Client: City of Chicago – Dept. of Planning and Development
Location: Chicago, IL
Client: City of Chicago – Dept. of Planning and Development
Location: Chicago, IL
The Wild Mile was created to provide a new environment for habitat, education, and recreation on the Chicago River. Designed as a 17-acre floating eco-park, it advances a community-led vision of renewed urban ecology that helps strengthen neighborhood connectivity, generate cleaner water, and to support more vibrant ecosystems. Located along the east side of Goose Island, on the North Branch Canal and Turning Basin. This area has been envisioned as a type of eco-park since the creation of the 2003 Chicago Central Area Plan. In 2019, Urban Rivers, SOM, and d’Escoto, Inc. developed a collaborative plan to provide programing concepts, conceptual designs, and budgetary pricing for the next phases of the Wile Mile Program.
d’Escoto, Inc. provided professional services that included assisting with the overall development of the master plan, scheduling, and cost estimation for all ongoing project phases. The scope featured a series of floating gardens, forests with public walkways, kayak docks, and other unique amenities. Much of the work has never been completed on this scale on the Chicago River and many of the deliverables required specialty materials and installation expertise. Our team identified the materials outlined in the conceptual drawings, worked to source the items, priced them out for a rough order of magnitude estimate, and projected a construction duration timeline based on the noted time intervals required to complete the scope. That information was used to help obtain funding, project a schedule, and create a baseline for the budget going forward.
The Wild Mile project has won multiple awards including:
• 2020, World Changing Ideas Award, Fast Company, New York
• 2019, Design Excellence Award-Merit, AIA Chicago
• 2019, Chicago Strategic Planning Award, American Planning Association
• 2019, Silver Ribbon Award, Friends of the Chicago River
