Michael Baker's San Diego County Regional Airport Terminal 2 Parking Plaza was recognized by ACEC California with a prestigious 2019 Honor Award.
Michael Baker served as the civil design manager for the design and construction of the airport's public-use parking plaza. As part of the Swinerton Design-Build Team, Michael Baker was responsible for managing the plans, specifications and estimates for the roadway and site civil engineering, including roadway horizontal and vertical geometry, roadway and site grading, roadway and site drainage, utility coordination, water and sewer facilities and pipelines, traffic handling and stage construction.
The three-story parking plaza can accommodate 2,900 vehicles, including contemporary parking technologies and all code-required handicapped, electric and alternative fuel vehicle spaces. Advanced wayfinding, including a high-tech vehicle notification system to assist drivers in finding available parking, was implemented. Also, an online payment system was installed and synced with digital camera systems to read license plates on vehicles entering or exiting the facility, allowing plaza users to arrive and depart with ease.
Our design also included an innovative, below-ground rainwater storage system with a capacity of nearly 100,000 gallons. Previously, the airport’s central utility plant used nearly 30,000 gallons of potable water per day in the non-potable process of managing air temperature in the airport terminals. The newly designed system allows the parking plaza to capture rainwater, which replaces some of the potable water previously used by the central utility plant.