Town of Union, NY: ReUnion Plan For Community Recovery and Resiliency
Union NY’s ReUnion Project’s Community Plan for Resiliency and Recovery is an innovative best practice-driven, highly collaborative strategy for sustainable waterfront revitalization following two devastating 500+ year floods. Some community members were stuck believing that big ticket (and unsustainable) measures like dredging or widening the River was the silver bullet. A Resiliency and Climate Change workshop, with presentations by recognized leaders addressed these issues head on. A three-day interactive design workshop led by PLACE Alliance New York and New England Environmental offered two open houses drove the message in support of LEED ND Main Street Revitalization, compatible re-densification of neighborhoods and use of green infrastructure to support for a paradigm shift in land use and management and emerging best practices in sustainable development and resiliency.
Through an interactive web-based MindMixer site, visioning workshops, a climate summit, a highly interactive charrette, multiple site and neighborhood specific LEED ND, green infrastructure, and low impact development projects would help to enhance waterfront access and downtown revitalization were developed. The vision for green urbanism and resiliency is already being implemented and will create lasting value in a restored and safer quality of life. The strategy for the Town and its two villages of Johnson City and Endicott is a winner of a NYRCR Rising to the Top Award for Best Regional Collaboration and its priority projects feature prominently in the Southern Tier REDC’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative proposal. The sustainable best practices are already raising the bar for mixed use neighborhood revitalization, attracting positive attention, and driving action and improvement in quality of life.