The Penn Street Parking Facility - a Design-Build Success Story

Tillman D. Johnson, AIA

Principal, BWJ Inc., Architects, Baltimore, Maryland

Robert M. Shaft

Vice President, the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, Baltimore, Maryland

Keith D. McCartney

Sales and Marketing, Tindall Concrete Virginia, Inc., Petersburg, Virginia

The Penn Street Parking Facility at the University of Maryland at Baltimore (UMAB), Maryland, is located in an urban university environment. Situated on Pratt and Penn Streets at the southern edge of the UMAB campus, it is instrumental in defining the campus’s new southwest “gateway”.

This project site is in an historically significant loft building district of Baltimore. The construction of the new parking facility required the demolition of the historic Maryland Electric Company substation building. The University decided that the design-build team should retain and restore the substation’s Pratt Street façade, with the new building becoming a backdrop for the restored facade.

A total of 1312 precast/prestressed concrete components were used in the parking structure. These components included double tees, beams, columns, spandrels, various ramp walls, slabs, stair units and miscellaneous elements. Each different product type came with much greater dimensional variety than is the norm for a project of this nature.

The precast components were manufactured at the Tindall Concrete Virginia plant in Petersburg. The company, a PCI Certified Producer Member, has provided high quality products and excellent services to its clients during the past 30 years.