Alan McKnight was the first landscape architect to serve as director of the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department. Through times of economic expansion and the Great Recession, McKnight led a staff of 350 in the creation of new parks and greenways and maintained a system of 240 parks, 15,000 acres of real estate, 29 community centers, seven swimming pools, scores of athletic facilities, 90 miles of multiuse trails and six golf courses. He commissions landscape architects as the prime design consultants on major urban multidisciplinary park projects. The highly regarded, 20-year transformation of the downtown Columbus riverfront is now complete, and the effort has been led entirely by landscape architects.

Category: Leadership/Management