Site Tour- Fort Missoula Regional Park | August 29, 10 AM
Invitation to Public Project Site Tour
Ft. Missoula Regional Park, Missoula
On behalf of the Idaho-Montana Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), I would like to extend an invitation to you for a special guided tour of one of western Montana’s special gems – Fort Missoula Regional Park in Missoula on Thursday, August 29th, 2019 at 10 a.m. Fort Missoula Regional Park is a 156-acre park and sports complex owned and operated by the City of Missoula and Missoula County that was funded by the county-wide 2014 Parks and Trails Bond, which included $38 million for construction at FMRP. The site tour will provide an insight on the cutting-edge approaches landscape architects employ to design sustainable landscapes, and how vital public investments are to ensure that communities reap the benefits of these extraordinary places.
This tour will enhance your understanding on how landscape architects employ design and ingenuity to transform landscapes into iconic community gems – benefiting Missoulians and visitors to our region. As a large public recreational space, the Fort Missoula Complex has a proven track record of enhancing economic prosperity and is a strong contributor to the success of Missoula businesses and the region’s overall commercial development.
This site tour, led by Neil Miner, ASLA, PLA, Missoula Parks Project Manager, is an informal opportunity for you to see how landscape architects utilized site design, grading, drainage, and horticulture to create a special place adjacent to the historic Fort Missoula. The site tour will also include an open discussion about the landscape architecture profession, its benefits and its contributions to our region. It will highlight the role that landscape architects play as key design team members working tirelessly to overcome the maintenance backlog that plagues nearly all of our public parks and recreation areas.
We expect the entire tour to take about one hour. To accept our invitation, please have a member of your staff contact me at (406) 721-3500 or kentwla@gmail.com. For your information, other federal, state, county and local policy makers are being extended this same invitation. The local media are also invited to cover the Tour.
Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to providing you a unique experience of the many facets of the Regional Park from a landscape architect’s perspective. Thank you for all that you do on the behalf of our region and the landscape architecture community.
Yours truly,
Kent E. Watson, FASLA, PLA
Chair, IM/ASLA Public Project Site Tour Committee (08/09/19)
Promote Student Engagement
Please follow the link below to indicate your firm’s willingness and ability to provide opportunities for Landscape Architecture and potential Landscape Architecture students in professional learning opportunities. We appreciate your help!
MSU Landscape Design Professor Honored
Rebekah VanWieren has been awarded the Western Region Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities.
Rebekah VanWieren has been awarded the Western Region Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities. VanWieren, an assistant professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology in MSU’s College of Agriculture, said she is honored to have won the award, which recognizes outstanding instructors in food or agricultural sciences who are seven years or less into their academic teaching careers.
Prof. Rebekah VanWieren - Montana State University
“I’ve always been fascinated by the integration of people and the environment and how we can utilize landscape design to sustain the long-term health of both within our communities,” “It’s this integration that drives my teaching and scholarship, and I hope my students graduate with a passion to make a difference through landscape design within the communities they serve.”
VanWieren teaches undergraduate landscape architecture courses that cover a broad range of knowledge and skills, beginning with using hand drawn illustrations to communicate preliminary design concepts and landscape construction details, and a course on site engineering where students bridge landscape design with civil engineering and learn about grading, drainage and ways to manage storm water. She also teaches advanced landscape design, a capstone class in which students spend a semester on service-learning projects in Montana, such as community park and trail design and vacant land redevelopment plans in areas challenged by past industrial uses or disinvestment.
Working with communities that don’t have the funds to hire a landscape architect in early design stages, VanWieren said she first asks her students to “think outside the box” to encourage innovation. But, as they begin building knowledge and skills, they then focus on the plausible to provide ideas the community finds valuable. One service-learning project pairs VanWieren and her students with the Fort Peck Tribes Office of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to revitalize a former main street gas station into a plaza with green spaces, something she said could change the trajectory of the space and improve environmental health and human well-being. VanWieren’s success in integrating scholarship with outreach led to her being awarded the 2017 President’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning at MSU.
Prior to coming to MSU, VanWieren worked as a landscape architect at firms in Michigan alongside planners and civil engineers. Her focus then was primarily on leveraging the design of green spaces on commercial properties and streets to reduce the impact of storm water on waterways, an issue she said is becoming more important as development increases even in semi-arid Bozeman.
Mike Giroux, head of MSU’s Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, lauded VanWieren’s ability to teach and prepare landscape design students while giving them opportunities to gain real-world experience. “Her capstone course involves having her landscape design students design and carry out service-learning projects that both instill civic pride and help ensure the long-term health of communities,” Giroux said. “We are proud of her and her accomplishments in teaching and all that she does to help MSU students be successful.”
Before working in practice, VanWieren earned bachelor’s degrees in both biology and environmental science at St. Olaf College in 2001, followed by master’s degrees in both landscape architecture and natural resource planning and policy from the University of Michigan in 2009.
From article By Denise Hoepfner, MSU News Service. Read the complete article at www.montana.edu
Rebekah VanWieren was also featured in the Landscape Architecture Foundation website as a 2008 Olmsted scholar. Click here to read the article!
Jack O’ Lantern Jamboree - MSU
October 17, 2018 | 7 PM | Basement of Linfield
ASLA’s first pumpkin carving event will be held at 7 PM on October 17th, 2018 in the basement of Linfield hall.
