The Kleingers Group is proud to be both a sponsor and to help plan the 2016 Safe Routes to School National Conference.

The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and the National Center for Safe Routes to School recently announced that the 2016 conference will be held April 5 to 7 in Columbus, Ohio.

Since 2012, The Kleingers Group has served as one of just a few Safe Routes to School Statewide Consultants to the Ohio Department of Transportation and has worked on more than 4 dozen Safe Routes to School (SRTS) projects throughout the state.

The Kleingers Group is a leader in creating both school travel plans and infrastructure design, creating safe and convenient opportunities for children to walk or bicycle to school.

According to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, the conference will bring together program representatives, state departments of transportation, planners, elected officials and community members to provide an opportunity for individuals, agencies and organization involved with Safe Routes to School to network, engage in educational opportunities, become inspired, and form partnerships.

The Kleingers Group is proud to sponsor the partnership’s goal of creating safer and more walkable communities and to share its traffic safety expertise.

More information about the conference is available at www.saferoutesconference.org.

As concussions caused by sports injuries continue to gain attention, it becomes more and more important for synthetic field owners to complete regular maintenance to ensure that their field continues to be safe for their players.

In November, Sportworks Field Design added G-MAX testing to its arsenal of field testing tools, allowing schools and other field owners to test the impact of the synthetic turf on players’ bodies and, more importantly, their heads.

Some studies highlight ways a synthetic field can be safer for players than natural grass. But over time, as a field gets more and more use, the infill can migrate away from high-use areas and begin to thin. The obvious result is that the field can get harder with less shock absorption each time a player falls. Field owners may be tempted to skip maintenance because of cost, but an unmaintained field can be a liability when players get hurt.

Sportworks recommends all owners perform G-MAX or “Impact Attenuation” testing annually to measure the shock absorption of synthetic turf throughout the field. The test is performed in accordance with ASTM Standard F355-A ensuring the field falls within an acceptable range.

Because Sportworks is a civil engineering firm and does not build fields or perform maintenance, field owners can be confident that the results are completely independent and unbiased.

The end result is owners can reduce their liability and be confident that their field is up to standards, and ultimately safe for players.

After a recent ribbon cutting ceremony and dedication, Otterbein University broke in their new synthetic turf field Saturday with a 20-0 win over Marietta College.  The Kleingers Group worked with MSA Architects on the renovation of Memorial Stadium.  The new project includes upgrades to the Memorial Stadium field turf and track facilities.  Two of our sports field design gurus, Craig Honkomp and Megan Cyr, were on hand to take in the game and field dedication ceremonies.

Traveled through Columbus lately? You may have seen construction at the new Orange Barrel Media Headquarters. The headquarters is located along I-670 just west of the confluence of the Scioto River and the Olentangy River near downtown.

It’s hard to miss the gigantic signage for the project, also under construction. Each tower for the sign is designed for a construction height of 160′! To help verify the towers were being constructed plumb, the contractor looked to our Central Ohio based surveyors to provide measurements at 20′ intervals to check the position of concrete forms. Proper adjustments were then made to ensure the towers met adequate dimensions, there is a minimal tolerance of 3/4″ for the steel between the towers.

The Kleingers Group recently completed work for Phase 1 of the Campus-Wide Geothermal Distribution project at Antioch College. This small, innovative, liberal arts college provides graduate programs that mix traditional class time with full-time work and community engagement. The noteworthy geothermal project does much of the same.

The project design elements included a large well field with 300 wells; a new entrance; sidewalks and curb; pervious patio; educational rain gardens and vegetable gardens; and a new grand entrance and drop-off area for students. The survey, civil engineering, and landscape architecture designs were completed by The Kleingers Group. While professionals drilled the geothermal wells and set the previous pavers, most construction was carried out by students on campus as part of their education/studio requirements.

The geothermal plant in combination with an existing solar array provides the College an opportunity to expand its sustainability efforts while reducing its overall power usage. Sources state that this package will help cut campus energy costs by nearly $400,000 annually, once completed.

The Kleingers Group’s commitment to site accessibility goes beyond the design. The Kleingers designers take unique measures to get a better understanding of how the end-user benefits from their design.

Recently, members of The Kleingers Group transportation team spent an afternoon with visually impaired residents and their guide dogs in the Columbus area. The team was split into two groups and paired with a blind individual, their sight dog, a cane, and blindfolds. Team members were then given the opportunity to experience the end-user. Members were blindfolded and given simple instructions to utilize their given tools (guide dog or cane) to navigate around a city block. Through the experience, team members were able to gain a new perspective about how end-users experience their design in real life and how everything in the design from curb ramps to accessible pedestrian signals to street conditions is important. This experience has helped our transportation engineers become more mindful of their design and how it impacts daily users.

For the Leblond Regional RecPlex project, our engineers were given the opportunity to design a recreation facility for individuals with and without disabilities. The team looked for opportunities to exceed ADA requirements for the project. The end result was a facility with accessibility to nearly everything from nearly everywhere in the parking lot. Designers found the solution by removing the reveal at the curb/pavement connection, this, in turn, saved money on the curb, bringing the cost in line with the budget, all while creating a ‘flush’ connection to all sides of the site.

