Designing a space to socialize with friends, watch your children splash through water features, and enjoy events on the waterfront

Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park

When Curtis Hixon Hall, Tampa’s first convention hall built in 1965, was demolished in 1993, the site was converted to the original Curtis Hixon Park. However, the older park had few amenities, a poor connection to the river and downtown, and no events or engagement. When the City of Tampa looked to revitalize the park as part of its Riverwalk project, our team was there to help.

Serving as engineer-of-record, we coordinated multiple architectural designs within a common civil design. Our team provided surveying, civil engineering, and transportation engineering for the full park, adjacent streets, and major intersections. This also included railroad crossings, traffic patterns, and the surrounding Glazer Children’s Museum and Tampa Museum of Modern Art. The reimagined park now features a great lawn that slopes gently toward the river with terraced edges. Several diverse spaces for various activities surround this greenspace including shaded pavilions, a step-down amphitheater, interactive play fountains, a large playground, gardens, a dog run, a concession kiosk with restrooms, and a site for a future restaurant.

The unique urban park design includes sustainable, operational features such as irrigation using reclaimed water and a hydrodynamic treatment system that cleans stormwater before it enters the Hillsborough River. This waterfront park now offers the Tampa community aesthetic gathering areas and a flexible event space, breathing new life into the surrounding area.