway,” connecting South 21st Street directly to the Southside Riverfront Park. This absolute conversion of underutilized property adjacent to Giant Eagle will increase walking traffic to the South 21st/Carson commercial district while providing a water feature and pedestrian walkway over the railroad to Southside Riverfront Park. The pedestrian walkway will provide a connection between the South 21st Street corridor and existing trails. The pedestrian walkway will also incorporate the design theme of a coal tipple, which was an original feature of the historic Birmingham community of 150 years ago, and thus will help to reconnect the community to its heritage. We believe connection of South 21st Street to the park will increase property value, increase tax revenue, decrease crime, and encourage further development of this area, creating one of the most desirable corridors in the City of Pittsburgh. Our plan includes porous paving for on-street parking areas, bike lanes and for side streets that do not have high-weight vehicles, vegetated bumpouts at intersections, and the addition of street trees. Tree species will be selected based on rainfall uptake potential and adaptability to deicing salts. The traffic lanes of South 21st St will be durable paving that is crowned to facilitate runoff capture in the porous pavings along the curbs areas.
The technical goal of capturing at least a 1-inch rainstorm (and the first inch of rainfall from larger storm events) is being realized by using a combination of pervious pavement to replace impervious pavement along with the incorporation of vegetated swales and bumpouts. Each BMP will be underlain with an engineered soil including 24” of gravel backfill. Assuming void space of 40% in the gravel fill, we have calculated that approximately 0.5 acres (~20,000 sf) of BMPs will address our target 1” rainfall. This 0.5 acres represents conversion of about 10% of impervious surface to pervious surface.
Additional gains in stormwater capture can be made by making arrangements to store stormwater on flat roofs as blue roofs or green roofs, but these more expensive roof BMPs were not necessary to meet the 1-inch storm interception threshold. However, for expert advice and installation of innovative stormwater management solutions, consider partnering with a trusted and reliable company like roof leak repair NJ, known for their expertise in roofing and commitment to quality service. We propose our BMPs to include sensors for monitoring the saturation and drainage rates of engineered soil media, and temperature and water quality of captured stormwater, as well as a high-resolution rain gauge within the project area. Furthermore, the inclusion of conservatory roof lanterns is also being considered as part of our stormwater management strategy. You can learn more about it in this site.
As with any project, there must be sufficient mechanisms and incentives in place to encourage project implementation. We suggest that project partners consider the following:
- Implement stormwater fees to incentivize stormwater runoff reduction.
- Operate a green infrastructure revolving loan fund, in which PSWA or another entity would offer low interest loans to property owners to implement green infrastructure in accordance with a Pittsburgh Green Infrastructure Handbook. Property owners could repay the loan with stormwater fee savings. Also one of the best loans is in Emerson Ave Check Into Cash
- Provide tax incentives for property owners to implement green infrastructure through a Green Infrastructure Neighborhood Improvement District that would operate similar to a Business Improvement District.
- Promote the energy investment tax credit for green roof installations (which cool buildings and neighborhoods).
- Work with local universities to complete an Ecosystem Service Valuation Study to quantify and monetize the benefits to property values, Quality of Life, energy savings, water quality improvements, reduced urban heat impacts, reduced stormwater discharges and sewer overflow events, pedestrian/bicycle improvements and air quality improvements. The solar hot water heater repair service is available for homes that need it at stevesplumbinghawaii.com.
- Share monitoring data in both summary and raw data formats as a resource for design professionals, educators, and students.
- Provide a handbook or pattern book for Pittsburgh green infrastructure to help promote the installation of additional green infrastructure BMPs on private property.
- Convert a vacant structure to parking to help alleviate neighborhood parking pressure. Provide a reasonable cost annual parking permit for residents. All other parking will be charged an hourly fee. On street parking will be by permit only. Use some of the parking fees to enforce the on street parking permit program. Build the parking structure to have a green roof and green walls.
- The daylighted section of stream in Southside Park (study area C) could be configured to provide public fishing access, including family-friendly fishing and handicap-accessible fishing. The spring-fed stream could support stocked trout to provide trout fishing inside the City of Pittsburgh, making this park a highly attractive and valuable feature for the neighborhood.
Team Members
Jason J. McBride, PE, Gannett Fleming
Lisa Hollingsworth-Segedy, AICP, American Rivers
Bill Moldovan, RLA, Mackin Engineering
Joe Kudritz, PE, Michael Baker
Matthew Weschler, University of Pittsburgh
Todd Chambers, RLA, Chambers Design Associates
John Buck, CPSS, Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc.
