How does a legacy recreational complex become a Civic Athletic Campus? 

In Bellingham, our design team started by developing a comprehensive inventory of the existing site assets, their conditions, and latent site opportunities. This baseline work established a fertile foundation for the City to begin to imagine what the site could be. 

Based on this site analysis three goals were established: where there was disorder, coherency; where there was disconnection, cohesion; where there was confusion, clarity.   

Early design explorations focused on how the site might accommodate two large, new program elements: an elementary school (which would be part of a land swap with the school district) and an indoor community recreation center. Through online surveys and a public open house, community input revealed a clear preference for using these significant elements to anchor opposing corners of the site, spreading out the traffic and impacts from these activity hubs. 

To tie these two elements together the master plan proposes a Civic Spine that defines the campus by creating an all ages and abilities corridor defined by low-grades, traffic separation, lighting, signage and signature paving. Along one key section, a portion of the existing roadway is closed to create a Civic Promenade for people to safely navigate from the new community recreation center to the existing stadium, ice rink, baseball diamonds and aquatic center. 

Infused with other wayfinding and sustainability strategies, the Council-approved master plan establishes a compelling vision for the site’s redevelopment, while maintaining features that are important to its history and natural ecology.