Join Jay Glucksman, PE on a guided tour of McLaren’s recent project: the Office of Mental Health at South Beach Psychiatric Hospital. Responsible for the structural, site/civil, and geotechnical engineering aspects, McLaren’s expertise extended throughout the site design process.
A key challenge was raising the proposed building’s elevation and it’s adjacent parking by 4 feet to meet FEMA Floodplain Elevation regulations, crucial for flood risk management near the Kill Van Kull in Staten Island. To reduce these risks, our civil engineering team meticulously designed drainage systems to direct stormwater to detention and infiltration practices, ensuring effective flood mitigation. Safety and accessibility were also key objectives in this project, with detailed attention given to ADA-compliant pedestrian pathways and lighting to ensure safe navigation.
Follow along as Jay Glucksman, PE, shares insights into this multidivisional project, directly from the South Beach Hospital site.
Video Transcript
On-Site with McLaren Engineering Group
Hi, my name is Jay Glucksman and I work for the Site/Civil Engineering division of McLaren Engineering Group. Here we’re at the Office of Mental Health South Beach Hospital. We’re here out at the job site, where we’re looking at the future building to be built, which is a maintenance garage. They’re currently working on the foundation and rough grading around the building.
McLaren was responsible for the structural engineering design, site/civil engineering design, and ongoing construction review of this project. We’re featuring here the excavator, which is being used to move soil around the site as we’re going to be raising the elevation about four feet up higher to comply with the local flood regulations here on Staten Island.
We’re not very far from the Kill Van Kull and other bodies of water, so we have to be very cautious about floodwater here at the site.
Ensuring Safety: McLaren's Review of Site Lighting for Pedestrian and Parking Structures
As well, we can see here, lighting that’s on the site. McLaren reviewed and checked that all the lighting would be safe and adequate for the parking structures, for the review, and for pedestrian safety. Lighting levels need to be maintained so that pedestrians can walk safely from their cars to the buildings on the site.
Site/Civil Review: Effective Curb, Roadway, and Drainage Design
McLaren, as part of the site/civil review, designed the curbs and roadway design for the parking lots and put together a package for trying to prevent and establish proper drainage across the site. The roadways and parking lots all lead to a single point towards the catch basin, which takes all the stormwater into it and directs the stormwater where we want it to go underground into either an infiltration system or into other pipes, which will lead to the public stormwater sewer system.
Designing For FEMA Floodplain Elevation
We’re looking at the excavation and grading of the area where the maintenance building will be installed. In this area, we’re currently working on rough grading and developing enough of a grade for the building to be built on. The building will be elevated four feet above what you see now in this video, and that will be to accommodate for the FEMA floodplain elevation.
As part of this design, McLaren provided structural engineering services, geotechnical services, and design services relating to designing the foundations, piles, and utilities seen here. These are the driven piles of the foundation which will be built upon later.
Integrating Design: Curb and Salt Storage Shed Placement for Seamless Access
And this is the curb of the entry roadway, where we’re going to have a salt storage shed as part of this site design plan. It’s hard to see now, but there was a curb design here at play that allows for the salt shed design to be right here, located above this curb, such that the entrance to the salt shed will be flush curb elevation with the roadway.
Pedestrian Accessibility and Compliance
There’s a lot of work to be done still here, but in addition to all this work that’s to be done, we have a nearly finished section of work here where we have a parking lot facility, lighting facilities, pedestrian facilities such as sidewalks, and we have landscaping installed.
Part of McLaren’s design in site/civil is ensuring that pedestrian access is maintained. Here we can see we have an ADA ramp and crosswalk that leads across the roadway, which will be traveled by cars to another ADA ramp and crosswalk. After this has been constructed as seen here. We come in and we verify all of the measurements and slopes are compliant with the Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines. That’s PROWAG (Public Right of Way Accessibility Guidelines) which tell us that we need to have this ADA ramp at a specific slope in order to make sure that is accessible and provides safe design and transport for people across the site. The sidewalks also continue and circulate around the building, and the sidewalks have their own guidelines that are to be followed that limit the slope, which is how long something can run versus how high it goes up across the site. In our case, all of the sidewalks are less than 5%, which means they’re well within the design and the construction tolerances for the site.
Here we have my four-foot level and as I read it it says we have a 1.5% slope going down the parking lot from the sidewalk towards the drainage structure. This is within the design tolerances. And is part of one of the detailed drawings that McLaren Engineering provided for the site design process. As you see, we have a few handicap and ADA accessible parking stalls laid out, as well as accommodating signage to label each parking spot and identify where the parking spot is versus where in the buffer zone between parking spots is.
Site and Drainage Design for the Office of Mental Health
McLaren provided site/civil engineering services, including this layout and drainage pattern with grading design, which allows for the site to function and allows stormwater to travel as we predict across the site. As part of McLaren’s site design package. We also design and provide details for the drainage structures.
Here we have a rare case where you get to see what a drainage structure looks like above ground before it gets put into the ground. You can see there are large precast concrete structures and we have to provide dimensions, details, and descriptions of how we want the structure fabricated, where we want the holes placed in it. And then we will verify in the field once it’s installed that it’s installed the correct elevation. As you can see, a drainage structure is made up of multiple parts. You have the middle channel you can have as part of this, which is a doghouse manhole, a concave section there. A concave section here where we’re going to be laying over other utilities. And then we have a more standard drainage structure here, where a pipe would come through one of the two ends. There’s also some supporting design rebar and the frame and grate, which will go on top of the drainage structure itself. The top slab of the drainage structure is here, which will be lifted, which can be lifted up by a crane or by bobcat. Using these pick points that are on the structure slab itself. The slab is very heavy. It’s very hard to manipulate by hand, by person. But all of this is part of the wonderful site design services and drainage design that McLaren provides. Check out the cool drainage structures.
I’m standing here at the new main entrance parking lot to the OMH South Beach Psychiatric Hospital site. And as you can see, it’s completed effectively. The thing that they’re waiting for right now is stabilization, which is for this grass growth here. You can see that there’s a cover over the area that doesn’t look like bare soil. This is a hydro seed that they’ve planted. So when the grass grows, the site will be fully stabilized and ready, but as of right now, they’ve got all their parking lot striping in, they’ve got the accessible ramps in, they’ve got pavement striping in the form of crosswalks and directional arrows on the ground.
Green Infrastructure: Solar-Powered Site Lighting
And you can see that they also have site lighting present here. The site lighting is part of a specification and part of the design intent that it’d be green infrastructure where the lights are solar powered and they are able to run by themselves off that solar power. And they have an auxiliary backup power support in the foundation that allows for if there isn’t enough sunlight, should that ever happen, that insufficiently charges the batteries that they can be powered off the electricity from the grid. But as of this moment and from observations we’ve seen, the solar-powered lights are working functionally, and McLaren aided in specifying and providing help with the green design.
We also reviewed the lighting design to make sure that pedestrian safety was put at the forefront. We made sure lighting levels would be safe at nighttime, and that it would be easy to traverse the area.
Ground-Level and Aerial Views: Ensuring Accessible Parking on Seaview Avenue
I’m standing here on the sidewalk on Seaview Avenue, and you can see that we also have striping to indicate areas accessible parking spaces as well. Accessible parking spaces are blue, and there’s signage put up to make sure that all the parking is done properly. And this is what this looks like from the ground view level.
And there’s some interesting differences between what we see at the ground view and what we see in aerial view. The layouts are different, and our designs take all this into account. And McLaren was forefront in providing the civil and site services to make this design work.
