Park Hill Line Creek Campus Site Development
This work culminated in the development of the Park Hill Line Creek Campus, home to Hopewell Elementary School and the LEAD Innovation Studio. This unique opportunity also brought challenges for site planning, turning engineers into problem-solvers.
The Park Hill Line Creek Campus encompasses 275 acres. The location and vast size of the site presented challenges for development due to topography, environmental considerations, available utilities, access to the property and phasing of the projects. Engineers and architects needed to work together to determine the preferred location for Hopewell Elementary and the LEAD Innovation Studio on the site.
The locations for the schools were chosen to minimize the environmental impact to the surrounding forest as well as the adjacent Line Creek Streamway and wetlands that traversed the property. Improvements were situated on ridge lines, and the building pads and parking lots were terraced to follow existing contouring. In addition to extending water and sanitary sewer extensions to the schools, storm water management and treatment facilities were incorporated into valleys adjacent to the schools and the planned meadow on the southwest corner of the campus.
In accordance with the City of Kansas City, Missouri Street Plan and collaboration with the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department, Line Creek Parkway was designed and constructed to access the schools. The three-lane undivided roadway extended from the signalized intersection of 68th Street and Waukomis to the south to a new roundabout at the LEAD Innovation Studio driveway. The roundabout was implemented as part of our traffic management plan to provide a permanent public access turnaround at the northern terminus of Line Creek Parkway, enhance the aesthetics of the dead-end roadway and to accommodate future growth to the north. The layout also provided pedestrians with a direct pathway from the LEAD Innovation Studio to the Line Creek Trail without crossing vehicular traffic.
The campus was developed from south to north to allow for the completion of Hopewell Elementary School a year earlier than the LEAD Innovation Studio and limit the impacts of construction of one school on the other. Access paths and utility corridors were chosen to overlap as much as possible to further limit the removal of trees on the campus.
Considering environmental, phasing and traffic aspects, and impacts of developing the Park Hill Line Creek Campus, Kaw Valley Engineering collaborated with the Park Hill School District Design and Construction Team to navigate these projects sustainably and successfully from conception through construction. Kaw Valley Engineering provided expertise necessary to evaluate and ultimately illustrate the site layout and grading approach to cost effectively support the schools’ needs from an access, parking and utility services perspective while limiting land disturbance, and providing storm water and traffic management to limit the impacts on the adjacent landowners and the environment.
