Just North of the beautiful harbor of Baltimore, MD, residents are excited about the completion of the Palisades of Towson, a newly-certified LEED Silver apartment home community whose mission is to demonstrate their concern for the comfort of their residents as well as the planet. Environmentally-friendly features were planned and built into each aspect of the 18 story community’s 361 apartments, 8,000 sf of retail/office space and the largest mechanized parking garage of its kind in the United States.

 

Throughout the design development process, budget pricing was provided on a variety of roofing systems. In February 2009, construction was well underway and the time came to complete the project’s roof structure. The project originally called for a highly emissive roof membrane to gain LEED credits and achieve the ultimate LEED Silver goal. This construction, however, also required underground storm water management tanks to meet municipal stormwater quantity and quality requirements. To accommodate the tanks, removal of massive amounts of bedrock would also be required.

 

The project’s roofing contractor suggested utilizing American Hydrotech’s Hydrotech Hydrology Tool (HHT) to definitively determine how a Garden Roof® Assembly could potentially assist in meeting overall stormwater requirements and goals. The HHT aggregated project component performance data, integrated project-specific municipal/LEED guidelines and then overlaid a variety of “real life” retention and detention abilities such as site specific storm events and other unique regional climatic conditions.

 

After careful analysis and customization of various Garden Roof components to optimize the assembly and meet project LEED goals, the underground storage and filtration requirements were completely eliminated and building owners saved more than $75,000 on project completion. Local officials continue to look to the developers, contractors and design of Palisades of Towson as a showpiece and testament to a properly executed green infrastructure for the greater Towson community.