East Wenatchee gained its second new park since 1959, and SCJ had the honor of working on both. The Gateway Park project brought several of our teams and offices together to convert an old parking lot into a community gathering place. The SCJ team provided civil and landscape architecture for the Cherryhill Park project to increase park equity by serving 3,179 people within a 10-minute walk. The work provided environmental cleanup for the 2.5- acre former cherry orchard and converted it into open space for the community. It was conducted with federal grant funds through the EPA Brownfield Cleanup Grant Program. The approach was—Keep it local and keep it simple.
Even with a budget of only $400K, the project still tells a unique story, is a tool to educate the public about lead-arsenic contamination and cleanup issues in the region, and creates a place for the community to become an integral part of a landscape sculpture. The contaminated soil was sculpted into a series of mounds; cleaned soil was “mined” from the site and used as the cap to keep the soil in place and covered with different restorative meadow plantings. Woven around the mounds are ADA-accessible walking trails, gravel “adventure trails,” and shaded resting areas with benches. The design leaves plenty of room for future amenities to be added without disturbing capped contaminated soils.