A Move with the Benefit of Strengthening GreenWorks Presence in Central and Eastern Oregon

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A Move with the Benefit of Strengthening GreenWorks Presence in Central and Eastern Oregon

When GreenWorks began our work, we saw the need for smart design and truly sustainable solutions to pressing problems. Since 1987, we have been privileged to be a part of the Portland Design community.

After a year of global pandemic and increasing climate change, one thing is becoming even more clear to me: The practice of landscape architecture is vital because it connects people with nature. The functions and values of parks, trails, and open space were highlighted over the last year of quarantine, devastating wildfires, and a barrage of grim and sad news. We all needed places to exercise, pause, reflect, and recharge. Some of us are fortunate to have gardens that meet some of these needs but all of us can use some time in the trees to recharge.

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GreenWorks Helps Reimagine Portland City Hall's Community Garden

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GreenWorks Helps Reimagine Portland City Hall's Community Garden

The GreenWorks team has recently completed a preliminary re-design of Portland’s “Better Together Garden” at City Hall. GreenWorks Landscape Designer Vivian Schoung explained, “The next evolution of the garden is to make it more welcoming to people of all abilities and to increase its visibility.”

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Jennifer D’Avanzo Named Associate Principal

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Jennifer D’Avanzo Named Associate Principal

Jennifer D’Avanzo is a Project Manager, Landscape Designer and Biologist with almost twenty years of experience working for environmentally-focused firms. We’re proud to announce she’s been promoted to Associate Principal here at GreenWorks.

Jennifer’s a certified professional wetland scientist and her work focuses on collaboration with agencies, parks districts, and engineers on challenging ecological projects that connect people with nature through design. We wanted to share an interview we did with Jennifer last week.

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Gateway Green is Shaping Up

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Gateway Green is Shaping Up

Gateway Green is a 25-acre parcel of land squished between two freeways. The project began as an effort of local land owners and open space advocates in an effort to catalyze economic growth in outer east Portland and provide a world-class recreation destination.

We talked to Kelly Stoecklein, landscape designer at GreenWorks, about progress at Gateway Green and followed one rider as he tested out the new mix of single track, gravity, and huge jumps.

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GreenWorks Supports the Portland Parks Levy

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GreenWorks Supports the Portland Parks Levy

Recreation and public parks are indispensable parts of our communities. They give us space we need to relax, exercise, and express ourselves. Unfortunately, Portland’s 11,000+ acres of parkland and 470 Parks department-run facilities will face vast cuts if we don’t act.

That’s why we’re supporting Portland Parks & Recreation’s Parks Levy. Measure 26-213 will restore programs to the City’s community centers and pools, expand access to its recreation activities, as well as maintain its playgrounds and restrooms. As the situation stands, Portland funds 27% of its parks and recreation system with user fees. The City was not generating enough revenue to keep our levels of park programming going, and the pandemic has made it dramatically worse. Measure 26-213, the Parks Levy, would fix this.

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City of Salem, MIG, and GreenWorks Produce Video for Virtual Open House

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City of Salem, MIG, and GreenWorks Produce Video for Virtual Open House

For the City of Salem, it posed a challenge from the very beginning to the Cultural Landscape Management Plan in progress for Bush’s Pasture Park and Deepwood Gardens. With the kind of large, in-person meetings needed to effectively listen to the community out of the question, the team had to come up with something different.

GreenWorks was selected to assist the City with MIG to, among other things, equip the City to engage the public. The new reality presented the team with an opportunity to do something they usually wouldn’t have done: We put much of the information that would have been shared at the in-person meeting into a video.

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Progress on Gateway Green

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Gateway Green is a 25-acre site located in East Portland at the confluence of two major freeways. This previously unused remnant landscape has a host of complicated public access challenges making the prospect of creating a park seemingly impossible. Community leaders and advocates who saw a potential for reclaiming this forgotten landscape have been instrumental in framing a vision and rallying support for developing the site into a usable park space. See progress on the park in this video update.

World Landscape Architecture Month

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World Landscape Architecture Month

April was World Landscape Architecture Month, did you celebrate it? We shared some sketches done by three people at GreenWorks, and we asked them to tell us more about why they chose this profession.

All month, landscape architects showcased how our work impacts the lives of people in our world. It’s an effort to increase public awareness of the vital service we all provide.

In addition to public awareness, members of ASLA use it as a time to encourage our elected leaders to act on issues we care about, like professional licensure and parks legislation; and it’s a time to showcase educational opportunities, career discovery outreach tools, and practice resources that are also available.

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