A Couple Waterfront Milestones for 2011

May 1:
3oth Anniversary of founding of The Waterfront Center in Washington, D.C. as a non-profit educational entity recognized by the IRS as a tax-deductible organization.

July 1:
Deadline for postmarks on entries into the Waterfront Center's annual "Excellence on the Waterfront" awards program for built projects in nine categories, comprehensive plans, grassroots citizen efforts and student work.


In other news...

Full Speed Ahead for Urban Waterfronts 2011 - "Thirty Years and Counting"

• Program lineup of topics announced on the website: www.waterfrontcenter.org. Persons interested in taking part in the program should e-mail: mail@waterfrontcenter.org and outline what they would contribute to the panel of their choice, their background, etc.

• The Finale Speaker has been selected! Details to be announced.

• The Gala Dinner will be held Friday evening, October 28, at Battery Gardens Restaurant in a private room, with seating limited to 250. All New York area award-winning efforts over the years will be saluted in a special ceremony. Winners of the 2011 "Excellence on the Waterfronts" will receive special recognition and a champagne toast. The committee and special speaker for this honorary dinner has been determined.
  

Short News Stories No. 9

Philly Goes Green
The City of Philadelphia has an ambitious plan to convert fully one third of its asphalt surfaces into green spaces, consisting of wetlands, flood plan restoration, rain barrels, porous concrete and green roofs. The aim is to transform its combined-sewer system. Runoff in this $1.6 billion effort will be filtered with processes mimicking natural systems. The lead force in the program, head of the Watersheds Office in the Water Department, thinks the green approach is more cost effective and sustainable than building underground storage tanks and tunnels. Stream restoration is another component.
Engineering News Record, Dec. 20, 2010.

Saving Fish
A different system of regulating fish catches, going by the name of catch shares, is catching on so to speak in the U.S. Pioneered by New Zealand and British Columbia, and promoted by the Environmental Defense Fund to a skeptical fishing industry, the method has been shown to increase fish populations (by 400 percent over 17 years in a study published in the journal Nature). The key elements are individual accountability and making fishermen the stewards of the fish they depend on. It replaces what's called the command and control approach, where fleets were told when and how to fish, i.e. what the season is and how many pounds could be caught. It led to a virtual fishing derby where boats competed to catch as much as they could, as quickly as they could, and never mind the unwanted fish pulled in accidentally, which died. A catch share system, approved by the Commerce Department, took effect on Jan. 1, 2011, for the Pacific groundfish fishery, covering 90 species and 95 percent of the harvest.
Environmental Defense Fund Special Report, Fall 2010.

Risky But Promising
Even the person in charge of the Treasure Island redevelopment project in San Francisco Bay acknowledges, "It's about as risky a project as there is." Right now 2,000 or so live there but have no school or shops. Also, there's an instability to the island requiring $1.5 billion in improvements including land fill and shoring up a weak sea wall. Plans call for as many as 8,000 homes and a 60-story tower. A major green emphasis will include clustering housing at a planned ferry terminal and trying to limit, but not prohibit, cars. There is to be 300 acres of open space as well as a major mixed-use commercial component. Only a few buildings from the past are to be reused. The most recent past was a Navy base. The Navy agreed in principle to sell it to the city in December 2009, for $55 million, having left in 1997.
San Mateo County Times, January 24, 2010.

Model Map
Anyone looking for an example of a clear, informative harbor map should contact the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Inc. and seek its Waterfront Promenade Walking Map. In a compact, easy-to-read format it calls out the principal downtown waterfront neighborhoods and describes same. The waterfront promenade that links there neighborhoods is delineated and the walking times from place to place are given. Features along the promenade, numbering nine, are called out and the water tax route is also laid out. The map notes that the Baltimore Waterfront Promenade Committee has been at work since 1984 to push for a continuous pedestrian walkway from Locust Point on the south harbor to Canton on the east. They are getting close. www.waterfrontpartnership.org
Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore Inc., 2009.

Rally Big
Not to be outdone by San Francisco's ambitious plans for Treasure Island (above), a developer in Boston plans a $3-billion minicity in the south waterfront (near the site of the Center's Boston conference in 2007). The master plan by Kohn Pederson Fox Associates was approved last fall by the Boston Redevelopment Authority; more approvals are needed. Construction may begin as early as next fall on the first residential towers, each 500,000-square feet. In all there is to be 6.3 million swquare feet of mixed-use development in 22 buildings. Build out of Seaport Square is put at 10 years. Architects also involved are Studio Daniel Libeskind, HOK, CBT Architects and Hacin+Associates.
Engineering News Record, Oct. 18, 2010.

Greenway Grows
The ambitious East Coast Greenway connecting Maine to Florida grew by over 100 miles last year. New segments as large as 55 miles in Maine on the Downeast Sunrise Trial and the 30-mile M-Path/South Dade Greenway in Dade County, Fla., and as small as .05 mile of New York City riverwalk and one mile in Conventry, RI, became part of the network. The Downeast trail now totals 85 miles, beginning at the Canadian border and runs to Ellsworth, Maine, near Acadia National Park. The greenway alliance reports that fully 25 percent of its trails are off road. A presentation at a Center conference on the greenway project was made a number of years ago. For a copy of the alliance newsletter and free trail maps for New Jersey, New York City and Pennsylvania/Delaware, contact info@greenway.org. The East Coast Greenway Alliance is based in Wakefield, RI at 27 B North Road, 02879, 401/789-4625.
East Coast Greenway News, December 2010.

