Before they merged, Parkhill, Smith, & Cooper served as the prime firm with sub-consultants Shrickel, Rollins and Associates to provide a master plan for the City of El Paso’s Northeast Regional Park as part of the City of El Paso’s 2000 Quality of Life Bond Issue. Recently, the two firms have merged. The park was built from the ground up and the master plan included total development of the 59-acre site.

The two unique parts of the project were master-planning a new regional recreation destination for the City of El Paso in a floodway that serves to mitigate storm waters from the Franklin Mountains and utilizing the open space as a recreation amenity.

Also, it was the first large-scale use of reclaimed water for a new regional park for the city and we worked closely with researchers at the Texas A&M Agricultural Extension Service on designs that harvested the existing topsoil, placed it aside while the site was graded with less-desirable underlying soils, and then replaced the ideal topsoil that worked better for drainage and management of elevated salts in the treated wastewater. On-site drainage will be detained to prevent downstream impacts. Construction materials and systems were selected on the basis of long-term life cycle benefits.