The St. James United Methodist Church in Athens, Georgia, has outgrown their current facilities. Breedlove Land Planning assisted in developing a master plan for growth and has achieved the re-zoning necessary to implement the improvements. Breedlove Land Planning also provided construction documents for the first phase, which included expanded parking facilities, as well as the utility and stormwater infrastructure to accommodate future phases.
A key challenge was maximizing the parking while limiting the impervious cover per the zoning conditions. The resulting design included a porous concrete parking lot that is directly connected to an open-bottom chamber stormwater management facility. With the motivation to blend into the surrounding community, integrating innovative stormwater technology resulted in a “greener” parking lot that serves as a stormwater model for the surrounding community. This project received the 2009 Athens-Clarke County Stormwater Stewardship Award.