The new child care center building is situated on a tight urban site in a decommissioned park that may or may not have been built on in the past. To incorporate microdetention throughout, bioswales integrated with the landscape have been fit into the building lot to absorb run-off from both the building roof and other impervious surfaces. The grading necessary to integrate the bioswales extends beyond the 40\' site disturbance limit (see plan with swales and limit lines) however the only vegetation on site is a non-native grass and the native species landscaping plan will be a tremendous upgrade and improvement. (please see shading plan that is being revised at the moment to show the correct shading) We maintain that this approach does meet the intent of the credit point "to conserve existing natural areas and restore damaged areas to provide habitat and promote biodiversity". The question is does the incorporation of the landscaped bioswales violate the 40\' site disturbance limitation?
The project is inquiring whether the installation of bioswales beyond the 40\' site disturbance boundary will disqualify it from following the compliance path for greenfield sites. Based on their description, it seems that this project site has been degraded and may in fact have been previously developed. CIR SSc5.1 6/26/2003 states that areas that have been disturbed may be classified as "previously developed" even if no building was erected on the site. The appropriate strategy in this case is to restore the site beyond the 40\' disturbance limit. Therefore the project should follow the requirements for a previously developed site, and should restore 50% of the non-roof area with native or adapted vegetation. Provide justification in the submittal for this classification.