Parking or Courting?

By Kathleen Knight

This week was a great one for the Resilience Team! We met with Thomas Lukas, the Assistant Director at Facilities Management, to discuss our potential cistern sites. We did a walk around tour of Parking Lot Structure 9 and the courtyard of Boelter Hall. We ruled out our other two sites, the Botanical Garden and the garden walkway between Franz Hall and the Geology building. The Botanical Garden did not have a great place to put a cistern, and we figured that the irrigation system for the Botanical Gardens was probably fine-tuned and site specific. After corresponding with Tom, he said that we the courtyard between Franz and Geology was not a viable option due to the size and slope of the area. We were kind of bummed about this decision, because we originally thought that the courtyard between Franz and Geology would have been a great opportunity for storm water collection in terms of the potential irrigation of local vegetation as well as the educational and informational opportunities due to its relatively high traffic use.

After discussing site specifics with Tom, our team has a much better sense of direction for our project, and we’ve been able to break it down into a few main stages: concept designs, going over budgeting with Tom, obtaining jurisdiction and permission for sites, utilizing part of the $18,000 grant from last year’s Resilience Team to conduct an engineering study, and lastly, applying to The Green Initiative Fund in April to obtain more money with which to install a cistern with. We’re still deciding on which site to choose between the Boelter courtyard and Parking Structure 9, but we’re planning on doing conceptual plans and designs for both sites before we make a final decision.