Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitor Center

Overview

Founded in 1910, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is located on 52 acres in central Brooklyn and is home to over 14,000 types of plants and flowers. 

We provided site/civil and structural engineering services to Weiss/Manfredi for a new visitor center and entry plaza for welcoming, orienting, and educating visitors, which was completed in 2012. The addition also included a lobby, offices, retail and exhibition space, cafe, restrooms, two outdoor plazas and landscaping.

Highlights

• Access points were provided from the building to the adjacent hillside 20 feet above the building, and grades accommodate new paths and relocation of numerous underground utilities. We also designed the paving, grading, stormwater management, and utility routing.
• We provided stormwater management and drainage design and calculations for NYS Department of Environmental Conservation SWPPP/SPDES General Permit application and LEED credits 6.1 and 6.2 for Water Quantity and Quality Control. Stormwater was managed onsite by use of a green roof and infiltration basins. We also created a Master Plan, requested by the NYCDEP, and received certification.
• Approximately 40,000 plants were used for the green roof installation on the Visitor Center’s green roof. Benefits of the green roof include reducing heat island effect to help keep the building cool, therefore reducing energy costs, as well as stormwater management benefits, in the form of evapotranspiration and stormwater storage within the green roof’s soil media.
• Two infiltration basins collect and treat stormwater runoff from plaza areas. The infiltration basins allow for enhanced stormwater quality, groundwater recharge through infiltration, and stormwater runoff reduction in the form of evapotranspiration and evaporation. The use of green infrastructure in this project was very befitting for the garden setting.