Maggie Daley Park

As the newest landmark for the City of Chicago, Maggie Daley Park is a world-class example of modern engineering and landscape architecture within the built environment.

The Chicago Park District began transforming the northeastern part of Grant Park into Maggie Daley Park in 2012. The project is a product of thousands of citizens’ participation in community workshops and meetings over a span of multiple years to help determine the programming for this prominent lakeshore site.

The major challenge faced by the team was to construct a world class park facility on top of an existing parking garage. The design team was restricted by the structural capacity of the garage slab and all of the improvements and solutions needed to be designed around this limitation.

IEI was tasked with the design of foundations for the playground equipment, including fourteen 55’ tall specialty designed steel light masts with new reinforced concrete plenums and vent stacks. The large playground equipment also included a 55’ tall expert climbing wall, a 55’ tall bouldering climbing wall supported by a refrigerated equipment room located within the perimeter of the climbing wall, a 125’ suspension bridge, 4 types of light poles and new retaining walls at the north entrance.

IEI served as the civil, structural and drainage consultant for the design team and was tasked with providing the drainage of the 16-acre park area over the parking garage roof slab and the other areas of the 25-acre site.

Project Highlights

Significant difficulties and complex design building a park on top of a parking structure:

• Detailed research and relocation design of utilities and services for the park fixtures;
• Multiple options and specialty drainage design and permitting;
• High-density polyethylene (HDPE) fixtures to reduce loading on parking structure;
• Multiple storage devices and infiltration options utilized;
• Structural design for specialty fixtures and foundations, which required additional analysis for the parking structure;
• Geofoam infill in lieu of soil to reduce loading;
• Significant detail in grading and drainage design in an ever-changing and evolving park layout.