The City of Federal Heights has issued a Request for Proposals from qualified firms for landscape architecture, architecture, and engineering services to develop a Master Plan for Ruston Park. The City of Federal Heights is proposing a new master plan to guide future developments and improvements in Ruston Park. The estimated budget for this project is $85,000.00, and the project must be completed no later than September 2013. Complete RFP documents are available on the city's website (http://www.fedheights.org) for download in PDF format. The closing date for proposals is 5:00 P.M. local time on July 30, 2012.

The city completed all the elements of our 2004 Ruston Park Master Plan in the fall of 2010 and is looking to guide future development through a new planning horizon. Ruston Park is a 13-acre neighborhood park located in the northern third of Federal Heights on its eastern boundary with the city of Thornton. Large areas of the park were not addressed by the 2004 master plan and are undeveloped. Access to the park is difficult and was also not well addressed in the 2004 master plan.

The goals associated with the proposed master plan for Ruston Park include:

1. Expanding public parking opportunities and ADA access from Zuni Street into the park
2. Improving access to the park from nearby Federal Heights Elementary School
3. Providing safer pedestrian access across Zuni Street for residents who live east of Ruston Park in the City of Thornton
4. Providing easier and safer pedestrian access to the residents of the mobile home communities that are located south of Ruston Park
5. Providing a series of looped trails of variable lengths with distance markers for users who want to keep track of their pace and progress related to their individual fitness goals; these trails should also capture views of interest and meander organically while providing reasonable, but fluctuating grade change
6. Adding recreational facilities and exercise equipment targeted specifically toward improving physical fitness for a wide range of age and ability groups
7. Adding play equipment stations through the park that are specifically targeted toward different age and ability groups, and adjacent comfortable seating areas for accessibility challenged care-givers and guardians
8. Adding more seating, picnic tables, plazas, restroom facilities, shade structures, barbecue stations, and other traditional park amenities to increase use of the park and visibility of users within the park to improve public safety
9. Designing a thoughtful planting plan for functional vegetation within the park focused on shade trees and riparian vegetation to mitigate summer heat, and provide a variety of seasonally changing foliage, fruits, flowers and structurally interesting winter forms
10. Creating a lighting plan for the park to increase safety of park users and decrease vandalism
11. Adding “place-making components” to give the park a unique identity
12. Adding art elements to the park to provide inspiration, beauty and whimsy
13. Protecting and enhancing the sledding hills within the park
14. Adding natural resource interpretation and education related to waterways, native plants and wildlife and how they are important to our region
15. Partnering with the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District to redesign two large stormwater channels to slow control storm surge flows, and function as a naturalistic creek channel and associated wetlands
16. Improving and expanding existing wetlands and restoring riparian habitat at the headwaters of Niver Creek
17. Improving dated irrigation and well water systems
18. Developing a maintenance manual for the proposed structures, vegetation, and water features within the park.