How one community design firm built resiliency measures into various kinds of residential and commercial structures in order to make them better able to withstand extreme weather and to create a greater sense of community.
2. Value – Understanding the Economics of Housing
The Naked Cost of the basis of neighborhoods….
Residential Code Type 5A Type 3A Wood/LG Type 3A Proprietary Type 1 Type 1
San Diego, CA Dayton, OH Bethesda, MD 3rd & H, Washington, DC Columbia Heights, DC Bethesda, MD
$85/SF $120/SF $135/SF $145/SF $160/SF $200/SF
Presentation for REBUILDING A RESILIENT NEW JERSEY SHORE
3. Value – Understanding the Economics of Housing
The Naked Cost of the basis of neighborhoods….
Residential Code Type 5A Type 3A Wood/LG Type 3A Proprietary Type 1 Type 1
San Diego, CA Dayton, OH Bethesda, MD 3rd & H, Washington, DC Columbia Heights, DC Bethesda, MD
$85/SF $120/SF $135/SF $145/SF $160/SF $200/SF
Presentation for REBUILDING A RESILIENT NEW JERSEY SHORE
4. Fitting A Community’s identity:
Tampa, FL Cincinnati, OH
Columbia, SC
Memphis, TN Tacoma, WA
Fort Belvoir, VA NTC San Diego, CA Fort Irwin, CA Marine Corp Base Family
Family Housing Family Housing Family Housing Housing, Quantico, VA
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5. Bridgeton, NJ
Conceptual Design: Torti Gallas Harrison, NJ
Buildings implemented by Minno & Wasko
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6. How do we make neighborhood with the rules that makes this?
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7. BFE’s relative to the Shoreline
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8. Kemer, Turkey
Belmont Bay, VA
Variety of Raised BFE (Base Flood Elevation) Solutions – Raising grade out of the Floodplain
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9. Gautier, Mississippi Torti Gallas with Marianne Cusato
Variety of BFE Solutions – Raising perceived ground out of the floodplain
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10. Atlantic Station, Atlanta, GA
Bay Street, Tampa, FL
Variety of BFE Solutions – Building Town Center out of the floodplain on top of parking
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11. Desire, New Orleans LA (Grand opening – Desire, New Orleans LA (after Katrina)
1wk before Katrina)
Desire, New Orleans LA -
Flooded during Katrina
New Levee system
Relying on solutions external to the neighborhood – ninth ward (levees, new flood gates and walls)
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12. Or we can choose to build/rebuild in the areas at risk…
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13. ….and try to make a neighborhood (adjusted to the requirements of raised BFE’s and addt’l freeboard)
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14. This project replaced Barracks
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16. Best practice of Burms/Dunes placed along the waters edge to buffer the wave action
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17. Here we try to address minimizing damage in
flood/storm surge events, where citizens in
risk prone areas go elsewhere during the
events -- We are NOT creating full survivalist
solutions for people who foolishly choose to
ride out the storm.
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18. BFE
BFE
BFE
BFE
Variety of BFE [Base Flood Elevation] Building Type Strategies
Everything below BFE line is sacrificial; no habitable residential space allowed.
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19. Raised Plynth - $$$$ (only top commanders)
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20. Establishing Frontage - Grounding Details – Smart Vents
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21. Where alleys do not exist, parking solutions can be side-loaded off of a shared stub
driveway, to keep the frontages clean of exposed vehicular and other storage.
Design with Breakaway Walls, providing more secure garages – (More to insure $$)
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22. Key terms:
BFE (Base Flood Elevation) : Elevation below which no habitable spaces should be built
Freeboard: Space between bottom of lowest horizontal Structural Member and BFE
Neighborhood Frontage with Open Foundation (Stilts)
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23. Neighborhood Frontage with Stilts – Scour resistant foundation, reinforced piers, bond beam at floor
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24. Miami-Dade Design Standards – Base Plate Details, Embedded tie down rods
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25. Naked Completed
Vertical Construction - Details
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26. Grounding Details – Louvers/Breakaway Lattice
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27. Miami-Dade Design Standards – Strapping, Tie-Down Rods
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28. Best Practice: Hipped roofs provide better wind resistance.
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29. Front w/ concrete porch and stair Rear w/ wood porch and stair
Two required means of egress; one secure, one at sacraficial
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30. Raised floor 5’ over 4’ BFE to allow for greater freeboard and the ability to park cars and reduce lot size . It was
decided to leave condensers just above BFE level to minimize noise to residents and impact to views
Plan was able to be much more compact than conventional alley loaded schemes.
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31. Opportunity:
Overall land dedicated to parking can be reduced; land area dedicated to active uses can remain the same.
Because tuck under lots take less space than conventional lots (parking efficiency); land on higher ground could
be upzoned to provide more housing; lower lands at risk can be “renaturalized” or parked w/o impacting
community tax base or without loss of population.
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32. Opportunity:
Required BFE + Freeboard may allow
for more compact lot sizes, where
units are parked below, and adjacent
garages and parking spaces removed.
