Central Park Opens

By Tom Gleason
Vice President of Public Relations - Forest City Stapleton, Inc.

When the completion celebration was held recently for Stapleton’s 80 acre Central Park, it was the culmination of years of a team effort involving design and construction professionals working with citizens throughout the metropolitan region who expressed the vision of future park users. The end result is an open space amenity that is likely to become one of the premier new urban parks in the nation.

Designed by the architectural landscape firm EDAW and constructed by M.A. Mortenson under the direction of the Park Creek Metropolitan District and Stapleton’s master developer, Forest City, Stapleton, Inc., Central Park is a dramatic blend of groomed urban green spaces and natural areas flush with native plants and grasses. Almost half of the park landscape consists of low-water native grasses and plantings and will be completely irrigated with recycled water as soon as Denver Water completes its distribution system.

In addition to spectacular landscape, Central Park also boasts features that were identified as desirable by the Greater Stapleton community during the earliest stages of the development process.

“The design for this park was driven by the comments and suggestions we solicited from the community as part of the design process,” said Dennis Piper, director of parks and environment for The Stapleton Development Corporation. “That input included requests for play areas for toddlers and older children (5-10 year olds), water features, shade, lots of places to sit, picnic pavilions and multi-use playfields as well as trails with neighborhood and regional connections,” Mr. Piper added.

The public input also included a recreation center that has been designed and proposed for a site across the Westerly Creek open space overlooking Central Park. The recreation center would be funded in part through a City of Denver bond initiative that will be presented to the voters of Denver in November.

“Central Park is intended to become one of the city of Denver’s great parks,” said Doug Lamson, another of the Park’s architects who formerly worked for EDAW. “Like City Park, Washington Park, and Cheesman Park, it is a regional destination that offers a wide range of recreational opportunities while celebrating the city’s unique natural setting by incorporating strong views of the Rocky Mountains.”
Some of the key features of Central Park include:

The Promenade

The 3,500 foot long linear pedestrian promenade begins at the park’s west portal (the crossroads of Central Park and Martin Luther King Boulevards) and ends at the cantilevered overlook on the east end of the park that offers a perspective of Westerly Creek, the MLK bridge and towers, the future site of the Stapleton Recreation Center, and neighborhoods to the east. The promenade also provides powerful views of Downtown and Mount Evans beyond.

An Urban Forest

On the western end of the promenade across from the former Stapleton air traffic control tower, an urban forest offers busy urban dwellers a place to enjoy the shade and forest atmosphere.

The Fountain and Pond

During the public information gathering and workshop design phases, the design team received numerous comments that water was the most desired element in a major public park. Concern for the conservation of this precious resource was balanced against the public’s requests by creating two carefully-designed water features in the park. The interactive fountain recirculates water, efficiently utilizing the resource. A pond on the eastern end of the park was designed to appear larger than its modest 1 acre by creating a shape that allowed long angled views over water and maximized the length of its shoreline.

Sledding Hills

In order to create a diverse landscape with a wide range of recreational opportunities, park designers created a series of “waves” in the parks topography starting small at Westerly Creek and eventually rising to the 35’ height “sledding hill” in the park’s northwest corner where the prospect of the Front Range and downtown Denver is most dramatic.

“If the test of a good park is the number of smiles per mile it generates, “ Dennis Piper said, “we are getting great mileage and we are off to a great start!”

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