The chosen site is in Sheffield's Cultural Industries Quarter, close the buildings used by BBC Sheffield and the University Technical College on Shoreham Street. The river was in a channel with vertical sides, with steel beams running over it, before it disappeared into the Shoreham Street culvert. To the north was an area of derelict land, used for car parking, and the area was overgrown. A semi-circular amphitheatre was created, leading down to the river. A chance meeting been the landscape architect Sam Thorn and Paul Gaskell of the Wild Trout Trust near the start of the project led to a rethinking of how the river would be handled, and resulted in it being re-naturalised, rather than beautified. The pocket park has two main functions, for as well as providing public green space within an area of the city which has few such facilities, it is also designed to flood under storm conditions, slowing down the progress of water further downstream. Funding came from the council's City Centre Breathing Spaces programme, the South Yorkshire Forest Partnership, the Environment Agency Local Levy, because of its flood defence aspect, and the European Union under the Interreg IVB SEEDS project, which funded the feasibility study.