News

Soon-to-be-open Beaverdam Reservoir Park makes connections between ecological health, human health, and recreation

Beaverdam Reservoir Park’s design intent is centered around creating connections between ecological health, human health, and recreation. The buildings, walking trails, and landscaping work with the existing environment to promote engagement between humans, nature, and wildlife.

This expansive park includes an entrance road, parking lot, welcome center, restroom building, crew facility, boat rental facility, several pavilions, trails, waterfront boardwalks and piers, a bridge, plantings, site utilities, educational exhibits, and various other site features – all designed to celebrate the connection between ecological health and human health.

Each scale of recreational programming directly engages ecological source water protection strategies. Picnic pavilions capture rainwater. Transverse bioretention areas filter source water. Walking trails run alongside natural topographic valleys that bring water to the reservoir. A new bridge and fishing piers extend the park into the reservoir, allowing for views toward the dam and Goose Creek and promoting engagement with wildlife. Facilities for paddle boards, kayak rentals, and rowing allow recreational water use.

The park itself acts as a filter from vehicular traffic. It promotes bicycle and pedestrian access at the outer arc through the pavilions (that allow for group gatherings and picnicking) and main walkway, across the bioretention areas and protected woodlands to smaller-scale walking trails and pavilions, to the crew storage facilities and boat kiosk (that allow individual kayak and paddleboard access to the reservoir). Just as the source water is collected, filtered, and celebrated, recreational activities are organized to celebrate human health and environmental interaction.

Beaverdam Reservoir Park provides a prototype that promotes an environment of ecological health, human health, and recreation connections and interactions. Studio 27 is excited to soon share this unique project with the public.