FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

City Partners with WallacePancher Group and West Virginia Botanic Garden to Provide Eco-Park Design in Morgantown Sister City of Xuzhou, China

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - The City of Morgantown is working with WallacePancher Group and the West Virginia Botanic Garden to provide landscape design and master planning of an “Eco-Park” for a national Garden Expo that will be held in the city’s Sister City of Xuzhou, China. 

The Garden Expo is a national event where all the provincial localities in China showcase their landscape and urban development practices. Xuzhou plans to build seven parks in the international zone of the expo, each dedicated to one of their Sister Cities. Morgantown would be one of seven featured cities, and the only one from North America. 

The Garden Expo and its parks will focus on best practice and inspirations on green development, sustainable urban development, diverse city cultures as well as living-friendly landscape and city design. The City of Morgantown will contribute $14,950 to the cost of the design and master plan of the Eco-Park. All elements of the park and facility will be constructed at the expense of Xuzhou’s Bureau of Parks and Urban Development and is scheduled to open in September 2021. 

The current design elements are representative of Morgantown and surrounding West Virginia. It features an inner circle highlighting more urban design elements, a grid of Morgantown’s downtown streets, mural walls, and pedestrian lighting with flower baskets. The urban center transitions to a more rural outer ring, with paths meandering though wooded areas, a fire pit, and rock outcropping. It is tied together with a water feature representing the Mon River and Decker’s Creek.

Through the Sister Cities Commission, the City of Morgantown established a “Sister Cities” relationship with Xuzhou, Quanshan District, in China’s Jiangsu Province in 2016, after holding a “Friendship City” status since 2012.

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View renderings of the design of the Eco-Park here.