Work on Nine Mile Run in Frick Park is scheduled to continue through the winter. Click photo for larger image. More Coverage: Fishing Notebook: Fly tying demonstrations

Work will continue through the winter on Nine Mile Run in Frick Park as the contractor heads into the final leg of the $7.7 million stream restoration.

Sometime in January, Meadville Land Services will begin installing two-ton boulder rock in the stream to control washouts and create the sort of habitat that could one day support stocked trout, according to Nine Mile Run Watershed Association executive director Marijke Hecht.

The first half of the 2.2 mile run, from Braddock Ave. to Commercial Road, has been reconfigured, and its newly meandering banks and adjacent floodplains planted with thousands of native trees, shrubs and other vegetation to replace invasive species removed from the area. Saplings have been wrapped to protect them from a burgeoning population of foraging deer, Hecht said.

The second half of the run, from Commercial to the Monongahela River, will meander less, but will be excavated in places and filled with rock to create the riffle-pool sequence ideal for trout and other aquatic life. By late next spring, a team of artists and engineers will present design schematics for a new green gateway to the park at Braddock Ave., where the run first sees daylight and the Braddock hiking trail begins. Last weekend, at the nearby Center for Creative Play on Braddock Ave., water resources engineer Tom Cahill and landscape architects from as far as Germany met with watershed residents for their ideas for transforming the two-acre eyesore into functional green space.

The challenge is to manage and clean storm water that now rushes uncontrolled through a broken-down culvert into the run, eroding the stream bank and depositing trash.

"Our cities can only survive if we re-connect people to their environment," said Gerhard Hauber of Atelier Dreiseitl, a Uberlingen, Germany-based landscape architectural firm specializing in water and recruited for the gateway project. "You can't create a Rocky Mountain stream in the middle of the city, but you can make a site like this something people are proud of, something where beauty is balanced with function."

That could include planting a "green" roof -- about five inches of sedum, a self-spreading succulent that would filter and contain rain water -- on the Center for Creative Play beside the stream, and replacing some of the center's parking lot with native vegetation and trees.

"In wooded areas, you have very little runoff," Cahill said. "As an added benefit, trees gobble up carbon dioxide, which is another big problem in urban areas."

Cahill sees the gateway project as part of a global trend toward returning watersheds to sustainable environments, where pipes and pavement take a backseat to natural resources and ecologically responsible practices. Some, such as the 500 rain barrels the watershed association has distributed in Swissvale, Edgewood, Wilkinsburg, Regent Square, Penn Hills, Point Breeze and the east end of Pittsburgh, recycle ideas from past centuries. Others, including porous pavement that allows water to soak in rather than run off, are brand new.

The more than 100 people who took part in the gateway workshop came up with some of the same ideas the pros favor as well as few of their own, including a waterfall and cistern.

Hauber said he hadn't thought of a cistern, but loved the concept. "I'm going crazy now, thinking how can I make this work," he said. Much will depend on fundraising for construction, which could begin within three years, said Hecht, whose organization hosted the workshop and raised $100,000 for the design phase. Landscape architects Rolf Sauer and Partners of Philadelphia are part of the creative team.

Cahill said the completed site will serve as a model not just for other projects but for homeowners looking for ideas for their own property. What is needed, he said, is a cultural shift away from manicured lawns to native grasses and other more sustainable plantings, since storm water management is a community responsibility.

Regent Square residents Sheileen McLaughlin and Michael Flanagan agree. Both are members of the watershed association and attended the design workshop.

"They've given us a rain barrel and planted trees on our property. How could we not be here?" said McLaughlin, a professional dog-walker who uses Frick Park daily.

At 600 acres, Frick Park is the largest of the city's four major parks. While it attracts hikers and mountain bikers to its trails, it also offers a wealth of nature, which the Nine Mile restoration continues to enhance. Hecht said the watershed includes 250 plant species, 22 species of mammals, 189 types of birds and 29 different reptiles and amphibians.