Central Artery Urban Park + Streetscape

Atlantic Avenue, Financial District, Leather District, & Chinatown / Boston, MA

Waterfield Design served as landscape architect of record for restoration of roughly 1/3 of the urban roads, sidewalks, major street crossings, streetscapes, and new parks needed to reconstruct downtown Boston after the old elevated viaduct carrying Interstate 93 traffic was successfully converted to an underground tunnel.

Over a 10 year period, our role was to prepare concept plans and to coordinate with dozens of abutter groups, City of Boston departments (PWD, BRA, Parks, Engineering, Landmarks Commission, Historic Board), and every state agency (MassPIKE, MassHighway, MBTA, DCR) to achieve consensus on the final plan. Once accepted, we completed a complex design for the new urban park and streetscape design for the restored areas.

Our design included the creation of several new urban pocket parks among some of Boston’s tallest buildings. We created marquis focal points at the Leather District Park and at China Gate Park, anchoring the pedestrian circulation routes for thousands of commuters each day. An entirely new streetscape design was also created to buffer the tunnel ramp roadways from the pedestrian scale of the surface streets. A substantial portion of our work involved ADA compliance across several major surface roadway crossings, some of the busiest surface arteries in the City.

The main focus of our project was to enhance the urban pedestrian experience, making it easier ot use and safer to navigate while also using the new land created by the tunnel to beautify the heart of downtown Boston. Total construction cost of our 4 downtown urban parks projects was $32 million.