Emma Webb Park

Kinston, North Carolina

Restoration and healing at Kinston’s oldest public park

Emma Webb Park is a Works Progress Administration-era park that over the past decade had fallen into disrepair and disuse. The Emma Webb Park master plan offers a long-term vision to restore Kinston’s oldest public park as a community destination and a model for green infrastructure and environmental education. The plan is the result of a robust public engagement process and a partnership between American Flood Coalition, Kinston Teens and the City of Kinston.

The design team invited the community to share their favorite memories from the park’s 85-year history. Those stories guided the team’s efforts to develop a park master plan and program — with an amphitheater, diverse gathering spaces, water features and interactive nature play — that is inspired by the best moments of its past while serving the needs of the Kinston community and the capacity of the parks department today.

The redesign of Emma Webb Park restores the site’s degraded urban stream channel to create a beautiful site feature while promoting habitat and water quality. The stream restoration is one of many sitewide green infrastructure improvements that will act as demonstration projects in this flood-prone community along the Neuse River, promoting a community-wide conversation about the layered benefits of high-quality park and greenspace systems.

Services Provided: Landscape Architecture, Master Planning, Conceptual Design

Client

American Flood Coalition