The Sequoit Creek Park in Antioch, Illinois, has been awarded an American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of-Illinois Engineering Excellence Honor Award. Sequoit Creek Park occupies a once blighted, dilapidated property in the downtown area. The 4.5-acre site, formerly home to several businesses, had over time become vacant with failing conveyance infrastructure and was “blighted and an eyesore,” according to Village leaders. Fifty years prior, a 102-inch metal culvert was buried to convey a natural creek to make way for commercial development.

In 2016 the culvert in this area began to fail, creating sinkholes throughout. Finally, in 2019, the culvert collapsed completely, impairing creek flow and creating upstream and downstream flooding hazards from Orchard Street to Main Street. In 2020, a comprehensive plan was developed to create Sequoit Creek Park as part of a broader downtown beautification initiative led by The Lakota Group. The core goal was to safely and sustainably restore the creek as an open-natural channel and make it the focus of the new park. Through integrated planning, the project addressed all stakeholder criteria and maximized public investment. We orchestrated the integration of multiple consultant designs into one cohesive set of bid documents, managed the bidding and contract award process, and provided construction administration and observation through to completion.