FBW Executive Director speaks at MWA Conference

This year’s Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance conference designated five civic groups in the metropolitan region as Heroes of the Harbor for the community-designed waterfront plans that they developed. The directors of these groups also served on a panel during the conference entitled Sandy Changed Everything. Or Did It? What community-designed waterfront plans can tell us about the future of the waterfront. Are we listening?

Ron Hine, the Executive Director of the Fund for a Better Waterfront (FBW), was one of the panelists. His introductory remarks in this video provide a concise history of FBW and what made the organization’s waterfront plan so successful.

The four other panelists were Jeanne DuPont, Executive Director of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance in Queens, New York; Chauncy Young, Coordinator, Harlem River Working Group in the Bronx, New York; Katie Ellman, President of Green Shores NYC in Queens, New York and Joseph Della Fave of the Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, New Jersey.

The conference, held aboard the Hornblower Infinity, was entitled Rebuilding Our Waterfront, From the Water In, From the Grassroots up. MWA’s 2014 Waterfront Conference attracted more than 600 waterfront advocates, government officials, scientists, engineers, environmentalists and community activists.