It's May! Celebrating Our Parks
Reflecting on the award-winning Unlimited Play Center at North Park, Provo, UT
With the 14th Annual Kids to Parks Day just around the corner—Saturday, May 18, 2024—our Envision team celebrates the benefits and beauty of the parks and open spaces throughout our communities. The annual Kids to Parks Day, held the third Saturday each May, is sponsored by the National Park Trust, and is designed to promote and connect kids and families with their local, state, and national parks and public lands and to enjoy the great outdoors. As a full-service electrical design firm, it has been our privilege to be the electrical engineering consultant on park projects in cities and towns throughout Utah.
As we reflect on recent parks and recreation projects, the award-winning Unlimited Play Center at North Park in Provo, Utah rose to the forefront. What's special about this park? It was specially designed to be accessible and inclusive of children and individuals of all abilities. The project was led by landscape architects, G. Brown Design and included carefully planned features like a musical sensory area, interactive water feature, interactive electronic pulse play, custom tree net structure, a variety of accessible swings, play mounds and at-grade slides, zip lines, and a variety of quiet spaces designed especially for the sensory needs of children on the autism spectrum.
Envision's role on the team included providing electrical plans and specifications to power the electrical distribution and controls for lighting throughout play areas and pathways, in addition to providing electrical capacity for the park pavilions, restrooms, and maintenance buildings on site. The design team worked closely with City, as well as a special community and parent steering committees, to develop a play environment with equitable play opportunities for individuals of all abilities—physical, sensory, cognitive, social, mental, emotional, and communicative.
“I've engineered countless park projects,” said Aleksandar Rankovic, Principal at Envision. "It's great to see such a high utilization rate by the community for this particular park. That's not always the case.”
The project received the "American Society of Landscape Architects Utah Chapter - Merit Award (2022).