到今年秋天，新奥尔良会议参与者将能够聚集在一个占地7.5英亩的城市公园中，为他们提供坐下来放松，骑自行车，散步，散步并带有薄雾系统和宽敞的阴影的地方。

为此，建造500万美元项目的团队一直在努力将现有的交通车道和人行道转换为线性公园，该公园涵盖了欧内斯特N. Morial Convertion Center的整个长度。该团队不得不提出计划根据过时的地图重新处理交通模式和协调公用事业。在整个施工过程中，项目团队还依靠仔细的施工来维护会议中心的操作，该中心已转换为临时医院，以容纳从Covid-19的康复的患者。

“四车道林荫大道将四车道的简单转换为公园，对于全市社区来说是令人难以置信的便利设施，”项目建筑师Eskewdumezripple的高级合伙人Amanda Rivera说。Landis Construction Co. LLC是首席承包商，合资企业的Manning Architects/Eskewdumezripple设计了该项目。

Construction is more than 75% complete on the project, which broke ground in September 2018. The park encompasses 13 city blocks and creates a tree-lined, landscaped promenade with walking paths, bike lanes and outdoor gathering areas.

Creating a park that will span the entire length of Convention Center Boulevard meant having to downsize the busy thoroughfare from four traffic lanes to two—and in some areas, just one. The project team also had to incorporate stormwater management features to ease drainage issues.

该设施的销售和营销副总裁蒂姆·汉普希尔（Tim Hemphill）说：“会议中心林荫大道上的交通量和速度变得不安全。”他说。

Reclaiming a Roadway

Creating a wide park along the front of the convention center meant having to take away two of the four traffic lanes on busy Convention Center Boulevard. The divided road is a major route leading into and out of the New Orleans Central Business District and provides access to the center and other buildings along the riverfront.

Stuart Consulting Group的土木工程师克里斯·芬纳（Chris Fenner）说：“现有的走廊不是行人友好的，沿着英里长的道路只有几个条纹十字路口。”“促进安全，可步行的环境对于任何拟议的改进都是必不可少的。”

Extensive traffic studies were performed to determine how to best reallocate city streets to park area. The studies recommended a “road diet” for the boulevard, meaning it would be necessary to reduce the amount of land the roadway took up and also reduce the speed limit to 25 mph from 35 mph. Joint venture partner Manning Architects was called in to lead the road diet effort.

必须消除横跨会议中心长度的驾驶室，班车，公共汽车和乘车共享车辆的装载车道。

To provide a dedicated space for these vehicles, a centralized transit hub was created on two existing parking lots across the street from the convention center, with one lot primarily serving buses and the other serving taxis and ride shares. The transit center’s layout makes it so that all traffic can flow in and out of the facility without driving on Convention Center Boulevard. All pedestrians that use this facility are routed to one signalized crosswalk covered with a large canopy.

Because Convention Center Boulevard is a major downtown artery, one of the challenges during construction has been to maintain access for motorists so they can still use the roadway while work is underway. To maintain two-way traffic next to the park in the event of a stalled vehicle or accident, a 6-ft-wide cobblestone strip was installed between the two travel lanes to provide room for traffic to pass. All told, the project will use 38,000 sq yd of sidewalk and linear paving and 30,000 sq yd of roadway concrete.

Sequencing was key to ensuring traffic flow, and the contractor was able to phase the work in a way that kept two of the four lanes open while the north side roadway and transportation center were under construction.

设施兼作现场医院

The convention center is usually booked year-round, with events that accommodate thousands of people. “Finding a good time and a way to sequence construction so that it’s not disruptive to ongoing operations was a challenge,” Rivera says.

But in early April, the center began operating as a makeshift hospital to house patients recovering from COVID-19. State officials equipped it with 1,000 beds for non-critical patients to free up space at area hospitals. The contractor has continued to build along other areas of the mile-long project without interfering with the makeshift hospital’s operations.

“The project was lucky enough that at 19 months into the schedule, a lot of the work had been installed, including the transportation center, which is being used for the COVID-19 response,” says Andy Redmon, construction contract administrator for EskewDumezRipple.

一个t the start of the outbreak, the contractor stopped work and employed a skeleton crew on site to oversee construction in progress. After the state designated construction an essential business, Landis took steps to comply with national recommendations and local protocols to allow work to continue safely. That included providing personal protective equipment, setting up hand-washing stations and putting other safety procedures in place.

“I’m glad to report that adherence to our new safety measures has been great. Productivity has taken a hit from all the precautions and additional PPE requirements, but the safety of the workers is top priority,” says Christian Generes, president of Landis Construction Co.

Underground Unknowns

随着该项目涉及大量的公用事业工作，无论是地下还是在地面上，项目团队都必须与几个监管机构和公用事业所有者进行协调，例如新奥尔良的下水道和水板以及Entergy。

Locating and working around underground utilities presented a significant challenge. Many of the utilities in the area were installed to prepare for the 1984 World’s Fair. Since then, not all maps have been properly updated or maintained, and that has led to conflicting utility records.

项目工程师必须在设计阶段进行绘制和定位尽可能多的公用事业，以减少施工过程中的冲突，以绘制和定位尽可能多的公用事业。

芬纳说：“即使采用了这些步骤，这是一个旧城区的城市走廊，因此在建设过程中仍然发现了不可预见的冲突。”“大部分项目曾经是铁路院子，遇到了几个与新公用事业冲突的大砖块。”

Intense coordination with regulatory agencies was necessary for the unconventional plan to narrow the roadway. “We were asking for input from various entities on changes and proposals that were things that had never really been envisioned in the city before,” Rivera says.

该项目需要重新安置高压电源线，以便公园可以包括从运输中心到会议中心步行的行人的树冠。兰迪斯不得不与会议中心官员和Entergy紧密合作，以在狂欢节游行和众多公约中实现这一目标。

“Most challenging was adjusting our construction to the event schedule of the convention center,” Generes says. “We met weekly with convention center staff to make sure our schedule was in line with where events were happening in the facility.”

Drainage Innovations

与排水和街道洪水普遍反对cern in New Orleans, a goal of the project was to incorporate as much stormwater retention and filtration features into the design as possible. The project includes 4,000 linear ft of subsurface drain lines.

The project’s landscape architect, Spackman Mossop and Michaels, incorporated various stormwater management features. The park will feature an underground Silva Cell system, which consists of suspended, permeable paving that can absorb and naturally treat stormwater and then redistribute the water to surrounding trees.

For additional drainage, the roof of the canopy over the transit center collects large amounts of water from the Crescent City Connection bridge directly above it and diverts the water to a designated rain garden.

Because of the hot and humid conditions in New Orleans, the project design includes approximately 50 in-ground misting spouts that can be operated with remote sensors.

鉴于公园有望经历的大量人流，设计师必须创造一个耐用的城市环境，该环境能够弹性地被公众不断使用。

The project team worked with the firm Landscape Forms on the park’s benches and planter furniture to custom engineer these components out of cast concrete, reinforced by fiber instead of steel rebar.

The linear park is the latest piece of the city’s Reinventing the Crescent master plan, which aims to bring six miles of linear park to the New Orleans riverfront. The park is also the first piece of a five-year, $557-million expansion for the convention center. The plan, approved in May 2018 by the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Exhibition Hall Authority, includes upgrades to the 36-year-old center and a proposed high-rise hotel with a pedestrian bridge connecting to the facility.

“The project was envisioned to serve as an amenity for both visitors and locals alike,” Rivera says. “Visitors will enjoy an expanded, world-class convention center experience, and locals will similarly enjoy access to the larger riverfront park network.”

The pedestrian park is on track for completion by August.