11-Feb-17 – A gold medal and $50,000 could get the Riverwalk season off to a good start.

The 1.25 mile Riverwalk, now stretching from Lake Michigan to Lake Street, is one of five finalists for the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence.

Named for the founder of The Bruner Foundation, a nonprofit organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the national design award “recognizes transformative urban places distinguished by their economic and social contributions to America’s cities,” according to the foundation’s website.

“The Riverwalk represents an extraordinary commitment from the City of Chicago to provide its citizens and visitors with a waterfront experience like nowhere else,” said Gina Ford (left), a landscape architect and principal of Sasaki Associates, Inc., one of the designers of the Riverwalk.

It is awarded every other year. The 2015 Gold medal went to Miller’s Court, a renovated residential and office complex in Baltimore that was in a previous life a tin can manufacturer.

Other finalists include Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in Boston, renovation of 46 historic homes in New Orleans, La Kretz Innovation Campus + Arts District Park in Los Angeles, and SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Four second-place winners will each gets $10,000. The money must be used to enhance the project.

A committee of design and development professionals – along with the mayor of Greenville, South Carolina – will select winners in June after reading award applications, visiting each site, interviewing project participants and community members. A detailed case study of the winning project will be published online and in a book.