Cottage Grove Regional Park, Lower Landing Trailhead

Cottage Grove Ravine Regional Park is a 522 acre park located in the southern part of Washington County. This park has steep ravines and rolling hills, includes Ravine Lake, and hosts pristine opportunities for hiking, fishing, cross-country skiing, picnicking, as well as many other outdoor activities.

The new Lower Landing Facility is just over 6,000 SF and features a warming lobby, parks and recreation office, a rentable multipurpose space with kitchenette, equitable restrooms, park storage and a covered picnic area. The site design includes rerouting the park’s ski trail to further activate the building as well as adding two exterior gathering spaces that orient park visitors to the trail.

The new Trailhead Building features Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), and is the first installation of this mass timber product in the state of Minnesota. The wood framing sequesters carbon and promotes the client’s sustainability goals. The innovative design takes advantage of the two-way spanning capabilities of CLT to form a thin cantilevered profile around the roof edge of the building without the supplemental members that would have been necessary with conventional wood decking.

Careful coordination with other disciplines allowed electrical work to be integrated with the roof to provide concealed conduit within the exposed structure. Lighting conduit is slotted into the top surface of the CLT, and all this was done in the shop prior to installation. The entire 6,000 SF roof was installed in just over one day and the entire mass timber structure was built in just one week.