City of Palo Alto California Ave. Parking Garage

About the project: Constructed on an existing, city-owned surface parking lot, the California Avenue parking garage is a four-story above grade and two-story below grade, 627 stall public parking structure serving the parking needs of the California Avenue business district. The parking structure fills its site to nearly the property lines, and utilizes strategies such as a cascading exterior grand staircase and landscaped setback, a pedestrian arcade, and a partial-block pedestrian arcade leading to a mid-block paseo to provide scale-mitigating site amenities.

Due to the depth of excavation exceeding the groundwater level, a Cement-Soil mix water- exclusionary shoring system was utilized to minimize construction dewatering, thus reducing the risk of groundwater intrusion to the excavation and minimizing the likelihood of drawing contaminated groundwater from nearby plumes.

The project includes provisions for a future PV system on the roof deck and provides parking for Electric Vehicles. The project received full Architectural Review Board (ARB) approval and underwent Environmental Impact Report (EIR) certification.

Nova has been instrumental in the success of this project, taking a leading role in all aspects of project delivery, including; design management, navigating the project through the ARB and EIR processes, managing the General Contractor bidding process (including pre- qualification), and Construction Management.