Short News Stories No. 8

Things To Do
The Environmental Protection Agency says that about $300 billion is needed over the next 20 years to clean up the nation's water. That's $192 billion for public wastewater pipes, $64 billion to correct combined sewer overflow problems and $42 billion for stormwater management. The report, out in June, represents an increase of 17 percent from its 2004 report, attributed to better reporting, population growth and better water quality standards.
Engineering News Record, June 2010.

Real Mixed Use
A mixed-use project in downtown Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, features condos next to a sewage treatment plant. Dockside Green has docks over a network of ponds and waterways that circulates wastewater from a nearby underground sewage treatment plant. The Water is used for toilets and on the landscape, reducing residents' water bills. Eventually the project is to contain 2,500 residents plus office and retail. Another innovation is a heating plant using local wood waste to generate gas that heats the units and water. The architect is Busby Perkins and Will. The city's aim is to retain Victoria's working waterfront amid the newer development.
The New York Times, July 7, 2010.

Sponge Park
The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn for years has been a seriously polluted water body, earning it the dubious distinction of landing on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund National Priorities List. There's now a plan to establish new stormwater absorbing parklands along the shore that would remediate rain water and reduce combined sewer overflows. And provide better public access. Initial funding of $185,000 from the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission has been received. The Gowanus Canal Sponge Park is expected to receive another $938,000 from other sources. The park is the idea of Susannah Drake of diandstudio.
WaterWire, newsletter of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, New York City, August 13, 2010.

Thinking Big
At the juncture of the Yangtze, Jiajiang and Qinhuaixin Rivers near Nanjing is to be established a 460-acre "new town." The SWA Group of Houston, landscape architects, planners and urban designers, has been selected to design the undertaking. It is to serve as a new cultural destination for the city, with an art museum, waterfront activities, an "eco-hotel" plus shopping and office space. The brownfield site will be restored using strips of bio film planted at the water's edge on small floating islands to stimulate plants and provide animal habitat. Nanjiang Hexi New Town Development will occupy seven kilometers along the Yangtze.
Engineering News Record, June 28, 2010.

Jury Completes Deliberations

A five-person jury wound up assessments in late July of entries in the Waterfront Center's 23rd annual "Excellence on the Waterfront" awards program. Meeting in Cape May, N.J., the jury picked nine projects, one plan document and three grassroots citizen efforts. The winners will be announced on Nov. 5, 2010, at the Center's annual conference, to be held this year at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Nov. 4 to 6. The Honor Award winners included entries from Australia, Canada, China and England. The jury was led by Fran Hegeler of AECOM in San Francisco. She was joined by Jane Jacobsen of the Confluence Project, Vancouver, Wash.; Jonathan Goldstick of HALCROW, New York; Peter Brink of Norwich, VT., formerly with the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and Dave Mathewson of the Port of Los Angeles. A press release with the winning entries is available, with a moratorium for release of Nov. 5.

Working Waterfront Revisited

At least three states are addressing the issue of how to protect working waterfront enterprises -- such as boatyards, fishing operations and marinas -- from higher valued land uses such as condominiums. Maine, Florida and New Jersey are in the forefront in tackling the issue.

New Jersey, for instance, is considering legislation that would establish the "right to fish." Patterned on the state's "right to farm" law, it would give fishing ports, commercial docks and fish processing plants a presumptive right to go about their business, noisy and/or smelly as it might be. The law, passed by the Assembly and pending in the State Senate as of June 2010, establishes that the daily operations of marine businesses are not a public nuisance.

Case in point: condominium development in Ottens Harbor, Wildwood, pushed out a fishing industry. The state now has six active fishing ports.

As with farms when residential development encroaches, county agricultural development boards would mediate disputes about the working waterfront.

The conflict is not new, although some are just discovering it. The Center's co-directors Ann Breen and Dick Rigby produced a monography in 1985 entitled: Caution: Working Waterfront, The Impact of Change on Marine Enterprises, with assistance from the Design Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Part One discussed four case studies where marine enterprises were threatened. Part Two looked at the other side of the issue, namely promoting public access to working waterfronts.

The displacement cases were:

• The Miami River, where tramp freighter operations and boat yards were endangered by spreading commercial and residential development.
• The central waterfront in Portland, Maine, where condominiums threatened to drive off the fishing fleet based here.
• Marineship in Sausalito, Calif., a funky houseboat community that a nearby office development protested.
• Henry Pier on Lake Union in Seattle, where a boat repair operation was in fact driven away by commercial pressures. Interesting here is that a state regulatory agency had to choose between the working waterfront and public access. It picked access.