Affected jurisdictions may want to
consider allowing more density and lot
subdivision at higher elevations to
keep your communities from
depopulating due to places not being
rebuilt at lower elevations.
Land formerly used for parking can
be freed up for development.
Redevelopment is an opportunity to
improve overall community quality
by requiring screening of on-site
parking
To improve street
frontages, shoreline communities
may want to allow for ground
(Illegal!)
floor, at-risk, foyers and mudrooms
(all with breakaway
construction), to screen parking
and provide safety - “eyes on the
street”
Conventional lot size vs. tuck under lot
Conventional Tuck-Under
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33. Opportunity:
Supermarkets can be on upper floors with service retail along street lining parking load
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34. Opportunity:
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Notas del editor
This slide is presented to address a lot of the fear that has arisen about the potential increase in costs for construction that responds to new standards to be adopted Post-Sandy. This shows the range of market-rate housing from single family production housing on the left to high rise construction in our more urban cores on the right. The costs range (roughly) from $85/square foot to over $200 a square foot in intensively urban locales.
The worst case for most shoreline jurisdictions is that a “podium” will be required your housing out of harm’s way. This will make the housing more expensive, perhaps 150% more. But, if there are any places that could take this increase in costs, it is New Jersey shoreline communities, which are value driven, desired destinations. Often, in the development world, the increases in building costs often comes at a price of a slight reduction in land values, so that the overall value of improved properties remains relatively constant, with more of that value placed in improved construction, rather than attributed to the value of the underlying land.
Torti Gallas’ firm’s culture is very much rooted in finding architectural solutions that befit the communities in which we build. A project in Cincinnati has the character of the locally beloved Queen Anne style, one in South Carolina has porches with spindlely columns, in Tampa porches have deep overhangs, and in suburban DC the federal style is often preferred.
Here in New Jersey, down in Bridgeton which has a rich heritage of Victorian architecture, we celebrated the often-neglected style (as can be seen in the image above with an origianl, boarded-up Victorian house in the background.) Some communities like Harrison have a forward view, and a more modern architectural approach is expressed.
The question for us thinking about the quality of the public realm in our Coastal Communities in the face of new design standards is: How do we make good neighborhoods given the challenges of the rules? The biggest rule will be the requirement of a raised “Base Flood Elevation - BFE”, below which no habitable space can be located. In these photos from Florida, houses have been raised out of the ground with an “open foundation” on stilts to accommodate a high BFE, and the lower portions of the buildings have storage uses exposed to their neighbors. This is not as nice as it could be, having everyone’s junk open for view. Given these new rules, how do we enhance what we love about Cape May or Ocean Grove, or add to the wonderful, but long-neglected architectural treasures of Asbury Park so that they are (re-)energized as vibrant destinations for the future?
BFE’s are relative to the wave energy, so are reduced as one moves inland. Also the numbers indicated are relative to the datum of the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88).
One approach to resolving a high BFE is to artificially raise the grade. These examples from Belmont Bay, VA and Kemer in Turkey show lush landscaped burms upon which buildings have been placed out of a floodplain.
Another option for communities, particularly those facing high BFE’s, is to create a new artificial ground plane. In this plan for a new waterfront village in Gautier, Mississippi [pronounced Go-shay] designed after Katrina, the rural “fishing village” character of the community can be enhanced architecturally by new wood boardwalk streets built on concrete framed piles.
Even more commercial districts can be raised out of the ground if necessary, as have been done previously in Chicago and Atlanta, where you can experience the old shop fronts in “Underground Atlanta” today. Two more recent commercial examples developed by the private sector are shown here: Atlantic Station and Bay Street in Tampa, both shopping destinations built upon parking podiums (which can be seen in the upper photograph). Development bonds can be floated or TIF’s or other structured finance devices can be used to raise the grades to allow for this kind of development for those communities desirous of a quality, raised public realm out of the harm’s way of the velocity zone.
Finally, solutions can be made external to the private development. Our Desire neighborhood in New Orleans Ninth Ward opened one week before Katrina, and was completely innundated for over two weeks. Afterwards the community was rebuilt (wood and drywall taken down and replaced), exactly the way it was before for two reasons: 1) External measures to the neighborhood such as enhanced levees and new flood gates and walls were added which promise to make New Orleans less prone to flooding. 2) Sadly, insurance coverage for the project only covered rebuilding, so even if our client wanted to build the community with improvements to make the neighborhood less flood-prone, the cost of those enhancements and their design were not covered by the flood insurance. In the aftermath of Sandy, rebuilding to a new, raised BFE may not be covered, so many homeowners may elect to go back to what they had before, or build less, but flood-protection-enhanced square footage, or spend money out of their own pocket to achieve have an asset similar to what they had before, but now meeting new flood standards
The final option is to choose to build/rebuild in areas at risk, and meet new protective standards for building sites within coastal flood areas. The next slides will present the Torti Gallas designed McDill neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, which was designed within a V-Zone (velocity zone) and uses a number of design techniques to attempt to make a neighborhood that can reasonably withstand flood and hurricane events.
The neighborhood replaced military barracks which had habitable space built within the floodplain, and endangered its residents who occupied these risky spaces.
