Interdisciplinary design practice Sasaki has unveiled new details of the 660-acre Greenwood Community Park and Baton Rouge Zoo Master Plan. The Parks and Recreation Commission of East Baton Rouge Parish (BREC) approved the first phase of the plan to move into design and implementation, and since then the team reached out to over 4,000 Baton Rougians over the course of nine months. The masterplan and park proposal aims to be reflective of the community’s needs as they imagine a new future together.
Sasaki, in Partnership with Torre Design Consortium, is leading the effort to design and coordinate the Greenwood Park and Baton Rouge Zoo master plan. As the team notes, Greenwood Park, the largest park in East Baton Rouge Parish, covers 660 acres and serves the communities of North Baton Rouge and Baker. Sasaki’s design vision aims to transform the fragmented park into a "balanced and connected destination" serving community members from all walks of life.
"Designed with the very best of Louisiana’s natural and cultural environments in mind, the new park serves as a place to both get away and come together. The balanced nature-based and active program elements are stitched together by a network of multi-modal trails that connect people to this place. The reimagined BR Zoo, now opening into the park, becomes part of a larger constellation of community uses that serve people of all ages, from all walks of life. The new Greenwood Park will be a neighborhood park for Baker and North Baton Rouge as well as a regional destination for EBR and beyond."
The park master plan began with a visioning and planning process. The design’s first phase will include a signature adventure playground, a new entry building and sequence for the zoo relocated within Greenwood Park, AZA re-accreditation for the zoo, a giraffe feeding, a pygmy hippo exhibit, re-routing of the zoo train, an expanded and upgraded J.S. Clark Golf Course, the restoration of Cypress Bayou, and the creation of the Signature Bayou Promenade.
As well as a series of programming efforts, the team also recommended reorienting the zoo’s entrance to the park’s interior to transform the zoo experience and make it an easily-accessible amenity. The team aims to create a Bayou Promenade that will serve as Greenwood’s front porch and connect the park and the zoo along a restored Cypress Bayou.
News via Sasaki
