The park’s gently sloping lawn and grove of trees (above) contrast with its still largely industrial setting (top). Photo © Peter Vanderwarker, click to enlarge.

Within the raised back portion, the architects inserted the bike amenities, topped by what they call the “perch,” reached via a gently sloping accessible ramp. “It is a place you go to get off the street that feels like a treehouse,” Manfredi says. It offers a view of the looming Hood brick smokestack—a landmark of the Charlestown neighborhood. The front, a lawn that slopes down to a stage, can function as both an amphitheater and a village green.

A wood-clad pavilion housing bike parking and a repair shop has been inserted under the “perch.” Photo © Peter Vanderwarker

Offshoots has carefully chosen plant materials to work in tandem with the architecture and create a diverse ecosystem, to reduce health hazards. For the grove of trees, the designers selected wind-resistant species such as quaking aspen and northern bayberry, whose waxy, “hairy” foliage captures air pollution, says Kate Kennen, a landscape architect and Offshoots’ founder. Also on the park’s west side, they created what they call a “wet thicket,” to soak up water contaminants—a mix of deep-rooted poplar, willow, and native dogwood. At the site’s eastern perimeter, Kennen’s team created a bioswale to collect and filter stormwater; it incorporates salt-tolerant native coastal vegetation that removes nitrogen and phosphorus, including swamp white oak, switch grass, blue flag iris, and native sedges and sweetgale. Throughout, Offshoots implemented sediment-management strategies.

For now, with much of the surrounding mixed-use development still to come, the park feels “otherworldly,” says Manfredi. But soon, it will become part of the fabric of the neighborhood. “We see the Hood Bike Park as a little catalyst for change,” says Kennen. Once the master plan is built out, she predicts, the park will be “a gem in the middle of it all.”