A Symbiotic Relationship

Wightman Park serves as a model for integrating stormwater and recreational needs

By Sara Thompson
Photos: Pashek + MTR

To make cities more resilient, park planners and designers need to look beyond the typical stormwater requirements when thinking about public spaces. How can parks solve larger, community-wide stormwater problems while still accommodating recreational needs? Located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, the two-acre Wightman Park takes about 30 acres of runoff from the neighborhood and uses most of the site’s square footage to capture more than 400,000 gallons per storm event. To accommodate this larger stormwater capacity and help reduce local flooding issues, multi-layered and multifunctional spaces were designed. A highly collaborative process led to additional funding and a successful project partnership between the city of Pittsburgh Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA). The result is a park with layers of functions, where green infrastructure is truly integrated within recreation, becoming part of the user’s experience.

In 2014, Pashek + MTR was hired by DPW to develop a master plan. The park is surrounded by mostly single-family homes with a few multi-family unit apartments, a CVS pharmacy, office space, and the Carriage House, home to a childcare facility and several non-profits. The park included a T-ball field, basketball court, and a playground that needed replacement. During the master-plan process, it was discovered that the park was the site of a former stream, and a good portion of the neighborhood drained towards the park. The company also learned through an extensive, public-engagement process that many neighbors were having difficulty with flooding and basement backups. 

It’s important to note here that Pittsburgh, like other northeast cities, has combined sewer overflows. When it rains, stormwater mixes with sewer water, overloads the combined storm-sewer system, and ends up dumping into streams and rivers, causing pollution and flooding. Pittsburgh is under a consent decree from the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce sewage overflows into rivers and streams and to end illegal discharges from sanitary sewer outfalls. 

Serving Two Masters

In engaging with the community further, we started to organize input into two categories: stormwater and recreation. Recreation-related needs included most of the same facilities within the existing park, such as a multipurpose field, basketball court, walking path, and playground. One goal was to make sure there was something for everyone and that contact with nature played a role.  

So, we took this information and developed a plan different from that of a typical park development. A typical development meets minimum stormwater requirements, where facilities tend to be afterthoughts and placed in a corner of the property.

Instead, the design for Wightman Park captures stormwater from the surrounding neighborhood and integrates green stormwater infrastructure and recreation facilities throughout the site. The design then uses stormwater best-management practices (BMPs) for education and to connect people with nature. PWSA learned of the stormwater components proposed during the master-plan phase and was immediately interested in becoming part of the project. It saw the benefits of using the park as a stormwater sponge for the surrounding neighborhood. This led to the partnership between the city and PWSA; each sought different grants and funding to implement the project. PWSA funded the stormwater facilities, while DPW funded the recreation facilities. Together with Ethos Collaborative, PWSA’s stormwater engineer, we led the design process into construction documents.

The resulting project includes park and streetscape improvements. A series of connected street bump outs collect stormwater runoff from about 30 acres of surrounding neighborhood and direct it into the park through a stormwater rock cascade, through a trench drain, and into a rain garden located in the center of the park. During larger rainstorms, stormwater outlets from the rain garden go into underground storage tanks located under the playground, half basketball court, and multipurpose field. Most of the walking paths are constructed of pervious asphalt to absorb stormwater collected on-site. In addition, most of the trees were preserved and many new trees were planted, further aiding in stormwater absorption. Most of the site now is taken up by stormwater BMPs, whether above ground or below.

Making Its Presence Known

Because stormwater is such an important piece of the design, we wanted to educate the public about BMPs and their functions. This was accomplished by locating the rain garden in the center, where it is seen from anywhere within and outside the park. Next, we combined the stormwater entrance with the main pedestrian entrance, where an accessible path and steps are adjacent to and cross the stormwater cascade. Lastly, interpretive signs teach people about not only the purpose of the cascade and rain garden but also the fact they are part of a larger stormwater system that included features buried or integrated into pavements.

Stormwater features were also used to connect people to nature. A boardwalk through the rain garden allows visitors to be immersed in nature in an otherwise small, facility-heavy park typically full of pavement and grass. A picnic pavilion includes a deck overlooking the rain garden. Important views of nature and the rain garden were created by a viewing platform on the roof of the restroom building that can be accessed at street level. 

The park was constructed in 2020 and has since become one of the go-to parks in the city. The playground is packed with families on any given day. Kids ride bikes and scooters on the looping paths and the boardwalk that crosses the rain garden, while adults use the paths for exercise and dog walking. Little League teams and families use the multipurpose field and basketball courts for active recreation. All of these facilities have stormwater features integrated under, around, or within them.

The result is a resilient park where recreation and stormwater facilities work together in a symbiotic relationship to meet the needs of the community and solve stormwater issues on a neighborhood scale. Since the success of Wightman Park, PWSA staff members have become standard fixtures on city park-planning committees, which have led to other park-stormwater collaborations.

Sara Thompson is a Landscape Architect and Principal at Pashek + MTR, a planning and design firm in Pittsburgh.  Her work focuses on sustainable park planning and design. Reach her at sthompson@pashekmtr.com.