Independent Newsmedia
Desert Ridge Marketplace in Phoenix this week has added to the Valley’s growing trend of adding “cool pavement.”
Desert Ridge Marketplace, a regional shopping mall located off the Loop 101 and Tatum Boulevard in North Phoenix and opened in 2001, joined with Vestar and ASU’s Southwest Integrated Field Laboratory to launch the first-ever ‘Cool Pavement Project’ at a commercial retail center.
The partnership comes on the heels of this summer’s record-breaking heat and aims to help mitigate elevated temperatures in communities dense with impervious and solar-absorbing materials, known as the “Urban Heat Island Effect.”
The city of Phoenix in June paved its 100th mile of cool pavement and invited mayors from around the globe to the milestone paving project, the world’s largest cool pavement program. Results from Phoenix’s pilot program for cool pavement showed a reduction in street surface temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Meanwhile, Scottsdale recently completed a study with ASU and has developed similar strategies to mitigate pavement-caused heat.
Phoenix is one of the fastest growing cities with 5,000 miles of streets. Pavements typically cover 30% to 40% of an urban area and are the last to cool down at night.
The Desert Ridge Marketplace pilot program launched Sunday with a testing site at the Vestar property. CoolSeal by GuardTop is a water-based asphalt coating that is expected to lower street and parking lot temperatures by reflecting heat rather than absorbing it. Paved surfaces – including roads, sidewalks, and parking lots – make up approximately 40% of the Phoenix land area, warming ambient urban air on the hottest days.
Cool Pavement was applied to a high traffic zone in the northside parking lot, which covered a total of 63,000 square-feet. Strategically placed sensors have been installed throughout the 1.2 million-square-foot center – both above and underground – that will collect data over the course of one year. Figures will be measured at differing times of the day and under various weather conditions, then taken back to the ASU laboratories for further analysis and reporting.
“We jumped at the opportunity to partner with ASU to learn more,” Miles Sanchez, Vestar chief operating officer, stated. “CoolSeal has the potential of lowering surface and air temperatures – reducing energy and water consumption over the long term.”
The partnership builds on residential street projects that the university has conducted with Phoenix city officials in local neighborhoods. Applying cool pavement to the commercial space will allow the ASU team to gain a larger and more concentrated testing site than has ever been possible before.
“Testing a cool paving technology on such a large continuous paved area offers us a unique opportunity to characterize the effects that cool paving has, not only on surface and subsurface temperatures, but also on near-surface air temperatures above and downwind of the test area,” David Sailor, Southwest Integrated Field Laboratory director and lead researcher on the cool pavement project, stated.
