Berkley Riverfront Park Path

Public park pathway

Pathway and landscape lighting for one of Kansas City's most-used public spaces. Built to handle the elements, the foot traffic, and the river breeze.

What ThreeCo did

• Pathway lighting
• Landscape lighting
• Built for the weather, the foot traffic and the wind off the river

On the Berkley Riverfront Park Path in Kansas City, Missouri, ThreeCo did the pathway and landscape lighting for one of the city's most-used public spaces, built to handle the elements, the foot traffic and the wind off the river. It is the example on our site of what lighting a public path involves, and the photos below show the path along the riverfront at dusk and after dark.

What a public riverside path asks of its lighting

A park path is used by people the owner will never meet: walkers after work, runners at first light, families on a summer evening, cyclists passing through. The lighting has to make the whole length of the path feel safe to use, show the edges and the surface clearly, and do it every night without anybody looking after it.

Along a river it also has to live in a harder place than most outdoor lighting. The wind off the water is steady and gusty, the ground can be wet for long stretches, and freeze and thaw work on every base and every buried connection through the winter.

Built for the weather and the wind

Outdoor fixtures on a public path need to be rated for wet locations, and the connections below ground need to stay dry for years, not just through the first inspection. Poles and their bases have to be set to stand up to the wind they will actually see on that site, which is more than a sheltered parking lot sees. Underground runs are buried to the depth code requires for the wiring method, and the inspection usually happens before the trench is closed so that depth can be checked.

Built for the foot traffic

A busy path means many people pass every fixture every day. Fixtures and access points need to be hard to damage and hard to tamper with, and the light should fall on the path itself rather than into people's eyes. Even light matters more than bright light: a path lit by a few very bright fixtures has dark gaps between them, while evenly spaced fixtures light the whole walk so the eye never has to adjust.

Public lighting is usually switched automatically, by a photocell, a time clock or both, so it comes on at dusk without anybody remembering to turn it on.

What the photos show

The photos on this page show the riverside walkway at dusk and after dark: post-top light poles spaced along the path, many of them carrying Kansas City banners, with the river and its bridges behind; a light beside an interpretive sign at the water's edge; a close view of a lit post-top LED head against the evening sky; and wall-mounted lights inside a covered steel-mesh walkway.

Lighting a path, a campus or public grounds?

Whether it is a park trail, the walks across a campus, a church's grounds or the route from a parking lot to the front door, tell Watt, our AI assistant, where the property is and what you want lit (the chat on this page), or call (816) 730-9100. ThreeCo works on both the Missouri and Kansas sides of the Kansas City metro, and subcontracts for general contractors carrying public jobs. Our CEO, Bob DeFries, whose background is in electrical engineering and architectural design, lays out outdoor lighting, and Jason Strange, our COO and Master Electrician, signs off on every job.