1225 Louisiana Garage

This unique renovation project in Downtown Houston started as the foundation and parking garage for the 28-story Sheraton Lincoln Hotel. Under the watchful eye of Harvey, the hotel was demolished by Cherry Demolition, removing all of the above grade floors and leaving the three level underground parking garage. The goal was to renovate the existing portion of this garage to function as contract parking for the adjacent office tower. In addition to renovating the actual parking garage, a new two-story structure to tie-in the 1201 Louisiana office tower with the new garage was added. This structure houses the five-story machineless room elevator with stops on every floor of the garage, and an ornamental stainless steel and glass stair. A 13,000 SF metal panel wall had to be custom fabricated to cover the three level of CMU wall that was exposed during demolition as the two buildings were tied together and shared a common wall. The garage was gutted of all existing electrical, plumbing and mechanical systems, only leaving behind the existing sprinkler lines and sump pumps to be reused. It was a challenge to design a new system around the existing structure as the clearances in the lower levels were only 6’-6” at some areas. New features include, MEP systems, a fire sprinkler system utilized with existing pipe to the fullest extent possible, a CenterPoint Energy switchgear room, dry pipe valve rooms and an all new parking layout. On the street level, cast-in-place planters as well as large GFRC planters lined the perimeter of the surface level parking lot and were filled with native plants, flowers and trees.