Project Profile: Sparrows Point Park
On the site of a former slag heap for Bethlehem Steel, designers, engineers and builders have created an oasis.
The newly opened Sparrows Point Park is Baltimore County’s first LEED Platinum-designed park. It includes a 16,000-square-foot community center, a 10,000-square-foot nautical-themed destination playground, a full-size synthetic turf field with LED lighting, and an ADA-accessible fishing pier and kayak launch.
The site work and landscaping on the 22-acre property has stabilized a shoreline that was rapidly eroding, created scenic water views and gentle walking paths, and set the stage to create a healthy ecosystem on longtime industrial land.
“This property was like a mini dumping ground. There was a lot of stuff left over from Bethlehem Steel’s operations,” said Kristen Gedeon, Senior Associate at MK Consulting Engineers. “There were metal tanks, remnants of railroad tracks and a lot of slag,”
Addressing existing conditions on the property required the project team to meet a litany of requirements.
“We had to get approvals from the Critical Area Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the county. We had to deal with erosion control, stormwater management and site contaminants,” said Steve McCalmont, Principal at MK Consulting Engineers.
Undeveloped areas within the park had to be capped with two feet of clean fill.
“The property has a very steep and eroding shoreline,” McCalmont said. “We learned that the shoreline on that part of the bay erodes at a rate of 1.6 feet per year, so once we cleaned up the shoreline, we put in a stone riprap and revetment to protect that area from erosion.”
Across the site, the team worked to reestablish a healthy and diverse ecosystem. Workers cleared vines and other invasives and planted a half dozen deciduous tree species that are native to Mid-Atlantic woodlands.
In the stormwater management areas, “we added native plants that promote good pollinators,” Gedeon said. “If you have pollinators, then you will get the birds and other small critters. So, we used a mix of perennials and grasses that will come back year after year. Pollinators are attracted to the perennials and songbirds love the little seedheads on the grasses, so our stormwater management is really fostering biodiversity.”
Installing a rare ADA-compliant pier and kayak launch presented the team with a challenge. A fixed pier was not an option. High tides and storm surges could damage it and a fixed pier might not give kayakers consistent access to the water.
Instead, the team had to design a ramp down to a floating pier “but the slope of the ramp could only vary a certain percentage between high and low tide in order to be ADA-compliant,” McCalmont said. “The horizontal geometry for the whole pier, kayak launch and everything was challenging and it was driven by vertical constraints.”