Wilmington’s Riverfront Park
Along the Cape Fear River, Riverfront Park, previously a lumber yard mill and cargo weigh station for the Port of Wilmington, has been transformed into 6.6 acres of newly accessible, versatile, waterfront open-space as well as a 7,000-capacity performance venue. As a new cultural destination for the City of Wilmington, the site goes above and beyond a singular purpose as a concert venue. The design enhances physical connections to nature and the water by mimicking the natural shoreline and drawing coastal marshes into the site. The design also seeks to encourage stewardship activities and reflection upon the City’s past with waterfront gardens that immerse visitors into the native ripar- ian landscape, interpretive signage, and an interactive water fountain evoking a tidal spray. In late 2020, it achieved verification through the WEDG® (Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines) program, making it the tenth WEDG Verified project and first project outside of New York City to meet the standard for excellence in resilient waterfront design. The project goes above and beyond the goals of a restoration to celebrate the native coastal ecology and illuminate the site’s history as a working waterfront. Beginning in 2014, the design was shaped by an extensive community- driven master planning process led by the City of Wilmington. The City Council approved the master plan in 2015 and issued a publicly funded bond in 2016 to support the development of the park. In 2018, the project’s resilience was put to the test when Hurricane Florence struck the City of Wilmington during the park design process. The park’s sculpted waterfront edge deeply engages the river, replacing decaying riprap with a living shoreline that extends the native coastal ecology into the site, while lifted lawns and plazas offer spectacular views to the stage and Cape Fear. A diverse palette of native and adapt - ed plant communities soften the shoreline, while a broad, urban tree canopy brings shade to the currently treeless and intensely sunny site. Urban gardens, creative children’s play, outdoor grass “rooms”, a park support building, and an interactive water feature are integrated along an arcing promenade, which traces the site’s historic train tracks and reaches out to the river. New boardwalks link the park to Wilmington’s signature Riverwalk, and connections for a future dock will allow for direct boat access to the park. Hargreaves Jones led the design and engineering team for the project, working in close collaboration with the City of Wilmington , Live Na - tion, and contractor Clancy & Theys Construction Company to address the unique challenges of designing a waterfront park and event venue on an historic brownfield site. Stewart , an interdisciplinary design, engineering, and planning firm located in the Carolinas, led the civil, structural and geotechnical engineering for the project, and also served as advisory landscape architects. The project maximizes re-use of brownfield soils on site, diverse opportunities for on-site stormwater infiltration, and landscape soils designed for resiliency within the
Photo: Hargreaves Jones
context of the site’s dynamic coastal hydrology. We met with Stewart project manager Natalie Carmen, PE who led the civil engineering team on the project, to dive into the dynamic hydrology and how that impacted the final design: What features of the site’s hydrology did you take into consider - ation in designing the project for resiliency? The Riverfront Park project offered a blank slate when we first visited the site. From east-to-west, there was a natural vegetation slope, large field, and of course the river. We found the entire site was covered with a two-foot-deep clean soil cap as part of the State’s brownfield agreement and the available environmental reports indicated the sub- surface soil to be contaminated, including debris from a wide range of historical industrial uses. From the beginning, we prioritized reusing existing soil on site and separately considered the uses and placement for the clean cap soil and the brownfield soil. Proposed excavations for below-ground stormwater treatment and building foundations were part of the grading calculations. Given the proximity to the Cape Fear River and the known flood plain elevation, the finished floor of all buildings, including the open-air stage, were set above the 100-year flood elevation.
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csengineermag.com
June 2021
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