With more cars on the road each day, McCormick Construction is doing its part to help find room for them. In fact, the Burbank, CA-based company recently announced that they have four major parking structures underway in their hometown city.

Totaling 874,767 and 2,173 parking stalls, the four projects are for Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Contract Services Administration Trust Fund (CSATF), 800 S. Flower St., and Talaria at Burbank.

“Parking, especially in Los Angeles County, has become a driving force behind not only determining the size and scale of the potential project, but how successful the development can be,” said Michael McCormick, president and CEO of McCormick Construction in a recent press release. “It is essential for project owners and developers to include parking options in their design-build projects in order to optimize space, time and cultivate a cohesive aesthetic between the building and its parking.”

Parking is important, but it's not cheap. Michael McCormick told me recently that parking structures generally range from about $13,500 per stall for above grade work to roughly $45,000 per stall for below grade.

The 450-stall Nickelodeon Animation Studio project is a five-story parking garage which is being design-assisted by Clark Pacific, DLR Group and Englekirk. Built for company employees at the newly located Animation group, the 129,000-sq-ft project is utilizing a precast concrete system, which McCormick says helped improve the project’s time- and cost-efficiency, "creating substantial savings." The structure is comprised of white cement and construction aggregate, which mirrors the glass fiber-reinforced concrete (GFRC) finish on the main office building

Across town, the 800 S. Flower St. parking structure is four levels and totals 178,444-sq-ft. Owned and developed by Cusumano Real Estate Group, the project will house up to 525 vehicles, including 20 exterior ground-level spaces on site. The structure features a green screen system with live plants on the structure’s outer walls, bolstering its environment-friendly appeal. Other features that reinforce the property’s aesthetic include streamline stair assemblies, decorative architectural lighting and a plaza area with custom concrete surfaces, which will serve to join the structure architecturally to the adjacent office building.

Michael Cusumano, managing director of Cusumano Real Estate Group, said in a news release that one of the goals was to include elements in the structure which add to the "aesthetic composition of the structure by promoting sustainability and ingenuity."

McCormick, whose company also specializes in office buildings, entertainment, multifamily and industrial construction, told me that because of the much improved technology in automated parking, along with more constraints on space, he is seeing an increased interest in customers wanting automated parking garages.

The third parking facility in Burbank, built for CSATF, will serve the employees and clients of the non-profit organization, which administers various programs and benefits for motion picture and television industry union workers. A recent wave of unionization in film industry auxiliary personnel resulted in the need for the a building and parking structure.

A Key feature of the 437-stall, five-story, design-build parking structure are unusually high, 15-ft bays, allowing for the accommodation of specific equipment used in training programs, including aerial lift and scissor lift operations as well as safety drills. The 157,323-sq-ft structure’s unique exterior combines brick veneer and finished concrete surfaces fitting within the architectural composition of the facilities adjacent to the structure.

The last and largest such project currently under construction in the city is Talaria at Burbank, a mixed-use retail and residential project which includes 410,000 sq-ft of underground parking comprising 761 stalls.

Besides the Burbank projects, McCormick is also currently working on Santa Monica Gateway, a new, Class-A creative office building in Santa Monica which includes a 237,000-sq-ft parking lot with 621 stalls.