Dorrian Green Columbus, Ohio

Services Provided

Urban Park Design
Construction Documentation

People Involved

Brian Kinzelman
Karen McCoy
Matt Manda
Tom Stephens

Awards

2019 ULI Global Awards for Excellence, Scioto Peninsula Cultural District
2018 Ohio Chapter ASLA Merit Award
2018 Indiana ASLA Award of Excellence
2018 Award for Design Excellence by Freenotes Harmony Park
2018 OPRA Award of Excellence 3rd Place for Capital Improvement Projects Over $2 Million

Creating a dynamic, interactive, “world-class” park space for a downtown neighborhood and surrounding cultural institutions.

Dorrian Green park is the latest implementation project in a series of transformational projects for Columbus’s downtown riverfront park system. The project called for a “world class” central open space for use by surrounding cultural institutions including one of the premier science museums in the country, the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, and anticipated future mixed use development planned immediately to the west of the park.

As a frontispiece to COSI accommodating thousands of visitors and school children per year, Dorrian Green provides the opportunity to further the learning mission of the Center and serve as the neighborhood park for the burgeoning East Franklinton neighborhood and planned mixed use development on the peninsula.

The park is built over a 630-car parking garage serving visitors to both COSI and the new Veterans Memorial and Museum. In addition to play areas for children and adults, amenities include a Sensory Garden, Reading Garden, Butterfly and Pollinator Garden, and Prairie Garden consisting of plants native to central Ohio. The Fountain Plaza is anchored by an interactive fountain and flanked by two open-air pavilions and flowering cherry tree groves. The northwest and southwest entrances feature salvaged limestone structures from the historic Central High School Stadium that once occupied the site, and the relocation of a kinetic sculpture, titled “The Spectrum Tree”, celebrates Isaac Newton’s discovery that sunlight contains the entire spectrum of colors.