Waterfront Revitalization Assistance Program

Summary

Encouraging and facilitating vibrant waterfronts is an integral part of Historic River Towns of Westchester’s mission to conduct tourism-marketing activities on a regional basis in the river towns.

HRTW’s new initiative, Waterfront Revitalization Assistance Program (WRAP), will help to carry out that mission by strengthening waterfront revitalization resources and collaboration among the river towns.

The Waterfront Revitalization Assistance Program

HRTW has received a grant from the Department of State to implement the Waterfront Revitalization Assistance Program to help the historic river towns to realize their visions for their waterfronts and to strengthen the region’s capacity as a Hudson River waterfront destination. The WRAP program aims to help:

• Provide information and technical assistance to HRTW communities to develop and implement their waterfront revitalization programs;

• Increase participation by HRTW communities in local, regional, and state plans and programs (e.g. the State’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, Westchester County Greenway Compact, Greenway’s Hudson River Water Trail, and the HRTW Signage Program) that will enhance their local waterfront areas;

• Facilitate dialogue among HRTW communities to share information, ideas and implementation techniques for waterfront development projects;

• Strengthen and conserve resources by facilitating resource sharing, e.g. funding proposals, financial resources, volunteer expertise, and professional services for planning, design and implementation of waterfront revitalization;

• Create a regional waterfront network of individuals in the river towns to work with the WRAP program to assist communities in planning and implementing waterfront revitalization projects;

• Strengthen collaboration among HRTW communities, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations to increase availability of financial and technical resources for the region’s waterfronts;

• Provide new perspectives and techniques for dealing with Hudson River waterfront revitalization issues in Westchester County.

In 2005, Historic River Towns of Westchester has hired Dobbs Ferry resident, Charlene Paden, as WRAP Coordinator to implement the WRAP program. During the first year of the WRAP program, Waterfront Resource and Planning Assessments were conducted in each of the thirteen HRTW municipalities, including Irvington, Dobbs Ferry and Hasting-on-Hudson. These assessments will be made available on this web site in the near future.

At a 2005 WRAP workshop at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, preliminary findings of the resource assessments were presented. The PowerPoint presentation focused on a wide range of waterfront related topics including the natural and built environments, planning resources, waterfront development activities and opportunities in each of the waterfront communities. The November 17th, 2005 presentation is available through this link.

In the area of local comprehensive planning, each of the thirteen municipalities have comprehensive plans for their waterfront areas, or are in the process of preparing them. In some cases, these plans are in addition to an LWRP and focus on its implementation. Review of each of the local plans revealed many shared waterfront planning objectives. These include:

• Retain unique community character

• Improve public access

• Preserve and protect resources

• Support water-related activities

• Provide ample parking

• Improve Signage

• Link Downtowns with Waterfronts

• Link RiverWalk

• Link the Region by Water

• Ensure Affordable Housing and Public Space

A discussion among the group of over forty workshop attendees resulted in the addition of two more objectives to the list:

• Encourage transit-oriented development near land and water transportation hubs to avoid sprawl; and

• Find innovative ways to manage traffic in the region.

What was implicitly stated in this list is a set of shared regional waterfront planning objectives that are vitally important for the region as well as for each of the 13 municipalities. The Historic River Towns of Westchester are poised, individually and as a region, to take advantage of a host of opportunities to attain these objectives and strengthen the region’s capacity as a Hudson River waterfront destination. The WRAP program aims to help HRTW communities to take advantage of these opportunities.

The next phase of the WRAP program has focused on development of a regional waterfront revitalization action plan that will work to achieve some or all of these objectives. A second workshop in May 2006 focused on facilitating a dialogue among sub-regional groups in the HRTW region. Over the next few months, Paden will work to continue that dialogue through a series of local, sub-regional and regional meetings to identify priorities for the WRAP action plan. If you are interested in being a part of these discussions, please contact Charlene Paden, WRAP Coordinator, at charlenepaden@mindspring.com.