Award-winning green space

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This article was published 09/11/2015 (3716 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s downtown has a bit of everything, but urban planners and city residents alike seem to agree they need more of one thing — green space.

The designers at Scatliff + Miller + Murray Inc. were able to create a naturalistic and functional space when they redeveloped Central Park (400 Cumberland Ave.). In light of the park’s success, the group received a 2015 Premier’s Award of Merit for Design Excellence on Oct. 14.

One of the project leaders, Bob Somers, said receiving the award is mostly due to the park being so well used by the community. According to him, consulting with the neighbourhood was a key element in planning the park’s features.

“This was a community that maybe isn’t getting out into Spruce Woods, they don’t have access to the greater Manitoba landscape that other people do,” Somers said. “It was trying to bring that Winnipeg experience from a recreational point of view to their front door.”

The park features a large artificial turf soccer field, a splash pad, slide hill, several gardens and public art. In the winter, the park also becomes a site for ice-skating and tobogganing. The park serves one of the city’s most densely populated neighbourhoods, with 75 per cent of park users being local residents, according to Somers.

“It’s by and large a community park, that was our goal with the project,” he said. “But it has taken on a life of its own where people are now seeing that neighbourhood for the first time in many years and coming in and joining it, and it’s brought a lot of people together.”

Combining together the best of what everyone wanted to see in the space was a long process, but well worth it.

“We asked ‘What would your priorities be?’ We did have a substantial budget but it wasn’t endless,” Somers said. “The park sees people from all walks of life. Ultimately the common thread was that everybody didn’t need it to be a cultural reflection of where they are from, they said we are Canadian now, we want to ice-skate, we want to toboggan, do things that Canadians do. That came resoundingly from the community.”

Somers said he and his team are happy to be recognized in their efforts with a Premier’s Award, but that seeing the park being used has been most rewarding.

“The Premier’s Awards, it means a lot. It kind of validates all the effort that went into it, the fact that working with the community, it shows that the communication was strong between the two,” he said. “If it was an empty park, it has a lot of lovely things but not being used, that might win a different kind of award but the biggest award is seeing use of the space.”

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