PHILMONT RISING

Village of Philmont, Philmont, NY

Proposal 2023
Project 2024
Project Completion Anticipated 2027

Philmont Rising is the civic, environmental transformation of two strategic sites in the Hudson Valley Village of Philmont. With energetic input from the local community and officials through on-site meetings, Zoom discussions, and special events led by the design team, the project provides a highly specific, realizable roadmap for the immediate, conscientious development of both sites, fulfilling their potential as unique, natural, free public amenities of nature, activity, and history.

Summit Lake Park
The project rethinks a key community park making it fully accessible to all, thoroughly engaged with its Summit Lake waterfront, and anchored with a new Community Center/Maker Space building. An existing local street separating the park from the water will be removed along with its attendant walls & guardrail allowing the park to fully connect to the waterfront with new walkways, shore-stabilizing boulder seating, floating fishing & relaxing dock, and a kayak/canoe/boat launch.

The new Community Center entry level is elevated to align with an existing parking lot level, creating a direct accessible route into a fully inclusive facility. A series of north-facing sawtooth skylights wash the upper level's open, flexible space with daylight for community meetings, screenings, lectures, dinners, clean making and classes of all kinds. An open kitchen supports these activities, and a discreet corner lounge provides an intimate, quiet space for reading, small meetings/gatherings, and games.

The area below is captured as a new Maker Space for creative works including ceramics, painting, & woodwork. The space is contiguous with a covered perimeter zone that allows indoor activities to spill outside. This level extends south as an outdoor basketball court/flex surface and connects east to the Lake via a new common lawn. The Lawn will sponsor outdoor classes, activities and large community gatherings, markets, screenings, and events.

An existing community building is restored to its original smaller, linear footprint which both restores parkland and frames the common lawn with modestly scaled concession facilities. A new adventure playground, walking trail, and picnic pavilions area are situated on the upper levels to provide overviews of Summit Lake in a zone that seeks to amplify the natural rocky, wooded characteristics of the site.

Historic Mill Site
Reimaged as a springboard for accessible, exploratory nature trails, the project leverages the site’s status as a municipal parking lot to connect visitors to Philmont’s history and natural surrounds. An existing traffic island at the site’s entry point is joined to the wooded bulk of the site to create a new peninsula planted with a grove of flowering trees that shelter and define a new nature/history plaza, visible from Main Street. The grove extends south providing the lot with a sense of natural embeddedness and separation from adjacent residences to the west.

A massive stone block anchors the plaza, provides seating, and features a large embedded informational graphic mapping out Philmont's historic mills and associated waterways, including the former Aken Mill, Agawamuck Creek sluice, and Mill Pond - all located on this site. Emanating from an adjacent gathering place where visitors can visit historic building foundations is a new double wythe brick ground graphic where visitors can trace the full extent of the old mill building across the site.

Accessible paths and boardwalks slope up to provide overlooks of the Mill Pond area. Seating and graphic panels weave into the landscape a layer of information about the pond and natural surrounds, which are the extended backyard to High Falls Conservation area.

Winner of the 2024 AIA WHV Design Award for design excellence.

Rice+Lipka Architects
Principals: Lyn Rice & Astrid Lipka
Associate: John Diven
Landscape: Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners
Civil, Structural: Proper & O'Leary
Survey: S.Y. Kim Land Surveyor
Cost Estimating: Nasco Construction Services