New Bern Streetscapes

New Bern, NC

Prior to joining Rivers, Senior Landscape Architect Project Manager, Allison Platt worked with the City of New Bern over the past 25 years as a Landscape Architect Consultant implementing streetscapes and open spaces throughout the downtown area.  Improvements included six blocks of streetscape, a pocket park (James Reed Lane), Union Point Park, the Broad Street Corridor, and more recently three parks designed to connect downtown streets to the waterfront promenade that include sculptures purchased for the City.   

The City has worked steadily at implementation over the years, resulting in an attractive and cohesive downtown.  The streetscape design set the theme for downtown improvements, and helped encourage private investors to renovate existing buildings and build new ones.   

The design for the downtown streetscape includes red brick banding surrounding fields of specially-designed hexagonal concrete pavers in a beige color.  The sidewalks are complemented by traditional iron pedestrian lights, benches, tree grates and trash receptacles. The trees chosen were Zelkovas, which are upright in form to provide views to the storefronts and which are thriving in the narrow area available (10-1/2' sidewalks).