Bioretention at the Atascocita Center

Bioretention at the Atascocita Center

Location: 15903 West Lake Houston Parkway, Humble, Texas 77346
Owner: Lone Star College System
Architect: Perspectiva
General Contractor: Summit Builders
Project Manager: Jones Lang LaSalle
General Facts: The Atascocita is a new satellite campus in the Lone Star College system that opened in 2011. TXI’s TruGro® was specified for its many bioretention qualities in their parking lot areas

 

The fastest growing community college system in Texas is Lone Star College. With 85,000+ students and a growing demand to service the Kingwood area, a new satellite campus, the Atascocita Center was completed in the summer of 2011. The goal was to provide higher education, leisure learning and training opportunities for students and the community.

The architects wanted to design a building that had a collegiate feel with an exterior look that reflected the surrounding community while being sensitive to the environment. Great care was taken to preserve existing trees that frame the building, complimented by lush turf and landscape plantings. Bioretention areas were designed throughout the parking area to help filter runoff, reduce the heat island effect, and provide an aesthetic campus amenity. 

The function of a bioretention area is to collect and treat stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces such as rooftops and paving. For this to occur, you need to create a depression with organic soils that have a high percolation rate, along with plants that can tolerate wet, and sometimes, flooded soils. Plant roots help in the transpiration process to move water up to the leaf pores where they evaporate into the atmosphere. Bioretention areas help the environment in the following ways:

  • they reduce the volume of stormwater leaving a site
  • they help remove nitrogen, phosphorous and metals from storm runoff 
  • they recharge the groundwater supply
  • they provide an aesthetic amenity while reducing the heat island effect
  • they help save on irrigation


TXI’s TruGro® was an integral part of the planting mix in the 1,380 linear feet of bioretention designed in the parking lot. Expanded shale is a wonderful product for this application for the following reasons:

  • it improves the infiltration quality 
  • it will not decompose or float like other amendments
  • it adds density to support root development
  • the porous composition absorbs and releases water
  • as an inert material, it does not add foreign pathogens or weed seeds 


Because of these qualities, TXI’s TruGro is also used in the design of rooftop mixes, potting soils, bonsai planting mixes and as an amendment for clay soils in turf and landscape bed preparation.

The bioretention areas break up the visual monotony of a parking lot while providing natural filtering of storm runoff. Pavement bays were graded to direct stormwater into the five bioretention sites equally. 

Each bioretention channel utilized the same design details including backup irrigation for drought conditions, velocity dissipaters (in the form of cobbles) to slow down runoff entering the system, a plant palette suited to submerged, moist and dry conditions, a drainage overflow to prevent flooding of nearby pavement areas, and a protective layer of mulch.


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