We’ve been covering a lot of what’s going on in Locust Square with the River Trail Path and other developments with pedestrian traffic in Schuylkill River Park, so we thought we’d let our readers know of another big project in this file. The non-profit Community Design Collaborative is working for the Friends of Schuylkill River Park on gateway improvements for the park at Taney and Pine Streets. The FSRP have begun developing the new vision for the gateway to this park, to “potentially transform the park into an archetype of a living, didactic landscape,” according to the FSRP. The project will concentrate on the “front parlor” entry and the larger, paved gathering area referred to as “the living room” to solve the problems of dark space, cracked pavement, drainage problems, cross circulation for bicycles and the recirculation of water in the central fountain.

The possibility of installing a green roof on the roof of the Markward Playground building was considered, but is not part of the final design because there would need to be reinforcing of the existing framing to support it. (We hope in the future someone will reconsider the installation, however.) Seating will be added to create new “gathering spaces,” water will be captured and conveyed into a large rain garden by a network of cobble conveyance trenches, two elevated rain gardens on either side of the north entrance will capture water from adjacent areas and spill over a cascade wall before being captured by cobble conveyance trenches and taken to the rain garden, densely planted trees will create a “miniature forest,” an increased number of portico columns will reduce bicycles speeds and solar-powered LED fixtures will reduce energy consumption.

FSRP calculated that the maintenance cost per year for the finished establishment would be just shy of $5k. Ari Miller, Jay DeFelicis and Allen Guenthner are the architectural designers and landscape architect working on this $1M (actually, $1,069,684)  project. Click here to view some more of the designs and sketches of the project.