In the report we cautioned waterfront businesses to clean up a bit as the public was increasingly interested in waterfronts. And that market forces were fully capable of consuming most boatyards, tug firm bases, fishing operations, gear shops and the like.

"In Waterfront Values, A Rising Tide" reported The New York Times on June 6, as if to confirm the threat. Talking about Ocean and Monmouth Counties in New Jersey, the paper reported that for all properties touching water, the average sale price in early 2010 was 35 percent above the previous year. Overall, general real estate in the counties was up just 6.7 percent.

"The numbers are powerful - overwhelming," a real estate analyst was quoted.

Urban Waterfronts 2010 Keynote Speaker

BALTIMORE, MD. - Keynote speaker at the Waterfront Center's annual conference here will be Bruce Katz, vice president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and founding director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.

He will present on Friday morning, November 5, and will address the theme of Urban Waterfronts 2010: "The City Resurgent." In a profile appearing in a recent issue of The Next American City, Katz is described this way: "He's made a name for himself by condensing Big Ideas about the potential of cities into easily digested sound bites that policymakers once paid lip service to but now are actually speaking." He was also called "America's oracle for cities."

Buttressing the idea that cities are experiencing a comeback are recent U.S. Census estimates. Among cities shown to have grown between 2000 - 2008 are Atlanta, 416,474 to 537,958; Boston, 589,141 to 609,023; Columbus, Ohio, 711,470 to 754,885; Los Angeles, 3,694,820 to 3,833,995; New York, 8,008,275 to 8,363,710, and Washington, D.C., 579,112 to 591,833.

The policy program Mr. Katz runs at Brookings seeks to redefine the challenges facing cities and metropolitan areas by publishing cutting-edge research on major demographic, market, development and government trends. He focuses particularly on reforms that promote the revitalization of central cities and older suburbs and enhance the ability of these places to attract, retrain and grow the middle class.

The Waterfront Center's 28th annual international conference will feature 33 presenters in four simultaneous tracks grouped under economic development, design and policy issues. Included are panels on Innovative Planning, International Updates, Waterfront Zoning and Community Boating. The conference is preceded by an all-day workshop on the Baltimore waterfront aboard the Lady Sarah (extra feed required).


For more information, see the Center's Web site: www.waterfrontcenter.org/conference. For a copy of the conference program, e-mail mail@waterfrontcenter.org.

Short News Stories No. 7

Treasure Island Makeover
The 400-acre landfill site in the middle of San Francisco Bay is about to undergo a massive makeover in one of the largest waterfront projects around. The U.S. Navy agreed recently to sell most of it and a portion of the natural Yerba Buena Island for $55 million to San Francisco. From the present 2,000 residents ambitious plans call for an "eco-savvy" (if is SF after all) neighborhood of 20,000. There are also plans for a waterfront hotel, retail center and something called a tourist draw. First must come major remediation to shore up the sea wall and build up the soil. Then comes infrastructure. The initial tab is $1.5 billion.
San Mateo County Times, January 24, 2010.

Working Waterfronts Wakeup
Another state has joined pioneers Maine and Florida in trying to save elements of the working waterfront from being developed out of existence. Now we don't want to appear smug about this, but we did put together a monography in 1984 entitled "Caution: Working Waterfront - The Impact of Change on Marine Enterprises." We sounded the alarm that small marine buisinesses could easily be swept away. North Carolina put up $20-million for the Waterfront Access and Marine Industry Fund. But, so far it was a one-time action in 2008 with no follow-up in 2009. Florida provides financing and technical assistance to revitalize working waterfront installations (boatyards, marinas, and the like) and Maine has a Working Waterfront Access Program with an emphasis on the fishing industry.
Lisa Stifler, Research Associate, Community and Economic Development Program, University of North Carolina, January 6, 2010.

Big Dig West
Four teams have picked to compete for the $1 billion tunnel in Seattle to replace the damaged Alaskan Way viaduct. Washington State Department of Transportation will make the award in late 2010. The replacement is to be a four-lane, two-mile-long double-deck tunnel, taking an estimated five years. Competing are Dragdos USA, Florida and HNTB, Kansas; S. A. Healy Co., Illinois, FCC Construction, Spain, Parsons Transportation Group, Washington, D.C. and Halcrow Inc., N.Y.; Vinci Construction, France, Traylor Bros Inc., Indiana, Skanska USA, N.Y. and Arup, U.K., and Kiewit Pacific Co., Washington, Bilfinger Berger Germany and AECOM Technology Corp., N.Y. With the viaduct gone, the opportunity is presented to totally redo the central Seattle waterfront. Stay tuned.
Engineering News Record, December 28, 2009.

Walkability Works
You know you're in the U.S. when people make a big deal out of walkable neighborhoods. Where you could, the example states, walk to a bookstore (while we still have them!) and then to an ice cream shop and kids could walk to school unescorted. CEO's For Cities has published a study of home values in the 40 largest cities and gave them a Walk Score. Housing with a high Walk Score commanded a premium, as much as $30,000 for the same property in Charlotte, San Francisco and Sacramento. And the winner is: our own Washington, D.C., where the White House neighborhood scores a 97.
The New York Times, January 10, 2010.