Oakland Park Archives

As a component of a drainage master plan project, CGA developed an innovative design solution for the implementation of a flood-control dam structure to be coupled with a bio-swale with a tidal wetland landscape typology. The focus of the project was to utilize the proposed pump station site as an opportunity to create an educational pocket park focusing on green and sustainable solutions to marry drainage designs responsive to sea-level rise and tidal impacts. Together, they work to control the impending floods and serve to provide the ecologically significant benefits of tidal wetlands while increasing the holding capacity of the system. Beyond its environmental and engineering impacts, the project also utilizes the opportunity afforded by the site and its location to signal and create a gateway experience for the City, as it is on the edge of the City’s boundary and along a well-transited thoroughfare. The design for the site, despite its size, is envisioned to have a high social impact, as it will be of a high design quality that includes a boardwalk with Folia® educational signage, unique paving design, furnishings for passive uses, native landscaping, branding signage with character lighting design, security features, and the inclusion of a transit bus bay.

CGA was contracted by the City of Oakland Park to design a public plaza at a prominent location within the City’s Culinary District. The public plaza is the linchpin to the newly established District’s catalyst for redevelopment, serving as a connective means and threshold to a brewery being proposed in a presently vacant industrial building. The goal of the plaza’s design was to meet the goals of the District’s master plan in contributing spaces of value for social, public use to increase the pedestrian experiences being lent by the District. Additionally, the plaza provides ample areas and infrastructure to serve as the designated location for future street markets – this includes ample electrical connection stations, a flexible elevated area that can be used as a stage area, and ample outdoor seating opportunities through the use of elevated planters with seat walls.

The design of the plaza required very close attention to detail design to ensure that the quality of the space was of a high architectural quality, consistent with the initial branding strategies already embarked by the City. Lastly, the project was conceived, design and developed through a cooperative process with the assigned City officials, the developers and adjacent property owner, lease and their contractor, and finally with the City-selected contractor contracted to build the plaza project. This coordination was a highlight of the project which ensured that the design ideas were clearly communicated and translated into the implementation phase, that all in-building needs were met and scheduled so as to not conflict with the plaza’s tight construction schedule, and that the continuity and balance of design elements was achieved between the public space and the improvements proposed by the adjacent building in terms of design treatments, color, signage and motifs.