海角视频

Thorpe Park MSCP1

Leeds, UK

Thorpe Park, Leeds is an award-winning, mixed-use business park located off the M1 in East Leeds which is home to over 900,000ft虏 of high-quality office space, and a working population of 5,000 people employed by more than 100 national and international businesses.

The latest office building to be built, currently known as B3, has been pre-let to a leading credit management company (Yorkshire Property Awards deal of the Year), which had challenging requirements around onsite staff parking.  

While the company initially requires 1,200 parking space for employees, it also needs flexibility to reduce that number in the coming years following the arrival of a proposed new on-site commuter railway station. MSCP1 is the flexible solution that is able to fulfil the tenant鈥檚 aspirations and requirements.

The tenants of the adjacent Grade A office building needed a flexible parking solution that can be adapted in the coming years.

Our multidisciplinary team played a critical role in working with the wider design team to realise a truly bespoke solution to the tenant鈥檚 parking requirements.

Completed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pre-let won the Yorkshire Insider Property Deal of the Year 2021 award.

We worked closely with the design team to devise a solution that allowed the car park to meet challenging planning restrictions.

Challenge

The B3 Grade A office building, which is yet to be given its permanent name, has been pre-let on a 15-year lease to occupy the seven-floor 133,118ft虏 (12,367m虏) landmark property.

Having worked with the developers on the wider site, 海角视频 was engaged to provide civil and structural engineering as well as building services engineering (MEP), fire safety and acoustics consultancy.

The B3 tenant required 1,200 car parking spaces, which would test the site鈥檚 capacity and require an innovative solution to be found that didn鈥檛 require losing the basement space to parking. We also worked closely with architects CJCT to solve the challenges with car parking, with a two-storey car park solution incorporated into the B3 design beneath a podium capitalizing on the hillside setting.

But this would not provide the required number of staff parking spaces, so plans were implemented for the construction of a multi-storey car park on the neighbouring plot.

Solution

MSCP1 is the first of two multi-storey car parks planned for the wider site. MSCP1 is a ten-storey design. However, to meet planning restrictions around height limits, one of the storeys had to be sunk into the ground. We worked closely with the design team to devise a solution that allowed this 鈥渂asement鈥� level to be incorporated into the site鈥檚 sloping topography. This means that the 鈥渂asement鈥� level is actually accessed at ground-level from one side.

Due to pressures on land take, our experts helped to develop a new design that incorporated a diaphragm wall solution for one of the retaining walls 鈥� which saved both construction time and money for the project鈥檚 tight budget. This approach essentially involved digging a trench, filling it with concrete and reinforcements, and this effectively became one of the retaining walls separating the multi-storey structure from the adjacent Retail Service Yard.

The space has been designed to offer a flexible reduction in parking as the demand for car-based commuting reduces in the coming years, at which time the occupier could rescind some spaces to later office developments.

Flexibility was also required to fit in with the tenant鈥檚 budget, with half of the multi-storey car park (five floors) being built in the first iteration, but with the foundations and structure in place to easily accommodate the addition of the further five storeys to be added in the future.

The planning regulations require 10 per cent of the parking to be devoted to electric vehicles, and the charging points have been incorporated into the overall design. Additional infrastructure will be in place to easily add further EV charging points at a later date as and when required.

Value

Our multidisciplinary team played a critical role in working with the wider design team to realise a truly adaptable solution to the parking requirements of the B3 tenant.

We worked closely with the architects to realise a flexible multi-storey car park that can meet the tenant鈥檚 immediate needs and budget, while also retaining the ability to grow or contract as required in the future.