Even though we were working within a Coastal V-Zone, we still planned the community as a neighborhood, where most residents have an easy, pleasant 5 minute walk to community facilities.
The site is subject to wave action, so one of the key design devices is to provide burms (dunes) at the waterfront, to assist in the dissipation of wave energy. These burms also helped provide a military defensive posture for the military residents, which includes some of the highest ranking officers in the service today.
The standards we design to are intended to best minimize damage in flood/storm surge events, where citizens in risk prone areas go elsewhere during the events -- We are NOT creating full survivalist solutions for people who foolishly choose to ride out the storm. The standards have been developed as part of the National Flood Insurance Program and are used to assess risk and calculate Flood Insurance Premiums.
In the design of the neighborhood at McDill, we used a variety of BFE Building Type strategies. Accessible Units , for example, are built at grade (to meet the needs of wounded warriors and other wheelchair-bound individuals) and are built on higher grade in the northwest corner of the plan (in brown). General Officer O-10 housing is built on a plynth above the BFE, with detached garage within the floodplain (most expensive mitigation solution). The next officer grades levels park below with breakaway walls and smart vents. (next more expensive). Finally the single family homes for lower officers and the duplex housing for enlisted families are raised out of the ground with parking below and lattice screening (least expensive to build and insure).
The top commanders homes are raised up on plynths with ceremonial entrances and detached garages in the floodplain.
The next officer level homes have breakaway solid walls and pleasant landscaping along the walkable street frontages and lattice beyond. Smart vents (which allow the equalization of pressure and the flooding of basements in storm events, are placed in the solid breakaway walls)
We typically design with alleys to move service functions to the back of our housing and create better frontages. Where we cannot provide alleys, to minimize the impact of driveways on the frontage we provide shared stem driveways with garages accessed from the side. Again, this officer housing has breakaway walls and smart vents.
For much of our housing in the McDill neighborhood, we provided an “Open Foundation”, where the lowest habitable level is raised out of the ground. In this case, the BFE was typically 4’. We decided to raise the floor up to provide additional “freeboard” and to provide the height to accommodate vehicular parking. Vehicles access the parking from the alley behind, and are screened from the public realm streets by lattice and lush landscaping.
This photo shows a variety of homes with Open Foundations under construction at different stages of completion. One home on the right hand side of the image shows the foundations, dug into the ground to reduce potential scouring from wave action. Other homes have the reinforced masonry frames and bond beams constructed, some still awaiting their concrete parking slabs at grade. In the upper left hand corner homes can be seen with the top chord bearing wood trusses hung between the bond beams and covered with decking. Finally, framed houses with and without roofing and building wrap are at the left hand side of the image.
In calculating where to set a ground floor, one needs to understand where BFE is in relation to site grade. Then the amount of freeboard required should be understood, and added to the depth of structure (in this case 2’4”), to set the floor elevation. Key details here include the base plate and tie-down details for the overall frame structure.
It is instructive to see naked homes in the process of construction with the final completed structures to understand how the design is implemented.
Attached are a variety of images of breakaway lattice. It is our understanding that lattice cost less to insure than breakaway walls.
The images here show tie down rods (right image), and the sheet metal strapping (Simpson ties) details between the different wood components. Note the metal ties between the roof trusses Anchor-bolted tie rods run from the bottom plate through the walls to the heel of the roof truss.
Hipped roofs at the corners assist in wind resistance. A neighborhood of hipped roofs are awkward from a design perspective, so in-line, more protected houses have conventional roofs that help establish the urban street wall.
Two means of egress were required; one of which was required to be of permanent concrete construction. The concrete stair was placed at the front of the home, the breakaway steps at the rear were constructed of wood.
The floor was raised 5’ over the 4’ BFE to allow for greater freeboard and the ability to park cars and reduce lot size . It was decided to leave condensers just above BFE level to minimize noise to residents and impact to views. Because tuck-under parking is utilized, the plan was able to be much more compact than conventional alley loaded schemes with separate land-hungry garages.
Again, because of the tuck-under parking, the overall land dedicated to parking can be reduced; the land area dedicated to active uses can remain the same. A lesson for existing rebuilding communities can be found here: because tuck under lots take less space than conventional lots (parking efficiency); land on higher ground could be upzoned to provide more housing while providing the same apparent density; lower lands at greater risk can be “renaturalized” or parked w/o impacting community tax base or without loss of community population.
Redevelopment is an opportunity to improve overall community quality by requiring screening of all on-site parking.To improve street frontages, shoreline communities may want to allow for ground floor, at-risk, foyers and mudrooms (circulation/storage uses with all with breakaway construction), to screen parking and provide safety - “eyes on the street”
Finally, supermarkets can take half the land of conventional markets if they are located on the second floor and parked and loaded below, (with a little liner community-serving retail at the street in front of the parking). These kinds of markets (Torti Gallas precedent from Georgetown, Washington DC), with freshly prepared meals and a generator can serve as a community resource subsequent to storm events, as utilities to the rest of the neighborhood are reconnected and brought back on-line.