News

WPL is celebrating 50 years!

Congratulations are in order...

William D. Almond, ASLA has been selected for induction into the 2010 American Society

of Landscape Architects, Council of Fellows!!

Billy was nominated in the Service Category by the Virginia Chapter, he has focused his skills

as an articulate advocate for landscape architecture on the successful 12-year campaign for

practice licensure in Virginia. As current chair of the national Licensure Committee, he

continues the ASLA "50 by 2010" goal of securing licensure for landscape architects in all

50 states.

Mr. Almond has 32 years experience and started the Landscape Architecture division at

WPL 10 years ago. He received his bachelor of landscape architecture with distinction from

Virginia Tech.

WPL would like to congratulate Dave Chirico for recieving his Virginia Society

of Landscape DesignersCertification!

Dave holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Landscape Contracting from The

Pennsylvania StateUniversity. He has 17 years of professional experience

supporting many disciplines including architecture,landscape architecture,

civil engineering, and surveying. He has been employed as a landscape designer

and project manager with WPL for 5 years.

Project News

Two of our residential projects were featured in the 2010 AGIO collection catalog. One made the cover!

2010 Agio Cover

Grommet Island Park is now OPEN!!!!!

HERE’S A BEACH PLAYGROUND THAT HAS SOMETHING FOR EVERY BODY
By Jaedda Armstrong
The Virginian-Pilot

Surrounded by palm trees and a rubber play surface, a new play park on the Oceanfront features cameras where
visitors can look out into the water and view surfers or dolphins.
It also has musical drums, a playground with monkey bars and slides, a boardwalk that leads out to the water and a
sensory wall for the autistic and visually impaired.
The park is designed for folks who usually can’t enjoy these luxuries during a day at the beach.
JT’s Grommet Island Beach Park and Playground for EveryBODY, a wheelchair-accessible 15,000-square-foot park
on the Oceanfront between 1st and 2nd streets, opens this weekend.
The park was inspired by and named for 35-year-old Josh Thompson, local developer Bruce Thompson’s son, who
has Lou Gehrig’s disease.
JT comes from his name, and Grommet comes from his love of surfing; the term is slang for a novice surfer.
The $1 million for construction, which started in March, was raised from sponsors, said Brian Solis, planning
administrator for Parks and Recreation.
“The great thing about this park is that everybody can interact with everybody else,” said John Babb, the park’s
project manager. “A disabled child and an ablebody child can both play together.”

Click to read the full article featured in the Beacon

Read the article featured in QUEST, MDA's Research and Health Magazine, "A Park for EverBODY" at

http://quest.mda.org/news/beach-park-everybody

Kellam High School has been elected for the SITES Pilot Program administered by the Sustainable Sites Initiative.

award

Sunday, May 2, 2010 was Virginia Beach's annual Earth Day Celebration at Mount Trashmore Park. The first annual Virginia Beach Stewardship Development Awards Program was also held during the celebration. The Mayor, the Deputy City Manager, and the Strategic Growth Area Manager presented Stewardship Development Awards to nearly a dozen design and development teams, who have shown extraordinary environmental responsiveness with their projects in the past year. WPL played a critical role in several of these award winning projects including, Great Neck Middle School, Virginia Beach Middle School Replacement and Revitalization of Beach Garden Park, and Renaissance Academy. WPL provided services including surveying, site planning, planting design, and LEED services for each of these projects.

South Beach Trail Boardwalk is now Open to the Public!

PICT3798

WPL is a part of the selected teams to work on the following projects:

Indian River High School Modernization

Old Point National Bank Tower in Hampton

Crossroads Elementary School Landscape Design

North King Street project in Hampton

New Suffolk Elementary School project

South Norfolk Library

WPL continues to work on Bayside Community Recreation Center, Historic Kempsville, Kempes Landing Park, and residential compounds for Burke, Nicholson, and Wilcox.

Awards

- Harbor Heights recieved a 2009 HRACRE Excellence in Development Design, "Award of Merit" in the category of Best Commercial-Retail Building. WPL provided civil engineering services for this project.

- WPL was given a certificate of appreciation for their support of the Hampton Roads Chapter of the Society for Design Administration.

-WPL recieved a 2008 HRACRE Excellence in Development Design ,"Award of Merit" in the catefory of Best Renovated/Historic Project for their work on Blair Middle School.

Testimonials

"My compliments on the design of the new fields at Providence Park. The deluge on Friday evening had us worried about whether we would be able to play games at all on Saturday. With about four people working hard for about three hours early Saturday morning, though, we were able to start a full schedule at 11:00 AM. This is remarkable and a credit to the design of the fields."

Frank Albero
Kempsville PONY Baseball

"WPL has provided excellent design services for a variety of projects for the City of Virginia Beach including Beach Garden Park, Providence Park, and Kids Cove Playground. In addition, Wpl has provided high quality streetcape design for other City projects. WPL is very responsive to clients needs and concerns. Located in Virginia Beach they are very understanding of local conditions such as the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act and Landscape Guidelines. I highly recommend WPL for landscape architecture, civil engineering, and planning services for municipal projects."

J. Barry Frankenfield, FASLA, AICP, LEED AP
Strategic Growth Area Manager,City of Virginia Beach

"WPL has performed master planning and landscape architectural on several very exciting school projects for us over the past couple of years. Their master planning efforts on the Williams Farm, which included a new elementary school (Diamond Springs Elementary School), an elementary school replacement (Newtown Elementary School), along w/ park open space that has been nothing short of extraordinary. This seventy acre campus is now complete and serves approximately 1500 students, and provides connectivity to the park open space for students as well as the community."

Tony Arnold
Director of Facilities Planning and Construction
Virginia Beach City Public Schools

“WPL’s Site Planning and Landscape Design for the new Virginia Beach Middle School will greatly enhance the Old Beach Neighborhood streetscape with pedestrian friendly sidewalks, street lighting, street trees, and neighborhood signage. Landscape installations will create interesting connected networks of open space within the neighborhood, and street tree plantings will help reduce the perceived scale and mass of the new school building to the adjacent properties and reinforce its residential character. Landscape elements have also been designed to provide eco-friendly solutions to stormwater management by incorporating grassed swales and bio-retention beds planted with indigenous wet-tolerant plant materials. The “jewel” of the design is a landscaped sculpture garden within a new traffic circle that acts as both the western terminus of 25th Street and the visual gateway into the new school’s entrance drive.”

C. Michael Ross, AIA, REFP
HBA Architecture & Interior Design
Virginia Beach, VA