Alleyway Drainage Improvement Project - City of Alameda, CA
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Originally constructed in the early 1930’s, the Alameda Theater served as hub of social activity in the historic City of Alameda for over 70 years. In the past decade the theater experienced hard times, with deferred maintenance and extensive water damage due to nuisance storm water. The City of Alameda's Redevelopment Agency proposed an extensive facelift of the historic Alameda Theater district, which includes building a new Cineplex and a new parking structure. The historic Alameda Theater will operate functionally as one of the 8-screen movie theaters and will only be accessed by patrons through the main entrance.
The City of Alameda retained Pakpour Consulting Group to provide civil design services to improve the drainage and eliminate the water problems along the alleyway at the rear of the theater. Pakpour Consulting Group completed a drainage study to determine the existing runoff and provide conceptual drainage solutions. Based on the approved drainage study, the final improvements included re-grading the existing alleyway to provide positive drainage away from the existing buildings, compacted drain rock to provide a pervious surface, a shallow ductile iron storm drain system, concrete valley gutters and a pre-fabricated pump station.
The team’s biggest challenge was conveying the runoff to the gutter along Central Avenue. Since Central Avenue did not contain longitudinal storm drains, all runoff along Central Avenue was conveyed in the street gutters. To achieve this goal, the design team incorporated a shallow trench drain system to convey flows to the curb and gutter in Central Avenue and graded the site to provide overland drainage release in the event of trench drain failure.
