TZL 1474 (web)

BUSINESS NEWS RIVEREDGE PARK PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE WINS 2022 ENR MIDWEST BEST PROJECT AWARD TYLin, a globally recognized full-service infrastructure consulting firm, announces that the RiverEdge Park Pedestrian Bridge over the Fox River in Aurora, Illinois, has won the Best Project Award, Landscape/ Urban Development, in Engineering News-Record Midwest’s 2022 Best Projects competition. The city of Aurora contracted TYLin to design the signature pedestrian-bicycle bridge, which is a critical part of the master plan to redevelop the city’s historic downtown. TYLin’s services included bridge architecture, aesthetic lighting design, structural engineering, and electrical engineering. The firm initially developed eight bridge concepts along four alignment profiles. The final bridge design, which was developed through a series of public meetings and refinements with city staff, is a seven- span concrete girder structure with a graceful S-curve alignment. The RiverEdge Park Pedestrian Bridge

unites the new RiverEdge Park with local neighborhoods, redeveloped parks, and trails. Considering the diverse group of bridge users, TYLin designed the superstructure to have a central beam “spine” with two pathways cantilevering on either side. The segregated twin pathways prioritize safety and convenience, separating slower pedestrians from faster commuter cyclists. From the riverbanks, the pathway decks gradually rise to the top of the girder at the midspan, where overlooks and benches offer strollers scenic views of the river and the city’s eye-catching downtown area. For commuters speeding to the updated, multimodal Aurora Transportation Center, the bridge offers an easy, non-motorized connection across the river. “On behalf of the City of Aurora, TYLin, and our project partners, we thank ENR Midwest for honoring the RiverEdge Park Pedestrian Bridge with the 2022 Best Project Award, Landscape/Urban Development,” said Dan Fitzwilliam,

PE, TYLin senior bridge engineer. “This project met every criterion for the client as well as this competition. It’s also proof that a landmark pedestrian bridge can meet a client’s needs while being cost- effective to design and build.” ENR Midwest’s annual Best Projects competition honors the best construction projects and the companies that designed and built them. The program utilizes an independent panel of safety judges who consider numerous factors in their decisions, including a project’s overall safety program, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable incident rate, lost-time accident rate, and total work hours on the job. Founded in 1954, TYLin is a globally recognized, full-service infrastructure consulting firm committed to providing innovative, cost-effective, constructible designs for the global infrastructure market. With 3,200 employees working in 65 offices throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe, the firm provides support on projects of varying size and complexity.

Donovan Rypkema, principal and CEO of Place Economics, has argued this point across the United States and around the world. Adaptive reuse in AEC marketing can also bring more sustainable approaches to past efforts. With advances in printing and digital technologies, what used to be in print can now be digital. What used to require 5,000 prints to be economical can now be printed in smaller quantities, perhaps even one at a time. Campaigns or ideas that at one time may have been cost prohibitive may now be economical or even free to implement. Printed pieces can be produced using paper with different percentages of recycled or post-consumer waste content. Going further, multi-page brochures can be delivered into your prospects’ hands with a QR code, replacing hard-copy formats. Greek philosopher Heraclitus tells us you can’t step in the same river twice, as the river is always changing and so are we. As AEC marketers, acknowledging and embracing change, picking up where someone else left off, and optimizing modern-day capabilities can result in something viable, fresh, and new … ish. Good bones – whether architectural or promotional – are worth saving. By applying various levels of rewriting, redesign, and repackaging, you can successfully bring adaptive reuse concepts into your AEC marketing realm. Jane Lawler Smith, MBA, is the marketing manager at Derck & Edson, LLC. She can be reached at jsmith@derckandedson. com.

JANE LAWLER SMITH, from page 9

In the book Copy, Copy, Copy , Mark Earls glorifies the use of existing ideas to create your own new approaches to marketing. Mark proposes that we learn to copy well (by which he means badly): “loosely rather than tightly, from far away rather than from our immediate competitors.” And I propose, even from our past selves. A common statement in support of adaptive reuse is the adage “they just don’t build things like they used to.” This is also true of much of our content from the past. Written at a time when there was no online thesaurus feeding us all the same word choices, the messaging of old was curated and crafted with care. “Any firm that has some organizational longevity can and should be revisiting its marketing resources from the past and determining what foundational, structural, and original elements exist.” What was the essence of that messaging? Do the values and core approaches still apply? If yes, and if you are looking for character and authenticity, this could be a great place to start building your next generation marketing approach. Adaptive reuse, especially historic preservation, is believed by some to be the most sustainable approach to building design.

THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 30, 2023, ISSUE 1474

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