By Keith McCabe, DiGeronimo Aggregates, LLC
Owner: Capital South Community Urban Development Corp. – Columbus, OH
Development Manager: Georgetown Company – New York, NY
Landscape Architect: EDGE Group – Columbus, OH
Landscape Contractor: Brickman Group – Columbus, OH
ESCS Supplier: Haydite, DiGeronimo Aggregates, LLC – Cleveland, OH
The grand opening was held this past Memorial Day weekend in Columbus, Ohio for the newly completed 9–acre urban park built over an underground parking garage that was the site of the former City Center Mall. The Commons includes almost 9 acres of grass where up to 10,000 people can congregate for concerts and features a bandstand, carousel, walk-up hamburger stand, and a plaza book kiosk. Children, parents, and others can play, eat, and lounge in the park or admire some of the twelve 2,000 square foot garden plots that contain seasonal plants throughout the year.
The twelve spectacular gardens are designed and maintained by the Franklin Park Conservatory using an array of perennials, shrubs, ornamental grasses, evergreens and annuals. The Conservatory included spindle palms and other warm-weather options among the 22,000 plants and trees selected for the garden plots. One member of the Conservatory is assigned full time to the gardens and more than 30 volunteers assist with the planting.
The successful completion of the project would not have been possible without extensive use of ESCS lightweight aggregate both in a base LW geotechnical drainage layer ranging from 2” – 4” placed over the water-tight green roof system as well as the “On-Structure turf mix” composed of ESCS aggregate, sand, topsoil and organic amendment in a 12” layer placed over the drainage layer and designed to use enough ESCS aggregate to meet a density at maximum water capacity requirement of no more than 90 pounds per cubic foot. Approximately 3,500 cubic yards of ESCS aggregate were used in the project.
