Future La Center roundabouts will have ‘organic, natural’ look

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LA CENTER – As the Cowlitz Indian Tribe moves forward with plans to build a cultural center, casino and potential hotel on its new reservation land near La Center, officials from that city are meeting with the tribe’s landscape designers to nail down a cohesive look to greet visitors entering either La Center or the reservation from Interstate 5.

On June 23, the La Center City Council held a work session with landscape architects from Lifescapes International, Inc. The tribe hired the design firm to work on the casino’s landscape design, as well as the traffic roundabouts that will be built on either side of the interstate to accommodate increased traffic driving to and from the proposed Cowlitz casino.

“We want to take the ideas that we’re working on for the casino – a sort of burnished, organic, natural, but maybe a little contemporary – and bleed it into the landscape (on the traffic roundabouts), so that they become a gateway that celebrates the town as much as the casino,” Mike Meyers, Lifescape’s principal landscape architect on the Cowlitz project. “We want the materials and the landscape to say, ‘Welcome, you’re home.’”

The Newport Beach, CA-based Lifescapes International has worked with a host of casinos and high-end resorts, including the iconic Bellagio Casino and modern, desert-inspired Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

On June 23, the designers unveiled their first ideas for the La Center roundabouts and said they wanted to have clusters of evergreens, mixed with flowering and deciduous trees for color in the spring and fall, to tie together the entire area around the I-5 junction. Inside the roundabouts, which will be installed on either side of the La Center I-5 overpass, the designers envision signs made from natural materials – possibly river rock found in nearby rivers – nestled in a bed of greenery.

“The roundabouts will be the jewels of this whole package,” Meyers said. “We will use native plants … and we strongly believe that this should look organic, not contrived.”

The designers showed city councilors a few of their preliminary sketches for a “Welcome to La Center” sign, which would be placed in the roundabouts facing visitors exiting I-5 and heading toward the town. Their vision includes a burnished metal sign with cutouts depicting images from La Center’s past and present – loggers, sternwheelers, boats, kayakers – and a “Welcome to La Center” cutout. The sign would be backlit to give a feeling of warmth, Meyers said. Behind the sign, the designers show evergreen trees. Beside it, a swooping wall of river rock, designed to look like a wave or maybe the bow of a native Cowlitz canoe.



“We want these shape to mimic the water, the river,” Meyers said. “And it would be backlit, for a soft, warm feel.”

After the presentation, La Center councilors expressed their appreciation for the organic, natural designs and said they liked the preliminary sketches.

Councilor Al Luiz said he liked the concept, but didn’t want the roundabout designs leading into the city to fully mimic the casino’s proposed design.

“I don’t want the entrance to our town to look like the entrance to the casino,” Luiz said. “It needs to be complementary, but not a replica.”

Meyers agreed, and said his firm’s desire was to see a cohesive design that could tie the two areas – the reservation land to the west of the interstate and the town of La Center on the east – together in a way that utilized organic, native, natural materials and plants.

Work on the roundabouts, as well as on the new I-5 exits and overpass bridge, could begin as early as 2016. Despite legal challenges to the proposed gaming facility, the Cowlitz tribe hopes to begin construction on the proposed 134,000-square-feet casino by the end of this year.