“Jordan Rising” Wins Two Utah Awards!

The “On the River’s Edge Competition” was organized by Salt Lake County and the Jordan River Foundation. They invited US-based teams to submit innovative and creative ideas that balance conservation with development, link residents and visitors to an ecologically diverse nature corridor, create year-round recreational opportunities, and foster vibrant social gathering places.

“The issues surrounding the Jordan River are a microcosm of the issues facing the west,” said Brice Maryman, co-lead landscape architect. “From increased urbanization and deteriorating water quality to homelessness and habitat fragmentation. We hope that the ideas in the Jordan Rising proposal can be a template for other western cities to follow.”

Rick Barrett, co-lead landscape architect said, “When we looked at the river, we challenged ourselves to use today’s opportunities—a booming regional economy and increased investments in public infrastructure—to restore the ecology and hydrology of the Jordan River.”

MIG’s team of landscape architects, park planners, river ecologists, planners, urban designers and biologists from across our offices thoroughly and thoughtfully addressed the multiple competition objectives: recreation, activation, conservation, economic prosperity and connectivity. 

The proposal would improve water quality, riparian resilience and economic prosperity for all members of the surrounding communities.   

A new hot-air balloon platform would float above the braided channels of the Jordan River, which will have a more diverse, complex and ecologically connected set of conditions. Going beyond the competition boundaries, green street retrofits extend out into the surrounding Salt Lake Valley landscape to improve the water being discharged into the Jordan River. Intensified land uses, and a diagonal shift connecting water to the mountains, provides the financial underpinnings to bring this complex, multi-year vision to life.

“This concept restores the river corridor to what it was when the Native American tribes lived here and the first settlers arrived,” Barrett said. “The banks of the Jordan River were paradise, and there’s no reason that they cannot be so again for the next generation of Salt Lake Valley residents.”