Town of Golden
BW Products Used:
- Grasspave2
- Gravelpave2
Contractor: Town of Golden Maintenance crew
Designer: Town of Golden
The city of Golden, British Columbia, Canada, asked itself how it could start a green initiatives program without breaking the budget of a small town with a population of less than 4,000. Often, green and sustainable programs can be expensive, labor-intensive, require outside
engineering expertise and hit roadblocks in local building codes. Driven by the Development Services Department (DSD), the city of Golden devised a way to turn an eyesore—a vacant gravel parking lot—into a model of small-town ingenuity. The DSD chose to develop the vacant
lot into a porous paving parking lot with storm water mitigation and other sustainable properties.
St. Andrews United Church and Center for Peace donated the land to the city of Golden. The partnership between the two entities has worked well: The city was able to showcase its willingness to go green, and the church received a well maintained parking lot for its parishioners. There are two designated handicapped parking bays and one designated church parking space, and the rest of the spaces are open to the general public.
Restaurant patrons, the industrial sector and the church all use the parking lot, which is comprised of two types of permeable pavers, gravel contained and grass supported. The gravel porous pavement was used in the main drive aisles of the parking area, and grass reinforcement was used in the parking bays and some of the perimeter.
Natural Percolator
The porous system allows rain and snowmelt to percolate through its crosssections and back into the groundwater supply. This mimics the natural water cycle of undeveloped land. The porous pavers also filter out hydrocarbon drips rom the automobiles, nimal waste and moderate mounts of solid waste, elivering clean water to he groundwater supply. These contaminants otherwise would be uspended in the runoff water from an asphalt, concrete or
conventional compacted gravel surface and subsequently pollute down stream water supplies and porous paving products, manufactured by , were chosen for the new green parking lot.
The products are comprised of a series of cylinders on a grid system designed to disperse the load to an engineered porous base course. The Gravelpave2 product is filled with clean, small aggregate, and the Grasspave2 is filled with sand and topped with sod.
Project Items
