7th and Franklin Street Parking Garage

The garage is located in the heart of downtown Richmond’s business district and utilizes half a city block. The facility features an architectural facade treatment to blend in with neighboring buildings. It has an on-site office for security and garage management as well as proximity card readers at all doors and gates, a close circuit TV system, roll up entry gates and Code Blue emergency stations.

Walter P Moore also participated in a lighting evaluation for this project which included the testing of multiple lighting systems to determine the most effective and efficient garage lighting application for this region. As a result of this effort, a highly efficient LED system was selected for this facility. The LED lighting system includes motion controlled and photocell applications to further reduce electricity consumption.

The parking structure is a precast facility containing two bays of double loaded parking aisles. Each bay consists of a park-on-ramp which ascends one parking level and a flat landing on each end. This allows for two levels of vertical travel for each full revolution of horizontal travel. The facility is 11 levels in total with eight elevated levels and three levels below grade.The garage was designed with two distinct circulation patterns and redundant auto exits and entries to relieve backups and congestion. To increase circulation and usability, crossovers were included at every other level to allow patrons to transfer from one circuit to the other.