Landscape/Urban Development: Best Project: Festival Park

Festival Park
Castle Rock, Colo.
Best Project

Owner: Town of Castle Rock
Lead Design Firm: DesignWorkshop
Architect: Tomecek Studio Architecture
General Contractor: Mortenson
Structural Engineer: Studio 818
Civil Engineer: Kimley-Horn

Festival Park is a $5.9-million recreation area that provides public-gathering spaces and amenities for community events. Those include seasonal festivals, farmers’ markets and foot races like the Castle Rock Half Marathon. The park is also home to the town’s Christmas tree.

The original park, created in 2007, quickly became too small to host the many activities the community desired. The town’s goal was to transform the park into a larger, modern downtown center. The expansion upgraded the storm and sanitary sewer systems, added lights and two pedestrian bridges, restored the stream and improved the landscaping near a local waterway. New amenities include a splash pad, fire pits, a pavilion and a picnic area.

With all the highly visible upgrades, the public might not notice one of the project’s key installations—Silva Cells placed around trees throughout the park. Silva Cells are modular paving blocks that hold noncompacted soil in an underground compartment. They help keep trees healthy and the infrastructure sound by providing room for roots to grow without cracking pavement or walkways. In addition, the loose soil absorbs and cleans stormwater, allowing better flow through the root systems.

Safety was critical to the success of the project, which logged zero OSHA-recordables during nearly 14,000 work hours. Each project manager and superintendent performed a complete safety analysis to identify specific hazards and find ways to eliminate them. The project team developed a site-specific health and safety plan as well as plans for disruption avoidance, crisis management and environmental issues. In addition, the contractor incorporated an integrated work plan for each task. The IWP featured step-by-step procedures and building information models for achieving both quality and safety.

Every morning on the jobsite, foremen, superintendents and trade partners all participated in plan-of-the-day discussions, ensuring that everyone involved was talking about safety and aware of the day’s major tasks. The Festival Park team also participated in weekly toolbox talks about various safety topics.