San Diego’s Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, made famous by the movie Top Gun and the “need for speed”, has a new neighbor in the city’s northern region. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the premier auto manufacturer, is constructing its largest luxury dealership across the street from the airbase in the county. Once completed, the new 2.9-acre dealership will have a 48,000-square-foot building and a fleet of first-class cars. Due to the sheer size of the building, the first hurdle is designing an efficient infrastructure and a stormwater system for the limited footprint.
The dealership includes a large parking structure, showroom, and maintenance facility, all within a relatively small footprint and along a busy thoroughfare. The workable area was further reduced by the depth of the existing drainage system, which will be connected to the new system.
With space at a premium and the potential for generating pollutants related to vehicle traffic and staging, engineers at TAIT & Associates designed two UrbanPond concrete detention systems with 6 feet inside height modules; both units contain interior walls for separating hydromodification, direct capture volume (DCV), and outlet controls. A standard box culvert was initially proposed, but UrbanPond gave the designers more flexibility to accommodate the building’s footprint, landscaping, and interior chamber requirements.
The two storage systems sit on opposing sides of the main building. On the west side, the UrbanPond is made of 48 modules, while the east system has 121 modules. Both units flow downstream to a 4’x8’ Modular Wetlands Linear, creating a hydraulically connected treatment train.