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.

Awards Granted to Hood River Middle School Music and Science Building!

The Hood River Middle School Music and Science Building is a LEED certified project designed as a hands-on learning laboratory, where students interact with the site's resource systems. The building additions were completed in September 2010.

• Last week the U.S. Green Building Council certified the Hood River Middle School additions as LEED Platinum, the highest possible LEED rating.

• The project was also recently named one of the American Institute of Architects Top Ten Green Projects for 2012.

GreenWorks worked closely with school faculty and the design team to create a site that meets school needs while utilizing a small ecological footprint. Resource system information, such as onsite rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment and solar power generation, is tracked and fed to a central dashboard where students monitor the buildings' resource flows. In the native plant arboretum, each student is responsible for a plant that they care for, water, measure and observe throughout the seasons. The learning garden is an ever-changing canvas, which provides harvests enjoyed by students and the community. Students harvest and sell the produce at the local farmers market and learn permaculture principles in the multisensory, food forest where they grow and harvest plants for food, fiber, dye and other uses. GreenWorks' services included schematic design, construction documents, specifications, LEED documentation, bidding assistance and construction administration.

Read more about the project on the AIA website here.

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.

Grant High School Community Garden

The Environmental Club at Grant High School in Northeast Portland is in the process of establishing a Community Garden and a Learning Garden in the front of the school. Their inspiration for the gardens came from a desire to give back to the local community, provide fresh food from the garden to the cafeteria, and learn about sustainable agriculture. The students received a grant from State Farm and have teamed up with Portland Community Gardens to make their dream a reality. The Environmental Club enlisted the help of GreenWorks to create a design for the garden that would be aesthetically pleasing to the surrounding community, include two ADA accessible plots, and maximize the available garden space.

The gardens are located in front of the school in the NE corner of the existing lawn on NE 36th Avenue. Portland Community Gardens will assign the community garden plots on a first come first served basis. The learning garden will be maintained by the environmental club and sustainable agriculture classes as well as the biology, special education and Japanese departments.

On February 16th the Environmental Club and Portland Community Gardens held a Town Hall event where they invited the local community to ask questions and express their concerns about the garden. The attendees voiced an enormous amount of support and enthusiasm for the project. Neighbors are eager to get a spot secured and start gardening!

GreenWorks was honored to contribute to the creation of the Grant High School Community and Learning Gardens. The Environmental Club has been working on the garden's implementation for over a year now, coming up against many set-backs and logistical road blocks. They are truly a remarkable group of students who simply wanted to give back to the surrounding community, supply their cafeteria with fresh and healthy food and provide an opportunity for future students to learn about sustainable agriculture. Follow the Grant High School Community Garden blog here.

Future Recreational Attraction on the Deschutes River in Downtown Bend, OR

Recently, the Bend Park & Recreation District has been working on a plan to alter the spillway on the Deschutes River at the Colorado Dam in downtown Bend to enable kayakers and inner-tubers to ride downstream without having to maneuver around the dam. The Colorado Avenue Dam creates an impoundment that was once used to support lumber mill operations and also maintains surface water levels upstream in the Mill District area. The dam is located in an area of the river that is heavily used during the summer months by people on inflatable rafts and inner-tubes. The current configuration blocks downstream passage and requires all river users to exit the river and put-in downstream. The dam creates a pinning hazard exposing a high number of users to the potential of being swept into the dam.

GreenWorks, as part of a team including OTAK, Pacific Habitat Resources, and RiverRestoration.org, provided a design for safe passage over the existing Colorado Dam for many types of river users including inflatable crafts, and hardshell boats like kayaks and canoes. The design includes whitewater play features, a higher pedestrian bridge and increased habitat diversity along the river. By incorporating a fish passage and on-bank habitat restoration, improvements to McKay Park, and removal of the existing pedestrian bridge, the design will achieve improved safety for river users and environmental conditions of the river.

Highway 213 Bridge Completed

Following a successful rapid bridge construction that required a multiday road closure, ODOT officials announced the reopening of Highway Oregon 213 in Oregon City at the I-205 interchange on Monday night, ahead of schedule.  The “Jughandle Project” will relieve traffic backups and improve safety at the busiest signalized intersection in the state by eliminating left turns, adding a new alignment for Washington Street, and replacing a 130 foot-long section of the 6-lane bridge. Click here to view a brief time lapse video of the rapid bridge construction – amazing stuff!

GreenWorks developed a planting and irrigation design as part of the project, including a rehabilitated gateway landscape into Oregon City, new green streets designed to accept and treat stormwater, and a 7+ acre mitigation site planted with thousands of native trees and shrubs. Click here to view the plans and drawings.

Nature Play Community Workshop For Westmoreland Park

Portlanders celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a community design event put on by Portland Parks and Recreation and GreenWorks geared around the eventual design for a nature play area to be built in Westmoreland Park. Kids of all ages really enjoyed the event! Their creativity, teamwork and ingenuity were all in full gear. It was an amazing start to an exciting project. Thank you to those who joined us!

The Concept: Portland Parks and Recreation and GreenWorks Landscape Architecture invited the community to play with natural materials, talk about natural play, make models and lay the groundwork for the design of the nature play area at Westmoreland Park. The City of Portland recognizes the benefits of letting children play in nature, including the physical, mental and social benefits. Prior to the natural play workshop, Parks and Recreation staff participated in a workshop to discuss risk and maintenance associated with natural play areas.

The Activities: Activities ranged from having adults remember their childhood play experiences, to free building and water play areas, to model making. The design team was able to talk with kids and adults about what they would like to see in the natural play area.

The Outcome: As kids of different ages and abilities worked together, creativity soared. We got some amazing feedback and ideas for the play area. Plus, we had a lot of fun!

"You Are Here" Sculpture unveiled at home of Portland Timbers

A new art piece was unveiled recently at Jeld Wen Field, the home of our Portland Timbers MLS team. Artist Ron Baron was commissioned by our local Regional Arts and Culture Council to develop the sculpture. The sculpture is a 9 foot diameter timber round with key artifacts embedded within it that celebrate the site and surrounding neighborhood. Baron described the work as an archaeological dig in which detritus and artifacts are partially buried in the tree rings, appearing to emerge from the wood. GreenWorks was honored to be asked by RACC to assist Ron Baron with the design of a foundation for the sculpture. We developed a number of concepts and settled on a two-column stone base with a stone lined planting bed. The stone was cut and installed by John Lawrence of Stone NW to within fractions of an inch to the sculpture. We were excited to be part of such a talented team and are honored to have a small portion of our work at the home of the Portland Timbers. Below are some photos of the work, and here is a link to a video of the unveiling.

Join Portland Parks and Recreation and GreenWorks this Saturday, March 17th, for a Fun-Filled day at the Westmoreland Nature Play Workshop!

A fun, interactive chance

for you and your children

to explore nature based play.

How does a nature based

play area differ from

a traditional playground?

Portland Parks & Recreation

is designing the City of Portland’s

first nature based play area in

Westmoreland Park.

Who: All ages welcome and encouraged to play! Come rain or shine, the event is indoors!

When: Saturday March 17th -10am-2pm

Where: 5040 SE Milwaukie Ave. and SE Mitchell St. Tri-Met bus #19

RSVP: Portland Parks and Rec or call Elizabeth at 503-823-5113

More information: www.licenses.ci.portland.or.us/parks/index.cfm?c=57822&