Hazel’s Creek
Master Plan & Site Interpretation
Client: City of Spokane Wastewater Department
Consulting Firm: AHBL, Inc.
Post-occupancy Photography: Craig Andersen, AHBL, Inc.
This 19-acre site was master-planned to minimize site disturbance, restore degraded habitat, offer sustainability education to the public, and support engineered water detention basins. Walking paths respond to the existing topography and physically connect green stormwater technologies demonstrated across the site.
AHBL provided planning, landscape architecture and civil engineering services to the City of Spokane Wastewater Department to update the Draft Hazel’s Creek Regional Drainage and Conservation Area Master Plan, prepared by others in 2005. The master plan introduced an integrated approach to stormwater management in the City of Spokane. Historically, the City prohibited the public from accessing regional stormwater management facilities. The opposite is true at Hazel’s Creek. Community recreation and site interpretive opportunities, natural wetlands and wildlife enhancements, and low impact development demonstrations were combined with constructed stormwater treatment wetlands and a detention and infiltration system intended to manage off-site stormwater runoff.
Master Plan revisions focused on integrating the pre-determined design program elements into a functional whole.
Providing the City of Spokane with plans for creating a landmark example of sustainable urban stormwater management.
Project requirements consisted of:
Compilation of site technical investigations;
Investigating extending the Hazel’s Creek stormwater management concept into the surrounding neighborhood, enhanced with a network of open space and pedestrian connections through the local community;
Site development and phasing sequence concepts; and
Meetings with City management, stakeholders, and the public to obtain input on the draft master plan;
Revision of the draft master plan document and graphics.
The homestead property and its surroundings.
The Hazel's Creek property, named for the last resident of the site, is now a 19-acre open space and stormwater management facility in the City of Spokane. It was historically a working landscape, owned by the O'Byrne family and farmed for many years. Today, it continues to be a working landscape, with a creek, wetlands, stormwater ponds and peculiar geological conditions contributing to stormwater infiltration and storage, and providing critical riparian and upland habitat for an array of plant and animal life on the Moran Prairie and the Southgate Neighborhood.
The homestead property and its surroundings.
Site Inventory & Analysis
The site affords open views due to the gently rolling topography. A few old, large willow trees break up the view and provide focal points. The central location of the original homestead affords a navigational landmark visible from all corners of the site.
The landscape was generally unmaintained with significant overgrowth of weeds, some of which were designated as noxious. The City had previously graded portions of the land for stormwater storage ponds. The site's adjacency to wildlife corridors, its mostly undeveloped condition, its available surface water, and its suitable vegetation attracted a variety of terrestrial and avian wildlife.
Boards depicting existing site conditions.
Site inventory and analysis board.
Design development drawing.
Budgetary constraints precluded ubiquitous site signage, but offered the opportunity to interpret the site through a combination of physical and digital resources. Interpretive signage greets visitors at site entrances, upon which sustainable interventions are described briefly and their locations marked on a map. In the landscape, numbered recycled power poles orient visitors and allow them to match these markers with information provided by a publicly-available brochure and website. These resources include information highlighting the site’s history, ecology, and its sustainable infrastructure.
Key user groups to benefit from the site interpretation design.
Early conceptual exploration of the interpretive marker design.
Interpretive marker section elevation.
Early interpretive signage concepts.
Logos were designed as stencils to be cut into sheet metal and affixed to each interpretive marker located across the site. The client chose to go with a numerical approach, however the logos still coordinate with a brochure, on-site interpretive panels, and a website to orient visitors and highlight the site’s history, its hydrology, and LID BMPs.
Each interpretive element was categorized and color-coded using the following groups:
Low Impact Development BMPs (Green), and
Hydrological Components (Blue).
Low Impact Development Site Technologies
Trail planting scheme section-elevation.
Service drive section-elevation.
Elevated boardwalks set on pin foundations recommended as replacements to culverts. Culverts degrade ecological conditions by restricting stream flows to narrow, artificial passageways. As plant and animal life move up and downstream, culverts function as a barrier, fundamentally altering the streambank and disconnecting habitat corridors. Pin foundations significantly reduce excavation which disrupts sensitive wetland soils. The inclusion of a constructed curb maintains ADA accessibility.
This conceptual section-elevation depicts a transect from 42nd Avenue at left across the property line to a proposed trailhead. The constructed trailheads featured navigational and interpretive signage under covered shelter. Benches constructed from brick reclaimed from the demolished residence were instead located at the previous home site.
Existing condition. View from the southwest looking northeast.
Proposed condition, same view.
Post-Occupancy Evaluation
In keeping with the concept of conservation, the project generally preserves the status quo for ecological site functions. Apart from the targeted, one-time removal of invasive species, no other major restoration occurred. The site deserves better, and a program of sustainability ought to focus less on low-impact development and more on the site’s restoration.
A hybrid physical/virtual interpretation schema was fundamentally enacted, however lack of website maintenance, resulted in the disappearance of its information. Without a symbology supplemented by “findable” information, the physical site markers tend to confuse rather than reveal.
The results serve to formalize recreational uses and ecological services on site, challenging the exclusivity of the landscape’s utilitarian purposes. Though the site’s future is still in question, its value as a neighborhood nature destination presents new possibilities for community environmental stewardship.
For more information about the Hazel's Creek site, see this video produced by the City in 2013.
In this video Marcia Davis, City of Spokane Capital Programs/GIS Senior Engineer, provides information on LID Best Management Practices (BMPs) implemented at the Hazel's Creek Conservation Area.
