Quincy, MA – Halvorson Design Partnership, Inc. of Boston has been selected to design a new park celebrating the history of Quincy. The project is focused in the heart of the city’s downtown area, adjacent to City Hall, the “Church of the Presidents,” Quincy Center Red Line and Commuter Rail station, historic Hancock Cemetery and a National Park Service Visitors Center.
A portion of the park, provisionally called Adams Green, is slated to occupy a section of Hancock Street to be removed, with its traffic re-routed as part of an on-going comprehensive reorganization of downtown streets.
At completion, the park will feature a new town green and promenade and provide facilities for public gatherings, outdoor concerts and events, as well as areas of passive beauty suitable for sitting, strolling and meeting people.
Adams Green is the public realm centerpiece of a visionary strategy for re-imagining and reinvigorating Downtown Quincy, developed by Goody Clancy in 2006. Since then, the city has taken many steps to realize the new vision, including new arterial streets, and an agreement with Street-Works LLC, an urban revitalization team, to undertake a $1.6 billion investment in new and renovated office buildings, hotel, retail and residential properties and streetscape improvements. The multi-block district abuts the southern portion of the Adams Green site.
Quincy Mayor Thomas P. Koch hosted a public presentation of initial concept alternatives at which Robert Uhlig, ASLA, President of Halvorson Design, and Craig Halvorson, FASLA, firm founder and overseeing designer for Adams Green, showed three alternative ways to achieve the open space and urban design goals for the park. Each solution provides a unifying public green space with trees, flowering shrubs, walkways, seating and plaza-like gathering places. The design ideas also feature coordinated improvements on the streetscape of surrounding roads, to facilitate public use of sidewalks adjacent to commercial retail uses.
Halvorson summarized the landscape architects’ approach: “We want a space that will capture people’s hearts.”
Halvorson Design Partnership is widely known for creating compelling landscapes that stand the test of time. Their open space portfolio includes Boston parks (such as Post Office Square and South Boston Maritime), the soon-to-be-open Riverside Park in Cambridge and Center City Park in Greensboro, NC.
The design team at Halvorson Design includes Halvorson, Uhlig, Rob Adams and Chris Greene. Collaborating firms include Howard Stein-Hudson Associates, engineers.