This 38-acre park was designed as a civic gathering place for the Alief community, with the goal of establishing a fresh, resilient development model for Houston.

The buildings on the site house four city departments: health, parks, libraries and general services). The site’s 5100 perennials are used selectively to add some color in high focus areas, even as seasons change.

Over $575K worth of site amenities were installed on this site, including 7 picnic tables, 27 benches, 31 bollards and 32 trash receptacles.

We installed 55 Bola bike racks throughout the campus, incorporating an artful solution for bicycle storage and security and an understated design that doesn’t conflict with other site elements.

In addition to sports fields and courts, the site boasts a bocce ball lane, cornhole, a concrete chess table and table tennis. Just over 600 SF of synthetic turf was installed over a gravel base to complete this bocce ball court.

The creative use of color, plant material and amenities throughout this site work in concert to provide a gathering space for visitors to enjoy. We installed 1000 annuals, 5100 groundcover, 5100 perennials and 6600 shrubs on this site.

This park was designed to provide for a variety of activities such as children play areas, formal and informal seating areas, neighborhood festivals and gatherings. Several pieces of artwork were installed in already completed areas, damaging our scope and necessitating rework.

Engaging all ages was one goal of Alief Park. We installed just over $50,000 worth of playground equipment on this site. In this play area, Goric Playground Equipment encourages children to enjoy, while rubberized play surfaces and decorative gravel help minimize potential injuries.

We installed the soil and irrigation in the community garden planters seen here. Community members are encouraged to plant and maintain fruits and vegetables plots. Adjacent, but not pictured, is a shed we installed which we had to ensure was ADA/Wheelchair accessible.

Heavy rain, combined with dense clay soil and flat topography, created a sticky clay/mud mixture that was inches deep in places. To combat this challenge, we performed work in other areas, fitted our equipment with wide track shoes and used mud matts and gravel to prevent equipment from getting stuck.

In this after picture of the same area, turf, grasses, annuals and trees line the interconnected walkways encouraging visitors to meander.

We installed 254,000 SF of warm season Bermuda sod on the site—watering it carefully afterwards to ensure root establishment.

One unusual specification was the client’s desire to have metal (vs. wooden) stakes for all trees. These “t” posts were a forest green and the client wanted them to be tan. We set up a pop-up paint booth on the site and repainted 2500 tree stakes that we used.

Due to an electrical scope delay, our irrigation system wasn’t operational requiring temporary irrigation be run through a hydrant hookup in limited zones to water over 575,000 SF or Bermuda seed we installed. We used 3 crewmembers for 8 hours a day for 10 months—until irrigation came online.

An after picture of the same area shows these same practice fields with well-established turf that can be enjoyed by all.

830 trees were installed on this site during a period with very hot temperatures and an inability to connect to the site’s irrigation system. With extensive hand watering, there were only 5 trees that succumbed to heat stress during that time.

Raised out of a floodplain, the Alief Neighborhood Center and Park is a good example of a resilient landscape design, weaving hardy native plantings through a diverse array of recreational facilities, centralized services while embracing a community-centric vision.