Plans for Spokane's Riverfront Park include the Howard Street Promenade, a Well-lit expanded walkway with strong architectural and visual connections that will lead visitors to the center of the park, to a central plaza and to the Spokane River Gorge. The proposed tree-lined promenade will accommodate bicycle traffic, along with arts and crafts market stalls.

Berger Partnership, a landscape architecture and urban design firm based in Seattle, has been selected by the design steering committee of the city of Spokane, Wash., to design the city's Riverfront Park's public spaces and grounds. A $64 million park bond, approved by voters in 2014, is funding the redevelopment of this 100-acre site along the Spokane River. Guy Michaelsen will be the principal-in-charge of the Berger team.

The city has also just hired landscape architect Berry Ellison to be the park's redevelopment program manager to oversee the team managing the design and construction of the work done at the park during the next five years. Ellison, formerly of Land Expressions of Mead, Wash., brings two decades of experience in project management, design, and engineering to the redevelopment project.

Land Expressions, one of the largest landscape architecture firms in the Inland Northwest, will be the local firm working with Berger Partnership. Land Expressions was the landscape architect and general contractor for Spokane's Huntington Park: See "Tribal Gathering Place, Historic Hydroelectric Development, Public Park, Urban Plaza" (March 2015 LASN). Ellison worked on that project as part of the Land Expressions team.

Juliet Sinisterra, whom Berry Ellison is replacing, was hired as the project manager for the Riverfront Park master plan in 2013. She is credited with shepherding the master plan to completion.

Spokane Parks and Recreation Director Leroy Eadie said there's been tremendous progress in visioning and strategic planning for the Riverfront Park Redevelopment project, which is now entering the design phase of the elements that have be so carefully planned.

The Berger Partnership is in the early phases of project reconnaissance and review, i.e., evaluating and reviewing the master plan and related predesign studies.

The Riverfront Park team also includes CH2M HILL, the engineering lead, NAC Architecture, KPFF, Dark | Light, Tomato, L & S Engineering, Adams & Clark, GeoEngineers, and Epic Land Solutions.