Silver Medal Winner Falls Park on the Reedy Greenville, South Carolina The transformation of a forgotten waterfall and river valley into an urban oasis and centerpiece for the city Challenging Conventions The 2015 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence BRUNER FOUNDATION, INC. Richard Wener, PhD; Jay Farbstein, FAIA, PhD; Anne-Marie Lubenau, FAIA; and Robert Shibley, FAIA, FAICP Edited by Elizabeth Chesla, MA 2015 RUDY BRUNER AWARD Library of Congress Control Number: 2016944071 ISBN: 978-1-890286-10-1 © 2016 by the Bruner Foundation, Inc. 130 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 www.brunerfoundation.org All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Cover photo credits (clockwise from left): Billy Michels, Rosales + Partners, Mike Buck, Rien Van Rijthoven, Panza DESIGN: Alexandra Trinanes/T2Design,
[email protected] IV 2015 RUDY BRUNER AWARD Overview Submitted by: City of Greenville Completed: 2004 Total Development Cost: $13.5 million In the center of downtown Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Falls Park on the Reedy is the transformation of a forgotten 40-foot-tall waterfall and overgrown river valley into an attractive urban oasis and centerpiece for the city. Completed in 2004, Falls Park is the realization of a vision that began nearly 100 years earlier with Beautifying and Improving Greenville, South Carolina, a 1907 report sponsored by the local Municipal League that identified the Reedy River falls and gorge as “the most distinctive feature in the topogra- phy and landscape of Greenville.” But decades of industrial discharge from textile mills along the river polluted the water, and in the 1960s, the falls were obscured by a four-lane vehicular bridge.