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Submitting Firm: KPFF

Location: Portland

Client/Owner: Portland Parks Foundation

Other Consultants/Key Participants: Ed Carpenter (artist), Geotechnical Resources Inc. (geotechnical), Morgan Holen & Associates (arborist), Pacific Habitat Services (environmental consultant), R&H Construction (general contractor), Shiels Obletz Johnsen (owner’s representative), Walker Macy (landscape architect)

In October 2019, Portland’s first crowd-funded bridge — Barbara Walker Crossing — became reality. Today, that bridge serves an average of 2,000 hikers daily.

For years, the community voiced concerns about crossing West Burnside — a road carrying an average of 20,000 vehicles through the West Hills daily — in order to travel on the Wildwood Trail from Hoyt Arboretum to Pittock Mansion. A bridge would cross and land on the right-of-way of three public agencies — Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Parks & Recreation and Metro.

The project began in 2011, with more than five years of practical design and construction once funding was secured from a multi-year capital campaign by the Portland Parks Foundation. KPFF led the design of the two-span, 180-foot-long, curved steel bridge, navigating the unique public/private partnership.

The two-span structure is framed with a steel truss. The intermediate support is a concrete pier supported on pile foundations. End abutments are designed to minimize impacts to the environmentally sensitive surroundings. The design team worked to locate the north abutment in a flat area of the hillside with minimal landslide risk. The south abutment landed on a narrow and steep rock ledge, requiring a rock anchor supported foundation with minimal rock excavation.

More than 900 private donors funded the project — some 60 percent of the $4 million project — including $385,000 in pro-bono services from the design and construction teams. To help ensure representation for all members in the community, minority subcontractors were used in the construction of the bridge.