Sidney’s Visioning Process with The Nature Conservancy
In 2021-2022 River Street conducted an intensive community visioning process in Sidney with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the world’s largest conservation NGO as partner and funder. The goal was to re-vision Sidney’s 2014 Managed Retreat program, engaging the public in deciding how to use new open space that includes over 100 parcels of bought out land along Sidney’s Susquehanna riverfront. The project was designed to engage hard-to-reach stakeholders, provide national peer to peer networking and establish models of how working with nature creates economic, social and environmental benefits. The resulting toolkit of case studies, best practices, graphics, illustrations, presentations and webinars will be a resource for communities nationwide who are considering climate adaptation through managed retreat. See www.resilient-sidney.com for more detail.
Throughout the planning process, the community convened to identify an updated consensus vision for how to move ahead with downtown revitalization, resilient outdoor recreation projects and open space development and management. Three online workshops and multiple focus groups and interviews, self-guided walking tours and in-person events were undertaken as part of the planning process. An open house was held in May 2022 to review all the Resilient Sidney initiatives, which included Sidney’s proposal for CFA funding and the 2022 NY Forward program. The Village staff also tabled and conducted outreach at the Sidney Semi-Quincentennial Celebration in June 2022 using graphic boards.
The Resilient Sidney team was committed to hearing all voices and casting a wide net to reach stakeholders. The Village was concerned that the neighborhoods most impacted are home to our oldest and poorest residents with the highest percentage of people living without computer and internet access at home in EJ census tracts. An outreach mailer was sent to every household village wide to introduce the visioning program in Fall 2021 and community engagement was offered online during the pandemic and in-person when possible. A local aerial photographer and drone operator was hired to provide online video footage of the Susquehanna riverfront that gave residents’ an armchair, birds-eye view of the available vacant waterfront and downtown sites.