The City of Sandpoint, Idaho was recently designated by the U.S. Census as the 7th fastest-growing micropolitan area in the United States. As the City of Sandpoint has grown, so has its need to serve the population through parks and recreation services. Bernardo Wills Architects, Greenplay, and Welch Comer Engineers were selected to perform a 20-year Master Plan that provided an inclusive framework for planning, acquisition, development, and administration of the parks and recreation resources, programs, and City of Sandpoint facilities.
Hear from our team on the challenges and creative solutions presented in the Master Plan, as well as the first project implemented from the plan, the War Memorial Field improvements and re-design.
Spokane Parks and Recreation wants to hear from you! The Parks and Natural Lands Master Plan is due for an update and will guide the Parks and Recreation Department’s focus and direction over the next ten years.
Learn more about the Master Plan and complete the survey here:
Matthew Halstead, BIM/CAD technician, has joined BWA. He is currently providing drafting, design, and construction support for two new buildings in Washington state: Vivacity Care Center, a primary-care medical clinic in Spokane Valley, and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories’ SEL Event Center in Pullman.
A city parks department goes after funding to update a well-loved park. But in order to apply for various funding resources, they must have a plan – what the industry calls a master plan. A master plan determines community goals and aspirations in terms of community development. It can both express and regulate public policies on transportation, utilities, land use, recreation, and housing. But where to start? Landscape architects are one of the resources available to parks departments and other public entities, serving as a guide for the development of a master plan. One key tool that design teams utilize for information gathering is a series of public forums with the various stakeholders. Clients generally start the process with many ideas for the plan but need additional input to build a unified vision. This is where the public process comes in: engaging the community (including many user groups with varying needs) to collect an informed response of what everyday users would like to see in their public project.
One of the Liberty Lake Master Plan Public Forums
The public process is important for a variety of reasons. It provides transparency to the public, allows time for feedback, airs concerns, and creates a sense of buy-in and ownership from the community. Feedback gathered from the process informs the design, allowing consultants and public entities to consider additional factors and unique insights. These ideas are potentially not evident solely through site observation and client direction, and all contribute to the overall vision. One challenge we often find in the information gathering stage is engaging a wide range of age groups and families, based on various schedules, comfortability with technology, and access to information. In order to overcome this, it is important to use a multi-faceted public input process, allowing the best range of feedback. Some of the techniques we use include public meetings, mailed surveys, online surveys, voting boards, comment cards, and pop-up studios.
Liberty Lake Regional Park
From the Liberty Lake Regional Park Master Plan to the Sandpoint Parks Master Plan Update, our landscape architecture team has been increasingly involved in the public process phase for projects. The success of these projects would not be the same without community members investing their time to share what matters most to them.
