SE Group had a strong showing at the 2023 Vermont Public Places Awards ceremony in May, taking home 3 of the 7 awards available.

Creating public spaces that enrich communities through connections to the outdoors is the foundation of SE Group’s work. That’s why we are particularly proud of these awards, which recognize a wide variety of project-types that promote public uses and benefits here in the backyard of our Burlington office. The VT Public Spaces Awards are hosted every other year by the Vermont Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Vermont Planners Association, the Vermont Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the Vermont Urban and Community Forest Program.

This year’s honorees included:

• Missisquoi Valley Rail Trails Marketing, Branding, & Wayfinding Project (Honor Award), which aimed to increase trail awareness for both local residents and potential visitors, enhance wayfinding and trail information, and better connect trail activity to local businesses for the popular MVRT trail. Key project deliverables included new a logo/branding guide, a redesigned website, a signage master plan, trail maps, and an interactive mobile app. The Path Less Pedaled also produced a video to explain the project and highlight this excellent recreational resource – be sure to check it out!
• The Kingdom Trails Network Capacity Study (Honor Award), a year-long planning process intended to address issues surrounding the capacity of the internationally renowned Kingdom Trails network and enhance the network’s positive impact on host communities and private landowners.
• Founder’s Hall and Rowland Courtyard at Burr & Burton Academy (Merit Award), which transforms the school campus by creating a new academic center and a central outdoor courtyard for the school community.  The courtyard successfully ties the knot amongst the upper campus buildings, celebrates the local history using marble from the Dorset Quarry as a key design element, and emphasizes green infrastructure for stormwater treatment as an educational opportunity.  The courtyard was designed to create spaces for large events and more intimately scaled spaces for smaller gatherings and outdoor lectures.  The project is a win-win as it delivers great awareness to the school community about prioritizing “green” public space over a parking lot. This project was designed in collaboration with KATO and ZGF Architects.

SE Group is proud to be a part of a team that recently won Premier Hospitality Magazine‘s 2022 Hospitality Design Award for ‘Best Event Space’ for the Rosebrook Lodge at Omni Hotels & Resorts’ Bretton Woods ski area at Mt. Washington. The 16,500 square foot lodge, which officially opened at the end of 2020, is perched near the top of the mountain, offering spectacular views across the Presidential Range. Skiers and hikers can easily access the year-round lodge via the Skyway Gondola, which SE Group also designed!

SE Group’s teams collaborated to ensure the lodge fit seamlessly within the larger Bretton Woods ecosystem, in addition to designing all of the plaza and terrace spaces. Our project partners included Bull Stockwell Allen (building design), TruexCullins Architecture + Interior Design (interior design), Horizons Engineering (civil engineering), and MWHarris Lighting Studio (light design). Congrats to all of the partners on this impressive space!

You can read more about the award in Premier Hospitality’s fall feature.  The next time you visit Mount Washington, make sure to get a meal at the Switchback Grille and enjoy this amazing setting!

On Saturday, December 17 2022, Palisades Tahoe officially opened the Base to Base Gondola, which connects Palisades Olympic Valley with Alpine Meadows. The new combined area makes Palisades Tahoe the largest resort in California, and the third largest in North America.  You can read about the gondola’s opening in the Tahoe Daily Tribune’s article.

SE Group is proud to have led the mountain planning and NEPA environmental analysis for this groundbreaking project, alongside Leitner-Poma Of America (lift design and engineering), Ascent Environmental (CEQA environmental analysis), Psomas (civil engineering), DOA Architecture (structure design), and RRC Associates (market research). During the course of this nearly decade-long project, SE Group analyzed more than 40 scenarios to connect the two valleys, ensuring a solution that was both environmentally sensitive and economically viable.

The benefits of the Base to Base Gondola are many, but crucially 1) it takes cars off of the chronically congested Highway 89; 2) it improves accessibility to the excellent beginner terrain at Alpine Meadows; and 3) it links the Alpine Meadows terrain to the robust accommodation options at Palisades Olympic Valley.

SE Group’s Minnesota Discovery Center Master Plan project has received the Vermont Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ (VTASLA) 2022 Award of Excellence for Planning, Research, and Analysis, the competition’s highest honor. The biennial Awards Program honors works in landscape architectural design, planning, communications, or research completed by members of VTASLA or for projects completed within Vermont by members of out-of-state American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) members. The awards were judged by an impartial jury of five landscape architects from the Alabama ASLA Chapter.

The Minnesota Discovery Center is a nonprofit museum and event complex in Chisholm, Minnesota that tells the story of the region’s mining history. SE Group was hired to develop a plan to reinvigorate the Center’s amenities and capitalize on the region’s shift to an outdoor recreation economy – while staying true to their original mission.

