In the Spring of 2019, Salt Lake County announced the “On the Rivers Edge” design competition where designers were offered the opportunity to re-envision a mid-valley section of the under-utilized Jordan River Parkway, an urban greenway running through the center of Salt Lake County’s valley. 

Entries were judged based on five primary project goals:  Activation, Connectivity, Recreation, Conservation, and Economic Prosperity.  Blalock and Partners joined with award-winning landscape architecture firm, LO|CI (based in Salt Lake City) and proposed a solution dubbed “WEAVE”.  The design is a bold and dramatic intervention to affect positive change. Working in concert with the Jordan River, it weaves together a variety of communities, balancing nature and responsible urban growth through the creation of multi-use connective tissue.  With WEAVE, the design team chose to directly address what they considered the five largest challenges associated with the Jordan River’s current conditions: safety; development which ignores the river; access; effective programming and environmental conditions associated with water quality and invasive plant species.  These conditions are the cumulative results of many factors over many years; no single entity is responsible, yet we all share in a responsible remedy.