Jack O’ Lantern Jamboree
October 17, 2018 | 7 PM | Basement of Linfield
ASLA’s first pumpkin carving event will be held at 7 PM on October 17th, 2018 in the basement of Linfield hall.
All pumpkins will be put on display near the plant growth center.
Pumpkins provided while supplies last, otherwise BYOP
PARK(ing) Day 2018
It’s time to rethink the way streets are used and to re-imagine the possibilities of the urban landscape!
PARK(ing) Day is an annual event that encourages community members, students, and designers to transform parking spaces into temporary parklets. This event occurs annually in hundreds of cities in dozens of countries on every permanently-inhabited continent on earth. While PARK(ing) Day may be temporary, the image of possibility it offers has lasting effects and is helping to shift the way streets are perceived and utilized.
This year we really stepped up our parklet game! There were 19 parklets, that I know of, total- Moscow (3), Coeur d’Alene (1 block party), Boise (6), Pocatello (7), and Bozeman (1). That is a dramatic increase from last year which is exciting! These were not all ASLA associated parklets but since ASLA is all about promoting this event, they were all on the ASLA parklet map. There was a news piece on the Pocatello parklets in the Idaho State Journal and there will be an article about all the parklets in Idaho coming out in the near future in the Idaho Business Review. Next year when you are in the planning stage of PARK(ing) Day, make sure to get the media involved to help raise awareness!
Maggie Clark, ASLA, PLA
Parking Day Pocatello
Pocatello Parking Day
Business participants:
The Yellowstone
Station Square
The Orange and Black Store
Molinellis
Main Steam Coffee and Desserts
Elwen Cottage
Bannock Transportation Planning Organization
Montana State University - Bozeman
University of Idaho - Moscow
Boise Parking Day
Boise Businesses/locations who participated:
D.L. Evans Bank
8th Street corridor
Collister Shopping Center
Vista Village
Albertsons
Coeur d’Alene block party
The City of Coeur d’Alene organized the Sherman Block Party pilot project in conjunction with PARK(ing) Day. This function was very successful with over 1,500 people attending! The pilot project design maintained the current location of the sidewalks, removed the center turn lane (except at intersections), and added diagonal parking on one side of the street. Furthermore, this project results in five additional parking spaces on this block. The pilot project also includes planters, benches, temporary curb extensions, artistic crosswalks, bike parking, and some curbside seating in a “parklet”.
Better Block Event - Pocatello, ID
Pocatello hosted the Terry First Build a Better Block event on Saturday, August 25th.
The Pop-Up Park had vendors, food, hydration station, public art, outdoor games, seating, landscaping, and a selfie stop.
photo credits: Team Better Block
photo credit: Hannah Sanger
photo credits: Maggie Clark
The Pop-Up Park had vendors, food, hydration station, public art, outdoor games, seating, landscaping, and a selfie stop.
Temporary Public Space Improvements included a 9 block bike/ped path, street narrowing, back-in parking, bulbouts, outdoor dining parklet, landscaping, intersection painting, and ISU logo street art.
Pocatello hosted the Terry First Build a Better Block event on Saturday, August 25th. In preparation for the build out, there were several ways for the community to participate and influence the project. There was a website terryfirst.com where community members could go to learn about the project and sign up to be a volunteer. The website incorporated some great interactive tools including “Photo Voice Map” where people could share photos that show what they would like that specific area to look like. There was also an “Opportunity Points Map” where they could point out areas that had potential to be improved. In addition, the community members could also take a questionnaire to further voice their opinions pertaining to the project. In mid-September Community Builders and Team Better Block held the first public meeting, attended by 75 people, to kick off the project. The group was split off into smaller groups to focus on Streets and Public Spaces, Art and Beauty, and Pop-up/Programming. The results from this brainstorming session were used to come up with a concept plan for the build out.
During the event, the City of Pocatello along with project partners Team Better Block and Community Builders debuted a series of temporary improvements to the historic warehouse district and Idaho State University neighborhood. Some of the ideas tested included pop-up shops, parklets, a stage with seating, landscaping, and public art. The Terry First project aims to create a vision for the Terry Street/South First Avenue corridor that will spur economic development, support redevelopment, increase bicycle and pedestrian mobility, and improve the connection between Idaho State University and Old Town Pocatello. “Build a Better Block allows us to try out some of the ideas before investing the time and resources to make them a permanent feature of Terry Street or First Avenue,” said Matthew Lewis, Senior Planner with the City of Pocatello. “The public will have a chance to see how the features function and make additional suggestions to improve the neighborhood.”
The volunteer effort was phenomenal for this project! There were about 125 community members and city employees from numerous departments who volunteered their time over the four days leading up to the event to get everything ready. This project was funded through Community Builders who contracted with Team Better Block as the consultant. After a successful community event, the City of Pocatello is anxiously awaiting the final report from Team Better Block. The City is identifying low cost improvements that can be accomplished short term as they work toward the long term goal of increasing walkability. Some of these low cost improvements may include a permanent ISU logo and striping updates. The community response from this event has been very positive and the City is excited to move forward with these new ideas. If you would more information about this event or if you are interested in doing a similar event, please contact Maggie Clark- maggieclarkpla@gmail.com.