Car parks play a fundamental role in bringing people into our towns and cities - whether it's to work, socialise, shop or commute. They also provide valuable revenue for towns and cities, but they need to align with sustainability agendas and promote visitor safety.
We are delivering some of the UK’s most cutting-edge car parking structures. Working with leading architects, we are able to deliver visually appealing structures, maximising parking space and providing efficient designs for traffic flow and pedestrian safety. Through our innovative approach to modern methods of construction, we reduce project timeframes and minimise disruption in public environments by working on several components at any one time.
We are at the forefront of sustainable building technologies, creating car parking structures that reduce carbon and enable the uptake of electric vehicles. A range of sustainability technologies can also be embedded into the project scope, including the provision of photovoltaic panels, rainwater harvesting and green walls to support biodiversity. Our team delivered the 654-space, seven-storey car park at Dorset County Hospital and incorporated a biodiversity net gain.
We have identified a specific need for an investment in car parking and the subsequent opportunity this provides NHS trusts to generate an income, and provide additional car parking without making any upfront investment - find out more here. Other ways we've supported towns and cities with their parking provision include:
- Encouraging visitors to the city centre through Lincoln Central car park
- Supporting the wider Smithfield Masterplan to attract visitors to Stoke-on-Trent
- Constructing Liverpool's biggest car park in Kings Dock
Encouraging visitors to the city centre through Lincoln Central car park
We delivered a six-level multi-storey car park to help attract visitors into the city centre. The car park contains 1001 parking spaces, 39 disabled spaces and motorcycle spaces on the groundfloor. It also has 12 electric vehicle charging bays. Lifts in the car park lead out onto two local streets as well as the bus and railway stations.
Project programme was incredibly important to Lincoln City Council as they wanted the new car park open for people to use it for Christmas shopping. To ensure the project stayed on-track, we made use of a number of methods. The first was making use of a steel frame. This option not only enabled us to streamline the design so it didn't require columns, but it also offered significant cost and time efficiencies.
We also made use of offsite manufacturing. The car park’s large precast concrete stairs and the core and steel structures were all built offsite, helping to ensure programme, minimise waste, increase quality and reduce risk.
Since completion, the car park has won an award for its focus on user safety. The award recognised a number of elements including the good lighting and clear signage throughout, and the use of a closed in mesh façade to prevent any potential falls from the structure.
The car park is now helping to bring visitors into the city centre and generate revenue for the council. In fact, between March 2021 and March 2022, there was a total of 505,463 parking sessions at Lincoln Central car park, which generated £1.6m for the council.
Supporting Smithfield's Masterplan to attract visitors to the city centre
With a huge amount of investment going into the area as part of the Smithfield Masterplan, we built a 730-space multi-storey facility to help attract visitors and increase spending on Stoke-on-Trent's high street.
Smithfield Multi-Storey Car Park has 730-spaces in total, including 48 motorcycle parking bays, 112 bicycle spaces, 42 lockers and an initial 12 electric vehicle charging points, with the potential for more to be added at a later date. One of the interesting design features of the building are the aluminium fins on the façade of the building. They are based on the profile of the famous Spitfire aircraft, which was designed by Reginald Mitchell, an engineer hailing from Stoke-on-Trent.
The wider regeneration includes a £200m mixed-use quarter, incorporating residential space, offices, hotels and restaurants. Another project we completed as part of the Smithfield Masterplan was a hotel and apartments - Hilton Garden Inn Hotel and the neighbouring Clayworks apartments.
Constructing Liverpool's biggest car park in Kings Dock
With 1450 parking spaces and nine floors, it's easy to see why Kings Dock Car Park is the largest car park in Liverpool! There was a need for Liverpool City Council to replace the Echo Arena car park that was destroyed in a fire, which meant this project consisted of the demolition of the old car park and the creation of the new one.
The council was keen to get a replacement car park in place quickly as it supports hundreds of visitors each year - partly due to its proximity to the city centre, but also due to it only being a stone's throw away from the Exhibition Centre in Liverpool.
To help ensure a quicker programme without compromising on quality, our team reviewed all framing solutions to find the best one for the balance of cost, quality and speed of delivery. We chose to go for a steel-framed option, with metal decked floors and precast cores.
For more information, contact our local expert