River Island

Mike Faha recently toured our project at River Island. Situated along the Clackamas River near Barton County Park, River Island is 240 acres of natural area that provides habitat for native species including endangered salmon and steelhead, native turtles and migratory birds. The main portion of the site in the middle of the river was a gravel mining operation until the 1996 flood, which greatly altered the natural area's landscape by breaching man-made levees and shortened the main channel of the Clackamas River. GreenWorks and Inter-Fluve have been working with Metro to help create a vision and concepts for restoring natural channel processes and supporting multiple values including fish and wildlife habitat, riparian and upland forests, water quality and recreation. GreenWorks assisted with public outreach and prepared presentation materials to easily convey complex engineering concepts into understandable, photo realistic graphics that help the public and stakeholders understand the opportunities and what the site could look like once it is restored. Conceptual design alternatives were created for restoration of riparian-forested wetlands at the gravel mine site as well as design and restoration of Goose Creek, reconnecting it to the Clackamas River mainstem for cool water rearing habitat for juvenile salmonids. Inter-Fluve developed a site conservation plan and permit-level designs. This project is one of the biggest restoration projects in the Pacific Northwest.

GreenWorks would like to acknowledge Metro Project Manager Brian Vaughn as well as project lead Inter-Fluve, and members of their team: Emily Alcott, Lon Mikkelsen, Mike McAllister, Mike Brunfelt, Caitlin Alcott, Matt Cox, Colin MacLaren, Rich Phaneuf, and Mackenzie Baxter.

Gateway Green

You may recall our post about Gateway Green in September. Now, we are happy to report that construction has started at Gateway Green! Tracks in the ground show that work is underway in this truly epic project. Our friends at PBS Engineering and Environmental shared this link with us. Check out the progress here: http://www.bermstyle.com/gateway-green-build-journal-week-one/

Watch Lane Community College Grow

The new Health and Wellness Building at Lane Community College broke ground in June. From the LCC

Opening Doors Campaign site, some info and a few photos of the event.

Also, with this cool new feature, you can keep tabs on the project via a webcam, updated hourly, showing construction progress for the project. Below is the progress from 3:00 PM this afternoon.

Restoring Clara Vista Swales

Phase I of the work on the swale rehabilitation has been completed, and the following pics offer some views of the completed installation. For this grant-funded project, GreenWorks offers 50% of their time as a pro-bono service, working closely with Hacienda Community Development and our fabulous non-profit partner Verde to restore these stormwater facilities to their former lush and functional self.

The project, funded in part from Metro's Nature-in-Neighborhoods program, included educational aspects, where residents of all ages living in Hacienda properties were included in design decisions such as plantings, materials, and types of spaces that would be included. The result is truly community driven.

One issue with the original design was that there was an uninterrupted linear swale with meant that any diversion from the pathway would damage the hydrology of the site. In addition to the installation of new swale cells, the intermediate places in between were piped subsurface to allow for greater play and amenity area for residents. These are seen below, newly backfilled, and Phase II will import additional soil and re-seed these worn out areas with an ecolawn mix, as soon as the weather cools down.

Check out these pics of the before condition, where the majority of vegetation had been trampled, flow-dissipating rocks had been strewn above, and the water was ponding due to compaction of the soils. Quite a change.

DaVinci School in NY Times

A recent blog post from the NY Times showed "A prototype green classroom addition under construction at the Da Vinci Arts Middle School in Portland, Ore. includes natural daylighting, passive heating and cooling systems, solar roof tiles and other green features that yield a 70 percent efficiency improvement over Oregon building code requirements."

:: image via NY Times Blog

The project by SRG Partnership and the University of Oregon’s Energy Studies in Buildings Lab was aided by pro-bono services from GreenWorks for site improvements and land use issues. Read the full NYT post about this innovative project here, as well as some additional local coverage in the DJC here.