Location: Shawano
Owner: City of Shawano
Concrete Supplier: Peters Concrete Company
Architect: Parkitecture + Planning
Engineer: Strand Associates, Inc.
Contractor: Martell Construction, Inc.

Shawano has a rich history of community gatherings. A vision for a new public space downtown was developed to provide a vibrant activity area for its residents.

Plans were developed for two blocks of new civic space connecting an existing festival park to main street and a city parking lot. The city desired a space that was beautiful and durable. The design team chose to utilize a mix of decorative concrete and precast concrete to achieve this outcome.

A “blue” concrete river provided the visual connection throughout the project area paying tribute to the Wolf River which bisects Shawano.  A raised concrete stage and radial decorative concrete bands serve as an elevated stage and delineation of space.

Colored concrete walls with LED lighting follow the exterior bands to provide a hard perimeter, night ambience, and retaining for landscape areas.   Precast colored concrete seat blocks and “river pebbles” were used to accent the space. Reinforced concrete was used for crosswalks and a raised tabletop crossing into the park.

The concrete mix was 4,000 psi and approximately 225 cubic yards were poured.