To improve the experience, the central features of the park’s restoration were realigning its entrances, modernizing the visitor center and reducing the inconveniences for pedestrians.

The designer, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, a landscape architecture firm based in Brooklyn, N.Y., executed its assignment in several phases. First, it worked with two other New York firms, Cooper Robertson and James Carpenter Design Associates, to create an expansive glass entrance to the visitor center in the shape of a crescent moon. It also added 46,000 square feet to the facility to include a museum, movie theater, gift shop and cafe.

The new entrance has room for visitors to wait in the ticket line out of the elements, a departure from the experience at the old entrance, which was accessible through an outdoor ramp at the foot of the arch. The visitor center construction cost $176.4 million, and the reopening is scheduled for July 4.

Second, Valkenburgh Associates lined up the new entrance to face west toward a landscaped pedestrian corridor that extends eight blocks into the central business district. Key features include the Park Over the Highway, a $38.5 million pedestrian plaza that crosses over Interstate 44, as well as Kiener Plaza and Luther Ely Smith Square, both remodeled at a cost of $34.2 million. Before the corridor opened, the interstate blocked the arch from the city for half a century. Now, visitors have a green pathway that extends from the bank of the Mississippi, under the arch and deep into the city center.

Other design elements include new walking paths in the arch’s shadow and a 7.5-acre garden and amphitheater that replace a parking deck on the north end of the park. The $17.5 million open space hosts regular outdoor events, among them concerts organized by the Gateway Arch Foundation and the city’s National Blues Museum, which opened just blocks away last year.