Sherwood Construction Co., Inc.

Scope Of Work

The Gathering Place is 100 acres of Tulsa’s iconic waterfront along the scenic Arkansas River that were transformed into a world-class, award-winning public park. Sixty-six acres of flat, bare property in the middle of Tulsa, alongside the Arkansas River, were transformed into one of the largest privately funded public parks. The property was elevated from a flat piece of land to an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind interactive environment with ponds, hills, tunnels, rock towers, basketball courts, a boathouse, a skate park and miles of walking pathways.

To accomplish the terrain changes, 327,347 cubic yards of sand had to be excavated from the Arkansas River riverbed with numerous interruptions of flooding and highwater level events in the river. In addition to the difficulty of excavating the 327,347 cubic yards, placing the sand in unique shapes, slopes, and locations was also particularly challenging. The sand had to be incorporated with 550,500 square yards of geogrid/fabric placed by hand for slope reinforcement. Most of this work was accomplished with smaller than normal equipment and a tremendous amount of physical manpower, 338,969 man hours to be exact.

Since this was a large design build project, and different from our usual large DOT or civil construction projects, our team worked and coordinated closely with the prime contractor, Crossland Construction, and the project architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, who designed and managed the project to ensure it was to their standards. It was a true partnership working with MVVA and Crossland to make this project one of our trademark accomplishments.