The Ramble is a 50-acre outdoor public space in downtown Fayetteville, AR with a transect of spaces from wild to urban. Initial project goals were to link the City’s key cultural institutions, which previously had no pedestrian path between them, to create a corridor that showcases and celebrates local arts culture. It will also enhance civic space and serve as a catalyst for additional development and density in the downtown area, increasing bike trails and connections, and improving streets and walkability. Phase 1 of the Ramble connected the Razorback Greenway and the expanded Fayetteville Public Library with accessible pedestrian and bike paths through woods that had previously been impenetrable with invasive species.

The RAMBLE is an integrated high-performance landscape, linking people to previously invisible nature in the heart of the city and restoring a heavily degraded stream and woodland as an accessible amenity for residents and visitors alike.

West Ave runs north-south from the Arts and Design district to Walton Arts Center, and experiences incredible diversity in adjacent development type and pattern and topography / elevation. Entirely new streetscapes were provided with contiguous, safe, well-lit sidewalks, traffic calming measures, completely replaced infrastructure, buried overhead power lines, and a series of bioswales that capture street run off. Each block of the corridor is provided with a unique native street tree planting that nods to the topographic location of the block. Upland, drought tolerant Chinquapin Oaks sit at the South St ridge (without enough run off to support bioswales), while more adaptable Black Gum and Willow Oak sit on the bioswale and lowland draw blocks.

Tanglewood Creek drains the most urbanized section of the Beaver Watershed, which provides Northwest Arkansas’s drinking water. Nearly all of the downtown of Fayetteville drains to the section of Tanglewood Creek that runs through the center of the Ramble parallel to the Razorback Greenway. The creek was previously mostly invisible from residents, with a large section of the spring fed creek buried under a surface parking lot that was built against incredible community outcry in the 1990s at the corner of Dickson St and West Ave. The springs that feed Tanglewood Creek will be daylighted and highlighted through a Phase 2 urban plaza that will replace the surface parking lot.