By Mark Abromaitis and Jan Landon
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

For many architects, a dying stream on a piece of property would just be filled in with dirt and built over.

But Erickson Retirement Communities took another approach on their campus in Overland Park, Kans. The stream that flows through Tallgrass Creek needed a little help with its meandering. So Erickson officials decided to restore and realign it to enhance the overall natural design of the community.

“From Erickson’s point of view, we saw it as an amenity,” says Charles  Schlauch, director of architecture for Erickson. “And on top of that, restoring the stream was simply the right thing to do for the local habitat.”

A new direction
A team of eco-designers, architects, and engineers got down to work and not only restored the creek but also redirected it to fit into the Tallgrass Creek landscape.

“Portions of the stream were in really bad shape,” says Mark Meyer, principal civil engineer for Intuition & Logic, a St. Louis engineering firm that worked with Tallgrass Creek. “We decided we needed to get in there and restore it. And in the process of restoring it, we realized we could also do some realignment.”

The realignment was more than aesthetic. It created a 100-foot buffer zone  between the stream and any of the Tallgrass Creek buildings. The restoration also ensured that the stream would not be in danger of faltering again. Tallgrass Creek residents will have a healthy stream surrounded by native plants and wildlife for years to come.

“When we look at the stream, we want to have good water quality, habitat, and natural channel geomorphology,” Meyer explains.

The ‘natural course’ of things
Watching the stream as it moves between the banks and under the Tallgrass Creek walking trail bridges, there is no hint that this hasn’t always been the tributary’s path. To move the creek, workers dug a new channel using  earthmoving equipment and then filled in the old channel.