Boats to Bikes: How to Bring your Community Plan to Life!
Cities of Rock Hill, SC and Virginia Beach, VA
Population: 66,154 and 440,000

Time: Thursday April 19 - 3:15-4:30pm

City of Rock Hill, SC: Along the banks of the scenic Catawba River, a new era of commerce is in the works. A joint effort between the City of Rock Hill and a development partner, Greens of Rock Hill, has resulted in the engagement of a unique brownfields redevelopment opportunity called Riverwalk. The Riverwalk project is located on more than 1,000 acres that once housed the largest cellulose acetate manufacturing operation in the United States. This public/private partnership worked together on the site’s environmental remediation and created the design of the new mixed-use development. This project uses a truly innovative funding model that largely alleviated risks to the City of Rock Hill and its taxpayers. This coupled with the decision to locate the City’s new Rock Hill Outdoor Center, also known as “The ROC”, in the project area has returned this property back into an asset for the community.

City of Virginia Beach, VA: The twenty-year Aquarium & Owls Creek Master Plan programmed 1,200 acres of land surrounding the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center including adjacent outdoor recreational land and facilities with substantial frontage along beautiful Owls Creek and Lake Rudee in Virginia Beach, VA. Potential land uses share a common theme for inspiring conservation of shoreline and marine environments, and benefit the community in social and economic ways. The City of Virginia Beach Department of Parks and Recreation Open Space Preservation Fund and the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center Foundation forged a unique public-private partnership which funded the process. The international master planning firm of EDSA, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, was contracted to work with the plan’s committees and the community in the adoption of this exciting plan by fall 2011. This approach is unique because “living” committees will coordinate the master planning effort, and propose to continue their work through the Plan’s 20-year implementation. At the heart of the master planning effort is Owls Creek, the unique water body extending landward from the Atlantic Ocean, the only such direct access in the developed Commonwealth of Virginia. The webpage and the related links explain the master planning process: www.vbgov.com/owlscreekplan.

Participants will learn how to:
• Empower stakeholders to breathe life into your community plan
• Serve as a model for leveraging public assets in order to stimulate private investment in research and development
• Partner to co-produce needed community services
• Develop creative financing mechanisms to achieve project success