Astretch of Detroit’s riverfront has been transformed into the 22-acre Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park, a major new public landscape featuring a play garden, water garden, lush green space with spectacular views, and a sports pavilion. Opened in October 2025, the $80 million project advances the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy’s vision of 5.5 miles of continuous public access to the river; the total is now at more than 4.75 miles.
The design emerged from what Detroit Riverfront Conservancy CEO Ryan Sullivan calls a “tremendously inclusive process.” A 21-member Community Activation Team — consisting of Detroiters from a variety of backgrounds — traveled to Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia to gain inspiration from other top-rated parks. The team’s input, along with suggestions from thousands of community members, helped guide the selection of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), the New York-based landscape architecture firm known for creating Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York and Maggie Daley Park in Chicago, to design the space.
Matthew Bird, principal at MVVA, says his team approached the former industrial site as a “blank canvas,” using its flatness as an opportunity to introduce sculpted landforms. Rolling hills reveal vistas in a way that makes the park feel larger than its 22 acres. “Unless you’re standing at the top of the DTE Foundation Summit, you can’t see straight across,” Sullivan says. “The topography becomes a subtle yet powerful part of the experience.”
Nature is woven throughout the park, and is visible in the DTE Foundation Summit’s rolling hills, open lawns, and winding pathways, and in the 2.5-acre Huron-Clinton Metroparks Water Garden. More than 900 trees, along with layers of shrubs, perennials, and grasses, shape a landscape that reveals something new each season, from spring’s flowering cherry walk to the saturated colors of fall.
For the Delta Dental Play Garden, MVVA partnered with Danish playground firm Monstrum — and, most importantly, local children. Youth workshops resulted in clay models, two of which were realized at full scale. “One of them is a fox and the other I call ‘the bird with no wings’; it’s something out of a child’s imagination,” Sullivan says.
The 28,000-square-foot William Davidson Sport House introduces a contrasting architectural presence. The open-air pavilion, framed by 33 steel columns and a 2,000-square-foot skylight, houses two full-size Detroit Pistons basketball courts and functions as a flexible gathering space.
Across its four distinct zones, the park is designed to be a year-round “third place” where visitors can picnic, play, sled, or simply wander among the changing seasonal textures. As Bird puts it, the aim was to create “a place where people feel like they’re escaping a little while still being right in the city.” 
MORE INFORMATION: detroitriverfront.org
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