The overall project goal at Johnson Habitat Park was to create a premier environmental education center directly adjacent to Denver’s South Platte River. Features include an outdoor classroom, fire ring, overlook plaza, tent pads for children and families to experience, many for the first time, the joy of camping outdoors overnight. Additionally, there are two river access platforms for boats and fishing, trailhead rest areas, interpretive signage, and soft surface trails that connect with the improved hard surface regional South Platte River Trail that traverses the park.
Johnson Habitat Park is the outcome of an intensely collaborative process between the design team, the City and County of Denver, the Greenway Foundation, The Trust for Public Land, the community, and many non-profit organizations. The $5.5 million dollar park design improves the ecological function of the park, restoring the river’s edge, restoring wetlands and contaminated soils, highlighting the natural systems, history, and connecting the park to the city and river with an enhanced regional trail. The park has become the flagship outdoor environmental educational center that serves a local non-profit in their efforts to build awareness and appreciation for Denver’s waterways.
