City Forest Master Plan
Westbrook, Maine
This 75-acre wooded recreation site was designed to include a shared-use recreational trail system, a mountain bike skills park, a natural play area, and outdoor classrooms for the adjacent elementary school. The design plan highlights unique site features, such as stream corridors and ledge outcrops. It provides a diverse recreational experience for the community, and it seeks to maintain the ecological integrity of this forested landscape.
The City Forest Master Plan outlined an approach to phased buildout, including project cost estimations for each phase of work. In addition to the plan for the City Forest property, a concept plan was developed for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWFC) recreation conversion process.
Collaborators: OBP Trail Works (trail professional) and Sevee & Maher Engineers (civil engineer)
Website & Survey
This work was completed in 2020, making in-person outreach a challenge due to the pandemic. Our team developed an interactive website and digital survey to reach out to the Westbrook community. This type of engagement was extremely efficient and proved to be very successful, which ultimately influenced the programmatic diversity included within the final plan.
Trail Design
Our firm collaborated with OBP Trail Works, who specializes in the design and construction of trails. The trail design process evolved from the onsite investigations that were conducted by our interdisciplinary team as well as our direct engagement with stakeholder groups.
All trails are proposed as shared-use trails for walkers, runners, mountain bikers, and snowmobilers. The network is accessible via a main-line multi-use trail, which is intended to serve as the spine connecting all amenities within the City Forest. The trail design emphasizes variability in the user experience, including barrier-free accessible trails to technical single-track style trails.
