GRAEF-USA Inc.

UW-River Falls Student Activity Center

GRAEF provided landscape design, site/civil engineering, structural engineering and sustainable design for the student activities center at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Students partially funded the project and required that the building meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Silver level of LEED certification. GRAEF developed design strategies to achieve LEED points for sustainable sites while remaining within the budget.

The site made achieving LEED site points extremely challenging. The project included a significant amount of new parking and the only available location was adjacent to a trout stream and wetlands. GRAEF studied several alternatives for achieving LEED points related to stormwater management and site disturbance, while facilitating the City of River Falls, United States Army Corps of Engineers and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources permitting. A small parking lot to serves the needs of the building and additional parking was placed elsewhere. Stormwater control for the entire site is handled through a system of interconnected infiltration basins that allows stormwater to be absorbed into the soil. These basins are used as landscaped medians within the parking lot. A large portion of the stormwater is collected in cisterns and reused.
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LOCATION River Falls, WI