Tanner Springs Park Featured in the Oregonian

Tanner Springs Park , designed by Atelier Dreiseitl and GreenWorks, is one of five finalists for the Urban Land Institute's Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award. Judges from the ULI selection committee came to Portland to assess Tanner Springs on July 20th. The winner will be revealed at the institute's Fall Meeting and Urban Land Expo, Oct. 16-19  in Denver.  "The $10,000 prize  is reserved for a public open space that changes or revives its surrounding community" (Daley;2012). The Portland Pearl district park contains wetlands which attract wildlife, treat runoff from the surrounding area and provide a scenic and serene setting for downtown park goers. More about the park and the award is featured in an article from The Oregonian that  ran Wednesday, July 25th.

Click here for the article.

Construction Nearly Complete on the Lewis and Clark Festival Park

Kirby Nagelhout is wrapping up construction at The Lewis and Clark Festival Park in The Dalles. Construction of the $2.9 million park began in November 2011, and on Friday, July 13^th, Mike Faha and Alex Perove performed a final walk-through, inspecting the irrigation and planting design. Cedar Landscape, Inc. is the licensed landscape contractor that installed the entire site’s irrigation, planting, and the concrete unit pavers in the main plaza. Strong roof lines from the building, the trees, and expansive green lawn are some of the park elements that are visible from the freeway. These elements create an attractive buffer between I-84 and the railroad, and establish a green identity for the city of The Dalles. The grand opening of the park is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, September 6, 2012.

We would love for you to join us at the opening of the city’s newest community park!

Westmoreland Park Open House

GreenWorks recently hosted an Open House for the Westmoreland Park Nature Play Area. The event took place at the Westmoreland Park site, where the current plan was “painted” onto the ground so that individuals could “walk through” the design to better understand how the different play areas would feel once built. Kids and adults had a lot of fun visualizing these future elements of the park. Comments from the public obtained at the Open House are being incorporated into the final design. You can view a draft of the preferred option below:

You can read more about the project and nature based play areas in The Oregonian and on the Portland Parks and Recreation website.

New Park Coming to the Cully Neighborhood

The Werbin Property is a 2.4 acre site located on NE 52^nd Ave between Alberta and Wygant Streets just a few blocks North of Rigler Elementary School in Portland. Over 60 enthusiastic community members contributed by showing up and voicing their opinions at an Open House for the next developed park in the Cully Neighborhood. As a consultant to Portland Parks & Recreation, GreenWorks put together three distinct design options that demonstrate different approaches to how the park could be developed and used. These drawings were presented at a recent Open House. Feedback received from the Open House and online surveys will inform the final design later this summer. More information about the park can be found here.

Grant High School Community Garden Construction Complete!

Northeast Portland Community Gardeners are happily planting, watering, weeding and harvesting food from their plots at the Grant High School Community Garden. The Environmental Club at the High School teamed up with Portland Community Gardens to transform a 7,700 square foot piece of lawn in the front of the school to a garden for the surrounding community. GreenWorks provided the garden design to maximize plot size, provide clear circulation, and create an aesthetically pleasing space that fits the context of the historic architecture of the school and neighborhood.

Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project Enters Full Construction Phase

On Tuesday May 22, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) authorized the Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) for the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Project, committing half of the project’s approximately $1.5 billion construction budget. FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff, US Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Mayors Sam Adams (Portland) and Jeremy Ferguson (Milwaukie) and other local officials were on hand in Southeast Portland to sign the funding agreement, advancing the project into its full construction phase. GreenWorks teamed with DEA, Mayer/Reed, and Waterleaf Architects, and provided the project with planting and irrigation design services for the east segment of this 7.3-mile light rail project. The completed project will include 10 new MAX stations and extend from the terminus of the MAX Green and Yellow lines at Portland State University in downtown Portland to the South Waterfront, Southeast Portland, downtown Milwaukie, and Park Avenue in north Clackamas County. A new first-of-its-kind multi-modal bridge over the Willamette River is currently under construction and will accommodate light rail, buses, bicyclists, pedestrians and a future streetcar extension, but no private vehicles. The project is scheduled to open in September 2015.

Project partners include TriMet, Metro, City of Portland, City of Milwaukie, Clackamas County, and Oregon Department of Transportation.

Project route information and station area renderings and plans can be viewed on the TriMet website here.

Photo Contest Results

For their annual wild-flower hike this year, GreenWorks employees headed to the Tom McCall Nature Preserve in Rowena. Located in the transition zone between the moist, heavily-forested, west side of the Cascades and the drier bunch grass prairies of the east, the Preserve brings impressive blooms every spring. As part of the hike, GreenWorks employees were encouraged to photograph the scenery and enter their best shot in an office wide photo contest. Results can be viewed below for First, Second and Third Place. First Place: Mike Faha

Second Place: Derek Sergison

Third Place: Amy Kearsley

GreenWorks Goes On a Field Trip!

GreenWorks employees took a trip out to the Columbia River Gorge to visit the Lewis and Clark Festival Park construction site and hike to Tom McCall point.

The wildflowers were in full bloom, here's a couple pictures of what we saw:

Everyone enjoyed visiting the Lewis and Clark Festival Park which is currently under construction. Mike Carter from Kirby Nagelhout Construction Company was there to explain the construction process and challenges associated with certain design elements. Alex Perove, the project manager at GreenWorks, who has been working on the project for several years, explained to us the design process and helped us envision what the park will look like when it's finished.

Construction Advances on the Dalles Festival Park

At week 21 of construction, The Lewis and Clark Festival Park is beginning to take shape. All of the landscape elements including planters, seat walls, pilasters, and the entry signage are faced with a stone called Mustang Basalt. This unique stone with nice red tones adds a lot of warmth and texture to the park. A pattern of large and small stones are being dry-laid and tight set. Stay tuned for more photos showing the progress on this park!

Stone mason: Don Olmstead of The Stoneyard

Graham Oaks Nature Park Green Roof Featured in Parks and Rec Magazine!

Metro's Graham Oaks Nature Park, located in Wilsonville, Oregon is loved by neighbors and animal inhabitants alike. GreenWorks always strives to meld built elements and the natural environment together in our designs. A great example of how we've achieved this can be seen in the structures at Graham Oaks Nature Park.

The shelter is a modified prefabricated structure from Western Wood Structures. It was was modified to match the restroom on site as well as incorporate green features like the ecoroof. These multifunctional efforts were developed by a forward thinking team.

• Waterleaf Architecture worked to match colors, roof lines and green features from prefabricated structures from two different manufacturers.
• GreenWorks worked to develop an irrigation and ecoroof plan that would flourish in the sites open condition.
• Metro (as always) pushed the sustainable envelope and was able to support these slight modifications to make the buildings more ‘green’.

The result is seamless, beautiful and functional.

The National Recreation and Park Association recently included the ecoroof in an article entitled 'Green is Gold' in its March 2012 issue.

You can read the full article on the Parks and Recreation Magazine website.