“We put in extra ADA spaces, but it’s as if the whole lot is ADA accessible because people can spread out and park wherever they want and cross the lot and access everything without a ramp. With the baseball field on one side, the basketball court and playground on the other side, and the building on a separate side of the lot, [users] can park wherever and get to all three easily. Good call.” – Doug (Cincinnati Recreation Commission)

The Kleingers Group is proud to look beyond the ADA requirements on projects. Ultimately, it is about the end-users experience in our designs, why not make it a stress-free encounter.

Today marks the grand opening of The Reserve at Lakeview Landing, a brand new residential community of 33 one- and two-bedroom garden style apartment homes and 12 villas with attached garages, located in Huron, OH. This community is open to adults 55 and older and features a full set of amenities such as a community meeting space, fitness room and a business center.  The Kleingers Group was selected by Miller-Valentine Group to provide site design for this project that included civil engineering, landscape architecture, and surveying services. The Kleingers Group is proud to be part of this exciting development and we would like to thank Miller-Valentine Group for asking us to be involved in another great community project.

Rendering Credit: Miller-Valentine Group

Work is underway on the new Vance Outdoors project located in the Village of Obetz.  The 56,000 square foot retail project will be built in the growing Alum Creek Drive retail corridor. The new retail facility is unique to this camping and hunting market segment by featuring a 15,000 square foot 24-lane, state-of-the-art indoor firing range.  This project is Obetz’s first large scale retail project.  Building on this exciting project are plans to construct a public park behind the Vance Outdoors site that may include an outdoor archery range, picnic shelters and water elements.

The Kleingers Group provided the site design for this project including the civil engineering and surveying services.  This work included design for a future out-lot, public utility layout and grading.  The site currently drains toward a Village Park’s pond that served as a borrow pit for highway construction.  This pond has no outlet, so the hydrology for the site required some creative thoughts relative to impact to offsite conditions and analysis of the overall drainage area.

We would like to thank our awesome team members Quandel, M+A Architects and Schaefer for a great project experience!

The Cincinnati Public Schools SRTS program recently won the Green Advocacy Award at the Cincinnati Business Courier and Cincinnati Regional Chapter USGBC’s Green Business Awards! The award honors an organization providing educational awareness of the importance of sustainability to the Cincinnati community and/or the public at large. Congratulations Carmen Banks and Cincinnati Public Schools!

Our very own Mark Nolt is shown above with Carmen Banks.  Mark and the rest of our Transportation Group deserve a big congratulations on a job well done assisting Cincinnati Public Schools in developing their award-winning SRTS Program!

A big congratulations goes out to the University of Dayton for receiving their first LEED certified project through the U.S. Green Building Council.  The University of Dayton and GE Aviation teamed together to build the GE Aviation Electrical Power Integrated Systems Center also known as EPISCenter.  The project received LEED gold certification from the Council.  The $53 million EPISCenter Project provides high tech facilities to allow commercial and government researchers to test electrical power systems in airplanes. The 138,000-square-foot facility employs 70 research personnel.  That employment figure could grow to 200 research employees within five years.

The Kleingers Group provided civil engineering, surveying, landscape architecture and zoning entitlement services on the project.  Our contribution to the LEED design included high efficiency parking stall layouts and the design of sustainable rain garden infrastructure throughout the site.  We would like to thank our fellow team members on a successful project:  Hastings & Chivetta Architects, the University of Dayton, Heapy Engineering, Shell & Meyer, and CityWide Development.

Photo Credit: GE Aviation

The Kleingers Group recently attended the Grand Opening Ceremony for Germantown Village, a new mixed-income, affordable housing community that is the first phase of a multi-phase revitalization initiative underway in the historic Germantown-Broadway area of Dayton. Kleingers provided the civil engineering, surveying, and landscape architecture design services for this exciting downtown Dayton project. This first phase of Germantown Village comprises five buildings with a total of 60 apartment homes. The buildings vary in height, two-story and three-story, and apartments range from one bedroom to three bedrooms. The $12.8 million development is financed by a variety of sources, including equity raised by the sale of low-income housing tax credits allocated by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency. The Project rendering above is provided courtesy of Project Team Member CR architecture + design.

Below is a video of the grand opening ceremony:

http://youtu.be/5XnkVfF80cQ

Wright State University recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for their new classroom building. The new facility will be approximately 60,000 square feet and located west of University Hall and north of the primary pedestrian path from parking to the main academic quad. The Kleingers Group provided the civil engineering and surveying on this exciting new project.

The project features two large Bio-Detention Basins traversed by a highly used pedestrian walk. The walkway features two Black Locust Wood Plank bridges, with steel cable railings that overlook the planting areas. The meticulously landscaped Bio-Detention Basins are engineered with a sub-surface drainage system and a specialty soil mix designed to improve both stormwater quality and quantity. This feature is a purposeful and tactile demonstration of the University’s commitment to environmental stewardship.

Additionally the project incorporates a large lower level outdoor plaza. The plaza space is flanked on the east by a cast stone seat wall and on the south by a series of terraced retaining and seat walls. The outdoor space can also be enjoyed through the expansive, full height, lower level windows.