In most respects, the Columbia Toastique site was outstanding. Located within Howard Hughes’ redevelopment of the Merriweather District, it was positioned between two new apartment buildings, near other retail, and right on the edge of Color Burst Park. The kiosk site would be prime real estate in a dynamic urban space.
Photos courtesy of Arium AE.
One core site condition, however, presented the development team with a very unusual and unavoidable challenge. The ground beneath the small, retail pad site had been filled with an electrical vault and a large pumping room for the park’s splash pad. Furthermore, access to the vault was not through a discreet hallway in an adjacent building, but through an enclosed stair tower on the retail site.
“This was definitely one of the most unique sites I have ever dealt with,” said Torsten Meuschke, Project Manager at Arium AE.
Excavation and demolition included unearthing the top of the vault, which lay two feet below the level of the park, and removing its roof.
“You’re peeling off insulation, membranes, and flashing, and there were intricacies to the demolition because we had to protect the equipment in the vault and make sure none of the systems were affected by our work,” Meuschke said.
Crews had to connect new steel to the vault, which would serve as the foundation for Toastique, he said. “We had to penetrate through the stair tower to add a steel beam and column inside the tower to support the entire building and throw the loads back down to the basement level.”
The restaurant’s design also had to make the most of a small but prominent site.
“A key question was how do we connect the inside of this new restaurant with the urban park,” Meuschke said.
On the front of the building, designers opted to create an almost fully glazed façade with a large, swing-up glass door and two adjacent sets of windows that mimicked the design of the door. The arrangement created an inviting connection to the outdoors.
Careful grading allowed the front of the restaurant to connect to a large patio overlooking the park. Despite the site’s slope, it also ensured the building was ADA-compliant without needing a ramp or railings, and also ensured that water would drain away from the building during rainstorms.
In this article: Howard Hughes and Arium AE.
Do you have a creative solution for a challenging site in the Baltimore-Washington region that you would like to share? Tell us about it. Contact Linda Strowbridge at lindas@naiopmd.org.