San Diego, CA --The Office of James Burnett (OJB), a landscape architecture firm with offices in San Diego, Houston and Boston, is leading the design and construction of the new Carolyn & Maurice LeBauer Park in Greensboro, NC. Members of the LeBauer Park Leadership Team formally broke ground on Wednesday, November 19, 2014. The park is expected to open to the public in May 2016.
Located on an important site in Greensboro’s cultural district, the 3.5-acre LeBauer Park will add vibrancy and activity to the downtown area and is anticipated to become the key public open space in the Piedmont-Triad area. The project also includes the renovation of two streets and a seamless integration of the proposed Steven Tanger Center for Performing Arts.
“It’s a great time to be in Greensboro – there’s a lot of interest in the center of the city and I believe LeBauer Park will be a major catalyst for continued growth and development,” said Nathan Elliott, principal at OJB’s San Diego office. “We worked closely with the LeBauer Park Leadership Team and a very talented group of consultants to develop a thoughtful design that makes the most of the site and offers a variety of fascinating features for all visitors to enjoy.”
The park is organized around a 17,000 SF concert lawn and performance pavilion, which will feature a permanent installation by artist Janet Echelman. Other features include an urban plaza with food and beverage pavilion, children’s garden, interactive water feature, dog park, reading room, games area, croquet lawn and putting green. In addition to a rich program of daily activities, LeBauer Park is anticipated to become home for many of the concerts and festivals that are currently held in downtown Greensboro.
LeBauer Park is made possible by the generous bequest of the late Carolyn Weill LeBauer of Greensboro to The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. Her instructions were clear: Use her assets to build a spectacular park for the community she loved. The Foundation is spearheading the park’s design and construction and will fulfill Mrs. LeBauer’s final wishes upon the park’s completion, when it will give the park to the City of Greensboro.
Project Facts:
• Areas in the park will include:
o Realignment of Summit Avenue
o Market Square
o Price/Bryan Performance Lawn
o Interactive water feature plaza
o Children’s Park
o Dog Park
o LeBauer Gardens
o Reading Room
o Over 1 acre of ornamental gardens
• Price/Bryan Performance Place includes a 17,000-square foot event lawn that is anticipated to accommodate up to 2,000 people. Garden courts surrounding the event lawn increase the event capacity to 2,500.
• The 1,500-square foot performance pavilion will be a comfortable garden pavilion for day-to-day use that will include the infrastructure to support a wide range of musical events as well as telecast events from the upcoming Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts.
• The dog park will include pet enrichment activities and is anticipated to accommodate 30 small- to medium-sized dogs and their owners.
• The children’s park will accommodate approximately 100 children of all ages and abilities and also will include several family restrooms and event space for a wide range of group activity. Various areas of the park will include educational activities related to the arts, culture and natural beauty of North Carolina.
• Market Square will include an approximately 800-square foot restaurant pavilion that will offer light food and beverages daily.
Programming
• LeBauer Park will be a highly active space, providing daily free programming for the public ranging from yoga to book signings to outdoor concerts and films. We are currently working to identify community partners in programming and will announce more detailed plans for programming at a future date.
• Programming for the park is anticipated to include:
o Music festivals
o Free concerts
o Chess, checkers and other board games
o Yoga, Zumba, Boot Camps and other fitness activities
o Ping Pong
o Putting greens
o Children’s activities
Sustainability
• The design of the park will include over 350 oaks, maples, tupelo and other trees plus more than an acre of regionally-appropriate ornamental gardens. The plants will sequester carbon, naturally filter stormwater and mitigate the urban heat island effect.
• The interactive water feature features a multi-phase filtration system that captures and reuses as much water as possible, reducing both the amount of potable water used and the amount of spent water discharged into the sewer system.
• The “quarry garden” in the center of the site follows natural grade and will collect and filter stormwater on site.
• A cistern downstream of the quarry garden will collect stormwater for re-use as irrigation water. In a typical year the park will use dramatically less potable water for irrigation than a “normal” urban park.
Funding
• Project cost: $10 million (Gift of Carolyn Weill LeBauer through The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro)
• Realignment of Summit Avenue and crosswalk improvements to Davie Street: Approximately $1.75 million (City of Greensboro/Greensboro Department of Transportation)
• Signature public artwork: $1 million (Grant from The Edward M. Armfield, Sr. Foundation, Greensboro)
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