Spotsylvania County, The National Academy of Environmental Design (NAED) and Luck Development Partners (LDP) announce the NAED will be opening its primary office in the County. NAED features the Nation’s leading organizations in design, planning, communication and research. These experts in planning and design will have a new home in Spotsylvania at the Center for Sustainability and Green Technologies in Ni Village, designed and funded by LDP.
LDP believes our partner firms, who have worked beside us and guided us on our journey, deserve just recognition. We would like to thank Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects for their high level of commitment and dedication to LDP and our Ni Village project over the last 4 years. Their profile follows:
The firm’s philosophy centers on design that honors and reveals the local history and natural context of a site through a process of observation, creative interpretation, and construction. Initial design concepts are driven by attentive observation of site dynamics including prevailing winds, solar orientation, hydrology, geology, soils, and existing plant and animal communities. In the development of a design, the firm employs a vocabulary of primarily indigenous materials, including plants, paving, landforms, and multiple uses of water. We meld the particular - a place, a plant community, a certain landform - with universal archetypal forms such as the mount, the theater, the grove, the parterre - so that the local ethos of a place is never lost or homogenized. The diverse backgrounds of the staff include studies in the fields of landscape architecture, anthropology, biology, economics, zoology, horticulture, architecture, art, art history, and architectural history. This broad knowledge base contributes greatly to the firm’s collective creativity and ability to respond to diverse client needs and expectations. It also underscores our great commitment to collaboration as part of a healthy design process. We particularly pride ourselves on our productive collaborations with a wide range of outstanding architects both regionally and nationally.
The Spotsylvania Greenways Initiative (SGI) was founded by local citizens, with the support of LDP and the MillionMile Greenway, to locate, preserve and create greenways in Spotsylvania County. Over the last 2 years, SGI has grown tremendously and continues to focus on several initiatives. A successful 2010 saw the opening of SGI’s first trail, the Salamander Loop of the Ni River Trail, and the creation of its first Friends of the Trail program to keep “the Loop” in tip-top condition. In 2011, SGI continues with its next project—the extension of the Salamander Loop to Patriot Park and the YMCA. Including the trails in Patriot Park, this extension will provide a walking, hiking, and mountain biking trail with a round trip length of 12 miles—the longest such trail in County staff to date. SGI is also working with the County to define a conceptual path for a biking trail along the route of the Virginia Central Rail Trail, a historically significant route that extends 20 miles west from the City of Fredericksburg to Orange County. The Board of Supervisors recently unanimously approved the County Trailways Plan, a thorough and visionary document that will guide SGI’s implementation efforts for the next 25 years, resulting in 100 new miles of trails in the County! If you wish to volunteer in support of increased outdoor recreation and trail usage within the County, check out SGI’s website at www.spotsylvaniagreenways.org or become a fan on their Facebook page.