Green Roof Excellence: Nashville Music City Center
Key Insights:
Quick Facts
- Name: Nashville Music City Center
- Location: Nashville, TN
- Customer: Garrick
- Client: Nashville Music City Center Development Corporation
- Size: 191,000 sq. ft. green roof
Challenge: Addressing stormwater management and urban heat reduction while creating an eco-friendly public space.
How Arcosa Helped
- Our Solution: Provided lightweight ESCS aggregate for use in soil blends tailored to the center’s unique requirements.
- Why Lightweight Works: Lightweight aggregates reduce structural load, support stormwater retention, and provide necessary porosity for long-term soil performance.
Final Results
- The green roof manages up to 2.6 million gallons of stormwater annually, contributing to LEED Gold certification and reducing the urban heat island effect.
Key Quote
“Green roofs like this allow 60 to 80% of rainwater to stay on a roof, absorbed by plants or evaporated, giving the system time to manage the runoff more effectively.” – Joe DiNorscia, President, Skyland USA
Context:
- Considerations: Collaboration across specialized teams enabled a customized approach, balancing water retention with effective drainage.
- Lesson to Learn: Successful green roof projects rely on precise material specification and efficient logistics to support urban sustainability goals.
Explore Further
For more on green infrastructure and lightweight aggregate solutions, visit Arcosa’s Green Roof Solutions.
Green Roof Excellence: Nashville Music City Center
The Nashville Music City Center, a sprawling convention center and public venue, brings an innovative green space to downtown Nashville, rising five stories above the city’s streets. Built in 2012 and LEED Gold certified, the center includes a 191,000-square-foot green roof, enhancing both sustainability and urban aesthetics in Nashville.
Designed as part of Nashville’s green infrastructure initiative, the green roof addresses urban stormwater challenges and reduces the urban heat island effect. The green roof spans 191,000 square feet and is constructed in three distinct sections, each optimized with a specific blend of rooflite® soil, developed by Skyland USA. This blend was customized and fine-tuned multiple times to meet the precise requirements of this massive green space.
Ordinarily, rain falling on the center’s 1.2 million square foot structure would flow into the city’s stormwater system. However, the green roof retains approximately 2.6 million gallons of stormwater per year, greatly reducing strain on the city’s aging infrastructure, which dates back to the 1880s.
Customized Green Roof Media: Balancing Retention and Drainage
The Nashville Music City Center’s extensive green roof relies on a specialized mix of rooflite extensive, semi-intensive, and intensive soil media to accommodate different planting zones and ensure optimal performance. Rooflite Blender, Garick, handled the soil production, and the media was installed by Baker Roofing using a pneumatic blower truck system, facilitating a smooth, efficient installation across all sections.
DiNorscia explains that creating an effective green roof media requires finding the right balance between retention and drainage. “The product is really a contradiction in functionality,” he says. “On one hand, it has to absorb as much water as possible. On the other, once it reaches that maximum absorption, the excess water must drain quickly to avoid oversaturation.”
The soil mix, which includes lightweight aggregates, was developed to both retain water and allow excess drainage, a balance essential for stormwater management and plant health.
LEED Gold Certification and Environmental Impact
The Music City Center’s green roof contributed to the building’s LEED Gold certification, achieving credits for water efficiency, reduced heat absorption, and sustainable site design. Additionally, by sourcing materials locally within a 500-mile radius, the project met LEED’s regional materials requirement, supporting local economies and reducing transportation emissions.
Collaborative Installation in an Urban Setting
The large-scale installation presented logistical challenges typical for urban settings. The use of blower trucks by Baker Roofing enabled seamless material transport to the fifth-story roof, ensuring that the soil was placed efficiently without disrupting surrounding streets and infrastructure.
A Model of Green Roof Innovation
DiNorscia and his team at Skyland USA have supplied green roof media for over 700 green roofs across the United States, underscoring their experience in meeting unique logistical and technical challenges. “Getting the product to the site and up on the roof is critical,” DiNorscia says, emphasizing that the logistical considerations are a “material handling puzzle” that requires close teamwork and coordination.
The Nashville Music City Center’s green roof serves as a benchmark in sustainable design, combining innovative materials with thoughtful, collaborative execution to deliver a high-impact urban green space.
Latest Posts
