Landscape Information
In 2012, Prince Concepts president Philip Kafka launched Core City, a seventeen-acre postindustrial site northwest of downtown, with the aim of regenerating the neighborhood’s housing, commercial development, and public realm. The first significant public space to be developed, this 8,000-square-foot park/plaza on the corner of Grand River and Warren Avenues was conceived by landscape architect Julie Bargmann as an urban woodland.
Scattered understory plantings of ferns, native violets, and irises are shaded by a grove of understory flowering and deciduous canopy trees emerging from a hardscape composed of concrete and repurposed materials found on-site, including cobblestones, red sandstone, and crushed black slag, a product of steelmaking. In accordance with Bargmann’s vision, 85% of materials used in the construction of the park/plaza were unearthed on-site, including portions of a demolished late-nineteenth century fire station, the walls of a bank vault, and other excavated artifacts. Site-specific artworks and installations, along with a bonfire pit, and a combination of fixed and moveable seating animate the public space.
