Meander Bend Park
Pictured Above: The existing site for Meander Bend Park, a currently unused open space along the Santa Cruz River.
Wheat Design Group worked on two conceptual pilot projects with Pima County and Autocase. Autocase is a company that develops software which analyzes the triple bottom line cost benefit for projects. The software is especially useful for green infrastructure (GI) projects, where analyzing the long-term cost/benefits of GI has been historically difficult.
The two projects were Meander Bend Park (featured here) and the Southern Arizona Children’s Advocacy Center (a building and parking lot with few outdoor amenities). WDG designed a concept for each project which was then analyzed with Autocase. The projects were eventually featured by Autocase on their website.
Pictured Above: The current site for Meander Bend Park.
Pictured Above: The conceptual plan view rendering of Meander Bend Park.
The analysis revealed that Meander Bend Park is projected to have environmental and social benefits that are 6 times the cost of construction, operations and maintenance. For example, the projected value of mitigating the urban heat island effects on this site in the next 50 years is $1.2 million.