The Alabama Welcome Center is a rest stop located at the Tennessee-Alabama border in Limestone County. The building needed to be updated, and the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) was looking to renovate the site.
Our proposed Welcome Center needed to be relocated further from the highway, with newly designed stormwater management. We also had to redesign the car and truck parking areas. The onsite structures and memorials had to be removed or rearranged to meet the proposed design including the Saturn 1B rocket memorial which had to be disassembled and removed entirely.
A risk we considered in the design was potential sinkholes from the area’s limestone. We did adequate research, testing and water management to avoid issues with the on-site conditions.
We designed an alternative site that is safe and functional. One of the proposed designs puts the Welcome Center Building in the center of the parcel. The truck parking would be placed on the rear side of the building opposite U.S. Highway 31. The car parking lot would be placed in front of the building and on the side closest to the U.S. 31. The retention pond would be placed north of the building and adjacent to the truck parking lot. The area covered by the building and parking lots would stay relatively similar to the original layout.
The second alternative uses the same parking lot layout as the first design but has a smaller detention pond in the same area, with an outlet that reused the existing ditch and culvert. With the newly designed Alabama Welcome Center, the site can be reopened, and visitors can enjoy what the location has to offer.
Edgar Cruz, Anthony Feliciano, Makaila Jaramillo-Holmes, Andres Prieto, Markel Valmana
Sean Martin, Ph.D., P.E., FRSE
Alabama Department of Transportation - Martin Clark, P.E.
Spring