Zidell Green Infrastructure

The 33-acre Zidell Yards site offers the first holistic, comprehensive opportunity in Portland, Oregon to identify solutions for applying green infrastructure to manage stormwater on one of the largest brownfield remediation and redevelopment sites in Portland.  The goal of this effort was to develop a range of comprehensive green infrastructure scenarios consistent with the constraints of a recently remediated brownfield that can be implemented within the framework of a 15- to 20-year development master plan.

Expo Center Stormwater Green Wall

The Portland Expo Center Stormwater Green Wall is the first of its kind in the United States. It integrates sustainability, art, and science for managing stormwater runoff.

Designed by a team led by GreenWorks, PC, it’s an innovative and unique project representing the next step in creative stormwater management solutions. By taking roof-runoff and routing it through a series of vegetated planters mounted to a vertical wall structure, the Portland Expo Center Stormwater Green Wall, designed with many partners including Oregon Metro, isn’t a traditional bioswale or garden. Instead, it effectively uses the available vertical square footage of the existing building to provide stormwater filtration for the 9,400 square foot roof.

“Standing 30-feet tall and 60-feet long, the free-standing, artistic structure is made of steel and aluminum and is adorned with soil and vegetation native to Oregon, particularly the Columbia River Gorge.”

Because of the stormwater wall’s prominent location, it was important that the design fit within the context of the existing site and complement the existing postmodern style of architecture. This was accomplished by giving particular attention to forms and materials. The form of the stormwater channels relate to forms evident on the existing building and the hexagons provide a decorative element that ties in subtly to the EXPO Center’s logo and brand. This project was constructed in 2014.

“There’s an educational component going on here… We want to explain how this structure is more than architecture. It’s connected to good, sustainable practices and mitigates the Expo’s footprint.” - Lydia Neill, Oregon Metro

A female mallard duck was recently photographed enjoying the Wall’s lush vegetation. Since opening in 2014, the Stormwater Green Wall has flourished. After a few winters that have broken rainfall records in the Portland Metro area, the ferns, star jasmine, sedge, and other plants are thriving. We are delighted to learn that besides processing stormwater, it provides urban wildlife habitat too!

Read More:

Architectural Record

Oregon Metro

City of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services

Portland Tribune

Sustainable Stormwater Management by Thomas W. Liptan

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Russellville Commons

Russellville Commons, located adjacent to the TriMet MAX stop at E Burnside and SE 102nd Avenue, is a three- to four-story assisted living facility with group care units for Alzheimer patients built atop an underground parking garage. It is one of the first multi-family developments in Portland’s Gateway District, part of the 1996 Outer Southeast Communtiy Plan’s densification initiative.

GreenWorks is designing streetscape improvements for Phase III, as well as an interior courtyard space that includes a memory care courtyard and a fountain. Significant streetscape elements include flow through planters that manage the building’s roof runoff along E Burnside and SE Ankeny Streets, and an entry plaza with special paving along and across SE 103rd Avenue extending to the Phase II section of the project. The interior courtyard space includes sculptural walls that provide a variety of spaces for individuals and for group interaction, as well as a tree-covered outdoor dining area. A circular vegetated swale handles courtyard stormwater runoff and provides a central landscape feature that echoes notions of healing and tranquility for the building’s residents.

21st and Clinton Rainwater Courtyard

GreenWorks provided site design and landscape architectural services for this half-block commercial infill project in inner Southeast Portland. With sustainability a key objective for the owner, we incorporated several design elements. These include transforming demolished concrete into permeable courtyard paving and designing a rainwater art feature into concrete seat walls and planting beds. Planting design focused on creating an intimate residential feel for the project, blending it into the neighborhood, while incorporating a courtyard to be used for outdoor dining and gathering.

ODOT Headquarters Renovation

The former ODOT Headquarters located on the Capitol Mall in Salem was an aged building suffering from inefficient systems. As part of an architect-led design team, GreenWorks addressed these deficiencies in an extensive renovation.  The primary goal of the renovation was to transform the existing building into a sustainable high performance building that would provide the best long-term value for the State within the project constraints. GreenWorks provided schematic design landscape architectural services addressing site sustainable strategies, green stormwater solutions, circulation, maintenance, plaza replacement, safety, and ADA accessibility. The project is certified LEED Platinum.

Oregon Zoo Stormwater Retrofit

GreenWorks developed a Stormwater Retrofit Master Plan for the Oregon Zoo at the request of the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services in partnership with the Oregon Zoo. The Oregon Zoo is one of Oregon’s top tourist attractions and is ideally suited for public education related to environmentally-responsible and sustainable site design. Subsequently, GreenWorks was contracted by METRO to implement parking lot and Greenstreet improvements, at this major tourist attraction, to treat and detain surface runoff, provides public education and creates aesthetic improvements. GreenWorks was part of a design / build team to implement strategies that included stormwater filtration for street runoff and flow-through stormwater planters for parking lot runoff treatment. The project was funded by an EPA grant.

Gabriel Park Water Quality Project

The Fanno Creek watershed is heavily impacted by urbanization. Urban streams are suffering from increasing impervious surfacing that results in increased runoff and higher stream velocities. Gabriel Park is symptomatic of these factors: swales have become unsafe gullies; forest groundcover vegetation is absent; park lawns have become severely compacted through overuse and provide little infiltration. The Vermont Tributary of Fanno Creek, which runs through the park has been severely impacted by those factors. GreenWorks developed several concepts to improve water quality for surface runoff in the park and presented these to three neighborhood groups. We provided schematic designs for various stormwater mitigation options, including: a wet pond/marsh treatment system; forest ground-floor revegetation; biofiltration swales; and creation of a wet meadow. GreenWorks provided final design and bidding documents.

Willamette Stormwater Control Pilot Program

GreenWorks was contracted by the Portland Bureau of Environmental Services to develop hand –illustrations of various stormwater facilities for a variety of Bureau uses. The illustrations included parking lot swales/infiltration facilities, courtyard infiltration facilities, rooftop disconnect infiltration facilities, and stormwater planters.

Clackamas HS Stormwater Retrofit

Clackamas County Water Environment Services (WES) hired GreenWorks to prepare a master plan for Clackamas High School that identifies and prioritizes potential stormwater low impact development retrofit projects.  The second phase of the project will be to design and build one or more projects (such as rain gardens, green roofs, structural soils, etc.) that can visibly demonstrate the benefits of low impact development practices to students, teachers, parents and the general public.  The project(s) are also intended to reduce the negative impacts of stormwater runoff on local streams from the substantial impervious area at the High School.   As part of the master planning process, we interacted with high school science classes, telling students about Low Impact Development (LID) and gathering their input on project options. When a project(s) is selected for design and implementation, students will, as possible, help with planting and long-term care.

Gresham Fairview Creek Regional Stormwater Facility

As a subconsultant for this regional water quantity and quality control project, we were responsible for design development of the four acre water quality facility, which includes a sedimentation pond with a wetland treatment facility. The wetland treatment facilities incorporates an emergent marsh, scrub-shrub community, and a riparian forest. Our tasks included preparation of graphic illustrations for a public meeting, at which we were present to answer questions.

CWS Low Impact Development Handbook

To view the complete handbook visit the link below.

http://www.cleanwaterservices.org/LIDA