Sunset Woods Park Improvements
Highland Park, IL
2024
Nine Acres Made Whole
Sunset Woods Park's southern edge was not broken in one place. It was fragmented across nine acres — aging courts, disconnected paths, amenities that served some users and excluded others, and no clear organization that made the spaces feel like part of the same park. The project set out to fix that without treating each element as its own separate problem.
Client
Highland Park Parks District
Size
9 Ac.
Acknowledgement
Work Completed by the Kanopi Gap team while Employed at LJC Design & Engineering
The design organizes the nine acres as a sequence of connected places rather than a list of improvements. A multi-use basketball and futsal court anchors active recreation. A skate plaza and wheel-friendly plaza give Highland Park's skating and wheeled community dedicated, well-designed space — not a corner of a parking lot, but a designed destination. A game area and native landscape zones add range and texture. Improved pathways and ADA amenities make the full nine acres accessible to the full community.
The public process shaped real decisions, not just the vision statement. Engagement sessions focused on specific questions: how the park should handle lighting, what skating and wheeled activities needed, how recreation spaces should be prioritized relative to each other. Community input moved directly into the design rather than into a report that got shelved.
The work also built on an existing master plan rather than starting from scratch. The design team took the vision the Park District had already developed with the community and tested it against physical conditions, refined it through engagement, and prepared it for construction. Stormwater management, accessibility, lighting, and site furnishings were resolved as one integrated system rather than deferred to separate contracts.
The result is a park edge that works for more people, handles more kinds of recreation, and holds together as a single landscape experience across all nine acres.
