Glen Park

River Falls, WI | Sports + Recreation

Glen Park offers historic architecture, dynamic natural landscapes, and recreation opportunities that include a series of nature and paved trails that connect to a greater trails system. ISG worked with the community to understand the needs of the park’s visitors and has applied them to the designs for new park amenities.

The City of River Falls wanted to bolster its outdoor recreation offerings and decided to engage the local community to determine the future of Glen Park.

ISG was able to maintain the historical beauty of Glen Park while implementing futuristic designs to maintain the Park’s sentimental value. Maintaining the goals and needs of Glen Park, significant public involvement was incorporated into the preliminary design phase. To further continue the involvement of the public, ISG collected information from the Park and Recreation Advisory Board, River Falls community members, stakeholders, and City staff to gain the full vision of Glen Park’s future. As part of this collective effort, designs for the new Glen Park Pavilion, which also serves as a storm shelter, included:

• Lower level FEMA rated storm shelter for 250 park users.
• Main level pavilion for 80 people connected to the storm shelter and public restrooms for park users.
• Building exterior that blends architectural precast concrete panels at the storm shelter area with heavy timber framing at the pavilion for a cohesive building design.
• Large glass overhead doors to open and expand the indoor event space to the adjacent out door space (patio, planters, grills, views to the park, etc).
• Building position that reduced the amount of existing trees that needed to be removed and provide views to other park amenities.
• Underground drainage pipe to hide the storm shelter’s downspout and gutter system.

Phase two of this project is currently out for bid and includes the reorganization of site circulation, additional parking, trails, a destination play area, splash pad, and picnic spaces.