Senior Landscape Architect Patrick Olstad and Senior Recreation Planner Andrew Pollak-Bruce, CPRP led the master planning process. The result was a strong demonstration of SE Group’s multidisciplinary team collaboration, delivering a site-specific design that promotes a more engaging and cohesive family-friendly experience, with a visual character rooted in the local landscape. With a focus on revenue generation opportunities, the plan also includes financial modeling and implementation recommendations to support the long-term financial sustainability of the Center.

For more information on this year’s VTASLA winners, please visit their Awards page.

SE Group is honored to receive awards for both the Project of the Year and Plan of the Year by the Vermont Planners Association.

Project of the Year: The City of South Burlington’s Market Street Reconstruction Project
This $21M streetscape design project, which began in 2012, was recently completed in 2019. The street is the cornerstone of the City Center project. With colorful perennial plantings, permeable brick pavers and generous sidewalks, the stage has been set for an attractive mixed-use center. A “stormwater park” with native plantings and public art provides a relaxing space away from traffic, while also supporting wildlife such as amphibians and songbirds. SE Group’s involvement has spanned the entire 7-year period—from early conceptual work to detailed streetscape design and construction review. 

Plan of the Year: Enosburg Falls Vital Village Master Plan
The Vital Village Master Plan promotes the economic development and community health for the Town of Enosburg Falls, VT.  Key concepts of the plan explored streetscape and community enhancements supporting complete streets, access management, improved multi-modal connections, beautification, wayfinding, and storefront/façade enhancements. Innovative public engagement strategies were central to the plan’s development. Technology-based formats like virtual village walking tours delivered through an engaging StoryMap were combined with simple “meet people where they are” grassroots workshops. Notably, one public event in the village center utilized the talents of local artists to complete a crosswalk, streetscape, and public art pop-up demonstration project. The resulting Master Plan provides an actionable implementation strategy—identifying development opportunities around the recreation tourism economy, an improved pedestrian-friendly streetscape, and a unified community identity.

A recent article on the continuing efforts in Enosburg, and the community’s resiliency even during COVID-19, was featured on Vermont Public Radio.

Project partners and community members joined SE Group recreation and trail planners, Drew Pollak-Bruce and Liz Grades, and Russ Roca from The Path Less Pedaled on a discovery ride and trail audit along the 26-mile Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail. Along with the trail ride, the event included engagement sessions to gather feedback and input from the community.

Many thanks to Russ for producing a fantastic video which showcases the scenic beauty of the trail, introduces the planning team and project, and shares the excitement around trail planning.

For more information on this project or recreation/trails planning, contact Drew Pollak-Bruce.

Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Brian Ferebee honored employees, partners, and volunteers for their 2018 contributions and successes during the annual Regional Forester’s Awards ceremony on April 4, 2019. SE Group team members Travis Beck, Ash Smith and Scott Prior were in attendance to receive an Innovation award. This award acknowledged the accomplishments of the team in meeting resource obligations, expanding community connections and partnerships with ski area partners, and for developing innovative ways to work more efficiently and effectively as part of an agency-wide effort to improve processes associated with environmental analysis and decision-making.

For more information on SE Group’s Environmental Services, contact Travis Beck.

The Vermont Public Places Awards program recognizes special public spaces, the corridors that connect them, or networks of public spaces which have been defined or enriched by planning or design, as well as regulations that promote positive public uses and benefits.

Vermont Town Forest Recreation Planning Project | Honor Award
SE Group worked with VT Urban & Community Forestry Program (VT UCF) and an interagency working group to engage 10 Vermont communities in a robust planning process to develop action-based town forest recreation plans. A key outcome of the project was the development of the Vermont Town Forest Recreation Planning Toolkit, which provides guidance documents, designs, case studies, best practices, and standards that empower any town to complete  the planning process on their own.

Underwood Park Master Plan | Merit Award
SE Group worked with the City of South Burlington to develop a master plan for the recently acquired Underwood Park. The innovative plan honors the legacy of the site while also addressing the communities needs for recreation, natural resource protection and restoration, and community events. Not every city park holds the potential for both working farm fields and a community event space in one package, and the SE Group was honored to work with the community to craft such a unique vision.

For information on either of these projects contact Drew Pollak-Bruce.

SE Group is particularly proud to share these awards with the Town of Chester. Through the efforts of the project’s steering committee and municipal staff, the Town worked diligently to assure the development of a plan that recognized the important historic character of this quintessential Vermont village and emphasized the value of bringing the community together.

This plan has set a new bar for implementation. From the onset, a major focus of SE Group’s efforts was to identify specific and actionable initiatives that advanced the broad vision the Master Plan and supported momentum. In just the past few months the Town has moved forward with signage and wayfinding efforts, is reviewing its land use code to better support historic resources, and is developing a new pocket park. The Town has also recently secured a Transportation Assistance Program grant to design and implement a new pedestrian connection between the Chester Depot and Main Street. Each of these initiatives was fostered in the Master Plan.

Chester is on the move and SE Group couldn’t be more excited for this terrific community!

Learn more about the plan by visiting the portfolio page.