If you ever get the chance to attend a University of Miami football game at Orange Bowl Stadium, do yourself a favor and get there early. The smell of fresh cut grass, the deep green color of the turf and the roar of cheering fans will put you in a football state of mind. All this before you even leave the parking lot.

That's right, the same maintenance team that cares for the turf inside this famous stadium now looks after a new grass parking lot that surrounds it.

Orange Bowl Stadium, owned by the City of Miami, was in need of improvements in order to retain the Hurricanes as an attraction. Having lost the NFL's Miami Dolphins as an Orange Bowl tenant several years ago, the City was not about to sit idly by. They needed to act boldly, and paving a parking lot with grass is nothing short of bold.

Aside from the obvious aesthetic benefits, the move to a grass parking surface provided the solution to two major problem areas -- storm water run-off and a shortage of parking.

Enrique Nunez, then a project landscape architect with Miami's Public Works Department, participated in the site planning and design of improvements to the stadium and was involved in the grass paving material selection process.

"At the Orange Bowl, there was limited existing storm drains that we more or less graded to, but we didn't have the funds for a new storm drainage system, which would be the ideal situation. So, working with our civil engineers and employing a little ingenuity, we were able to get the most out of what was already there."

Ingenuity arrived on a truck from Colorado in the form of Grasspave², the patented system by Invisible Structures, Inc. of Aurora, Colorado, a company founded in 1982 by Vicki Bohnhoff, president, and her husband Bill who oversees research and development of the products.

Nunez cited "ease of installation, cost effectiveness and compatibility with the type of sod we have here in south Florida," for the decision to go with Grasspave².

Grasspave² is a series of interlocking grids with small rings to hold the sand and topsoil which fill in the unit below the turf. The system is injection molded, and produced from recycled products that will not dissolve into the soil over time.

Because the natural turf and subsurface structure allows water to pass through, while at the same time filtering it, the problem of excess storm water channeled in specific areas was avoided. This is a particularly important "with the amount of rainfall we receive here in south Florida," according to Nunez. "The system enhances the percolation and the limitations we had in dealing with the storm water," he concludes.

The grass parking lot would still need to fulfill the basic requirements of a parking lot, though, by standing up to constant abuse.

"We studied examples of similar facilities that had utilized event-type parking -- parking that would not occur for long periods of time, and like stadium parking was very conducive to tailgating," said Nunez.

Many Grasspave users elect to go with a straight turf application, but the Orange Bowl had a special reason for keeping the aisles paved. "They wanted to be able to park the cars without attendants in order to limit the amount of staff required," said Vicki Bohnhoff. the City was ready to let thousands of crazed fans park on the turf, but drew the line at letting them drive on it "Essentially all the heavy duty vehicular activity occurs on the asphalt aisles, and then parking is done on the Grasspave system," translates Nunez.

Should damage occur (when you host a tailgate party featuring thousands of pumped-up football fans clad in orange paint, expect some damage) sod can be replaced without impacting the reinforcing system below.

"We used a sand-grown Argentine Bahia that was cut a depth of the ring in the system, which was one inch," explains Nunez. "Essentially we embedded it on to the rings and then topdressed. It was entirely sodded, no seed." The thickness of the sod actually aided in the installation process, according to Nunez. "With the sod being not so thick, it made it easier to control and make flush with the asphalt walkways. It allowed us to get very close to the edges."

The grass parking lot installation came as part of a total exterior redesign at the Orange Bowl. "On the north end of the stadium we closed two streets and a central avenue that came right into the center of the stadium," says Nunez. "This avenue then became a pedestrian promenade, and provided access to new ticket booth plazas that we created."

Nunez says that improved aesthetics were a bonus to the practical purpose behind the design. "With this new 'Super Block' concept we had new, larger parking areas where we went with the design of the Grasspave system in combination with asphalt vehicular aisles."

The Orange Bowl now features a total of 2,300 parking spaces. Grass covers 1,745 of those spaces -- 1,085 on the north end of the stadium and 660 spaces on the south end.

According to Nunez, the benefits of a grass parking lot are felt not only by fans and tailgaters when the turf is in use, but by the entire Miami community when the lot stands vacant. "When there aren't any events, you don't see asphalt anymore. You have overall a very nice green front-yard appearance."

The public, he says, has noticed the difference. "The general public almost wish something like this had been done years ago, before the Dolphins left. Some feel if there had been efforts for the improvements to the site like this they would have had a better chance of keeping the Dolphins there."

The warm public reception, and more importantly the practical benefits of grass paving have let to better awareness of this opinion. "There are studies being doe by our planning department for designations of certain areas where the concept of grass paving could be incorporated into future developments," says Nunez, who is now with Miami's Department of Community Planning and Revitalization. He lists right-of-way shoulders, emergency vehicle access areas and parking lots as the most likely candidates for future grass paving.

One place grass paving will surely be seen is in the movies. "We shot a video with Tri-Com pictures (in late September at the Orange Bowl) who are filming a series called Earth Watch which is 13 half-hour segments. Our part will be about storm water runoff," reports Bohnhoff.

With the recent boom in stadium construction and renovation, Invisible Structures and other grass paving manufacturers have numerous opportunities ahead of them. "We are currently bidding on Jack Cooke Stadium in Washington D.C.," says Bohnhoff. "Hopefully we've entered the game at the right time."