Tanner Springs Park Project 1 of 5 finalists for Urban Land Institute Urban Open Space Award

Atelier Dreiseit and GreenWorks PC recently submitted their Tanner Springs Park project for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Urban Open Space Award.  The competition recognizes an outstanding example of a well-used public open space that has spurred regeneration and the transformation of its surrounding community. The Atelier Dreiseit and GreenWorks submittal was one of the five finalists selected.

Other finalists include:

• The High Line in New York, N.Y.
• Pier 25 at Tribeca Section of Hudson River Park in New York, N.Y.
• Railroad Park in Birmingham, Alabama
• RiverWalk Urban Waterfront in Calgary, Alberta.

The winner will be announced at ULI’s Fall Meeting and Urban Land Expo, set for October 16 - 19, 2012 in Denver.

Click here for more about the ULI and Award Program.

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.

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.