Cosca Regional Park
Master Park Development Plan, M-NCPPC
Lardner/Klein is the Prime Consultant and Lead Designer of a multi-discipline team (ESA, SIRI, MTFA, CHMGS) responsible for overall project direction, landscape architecture, urban design and planning actions, and public meetings facilitation.
The team, led by L/KLA, was responsible for preparing a master plan for Cosca Regional Park, its first. The park, having grown incrementally over the past decades into a now 800-acre site, is facing aging infrastructure such as 50-year old septic fields, worn out facilities and a parking shortage.
Some of its facilities have recently been refreshed and are in good condition, others need replacement or renovation.
Recreation demands and trends have shifted since the park’s founding, and new activities may be appropriate to add to the park’s offerings. Other sectors of the community are underserved and the master plan through its demand forecast and level of service analysis recommends ways to better serve the missing demographics.
Natural resources also need better stewardship. An inline pond is heavily sedimented, making the use of the existing boathouse and dock and stocked fishing more challenging. Worn trails, incomplete trail segments and challenges with ADA accessibility exist throughout the park. The site is heavily forested, with large areas of intact and healthy woodlands.
Our recommendations repositioned the park and reframed its focus an Adventure Wonderland with the entire park as playground and natural wonder.
Disconnected and disparate activity areas such as the lake, ballfields, the nature center, and playgrounds within the 50-plus year old park were addressed with two comprehensive recommendations:
The implementation of a paved, ADA accessible trail—the Ribbon Trail—that connects all the disparate activities areas within the park. Ribbon Trail users can walk, run, skate, or ride the paved trail, making the entire park an all ages playground.
Reconfiguration of Thrift Road, an arterial that bifurcates the park, as a park drive and not a park barrier by adding traffic calming elements such as on-street parking, additional landscaping, planted medians, protected crosswalks, and continuous and connected sidewalks.
The plan was developed with an open and collaborative public engagement process, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, making use of an array of public outreach methods, interviews, on-line surveys, in park informal pop-ups, virtual public meetings and an active social media feed.