Grant Frontier Park is the focal point of the South Platte River Vision.  THK led a multi-disciplinary team effort to transform that vision into a cohesive experiential park, bringing pedestrian activity back to a long-neglected river corridor.  Grant Frontier Park features passive and active recreation, educational opportunities and vital regional trail connectivity.  The park provides abundant ADA access to trail, play areas and the river encouraging use by all visitors.

Notable highlights of the park are an environmental play area, outdoor education zones and a complete redesign of the existing regional trail. Natural play areas feature unstructured elements like fallen logs, river boulders and other locally sourced natural materials.  Denver Public Schools and SPREE utilize the park to encourage problem solving and experiential learning.  The redesign of the regional trail improved ADA accessible river access and addressed safety concerns.

The environmental playground at Grant Frontier Park was a unique component of this project and encourages exploration and discovery of the natural world. Fallen logs and boulders recycled from the project will be reused to create the Environmental Playground and provide a distinctive user experience. A constructed island and jetty provide a personal experience with the main channel of the river itself.  All these diverse experiences are ADA accessible and cater to the wide range of participants this regional park attracts. The opportunity to explore, create and ‘get dirty’ in nature is an exciting and stimulating experience for urban families.

The project also completed a redesign of the 10’ regional trail to a 12’ regional trail encourages multi-modal use by both pedestrians and bicyclists, while reducing the occurrence of conflict between the two. A network of local 5’ gravel trails accessed from the regional trail encourages exploration of wetland, riparian and upland habitat zones along the length of this regional trail section and within the environmental playgrounds.