Our December 12, 2023 Council work session.

Mr.

Manager, we really do appreciate you bringing just like a uh we've got a lot of stuff here tonight.

Yeah.

So do things.

And I appreciate the uh our early start, three important and timely items, and we'll get right into it.

I'll turn it over to planning director McNamara.

Good evening, everyone, and I'm gonna defer right to our consultant.

This is Rami Diaz with uh Wagner and Ball, and they are completing, we're rounding the bend here on our industrial waterfront study, and we'd like to touch base with you as we move forward with this.

So we'll turn it over to Ramirez.

Thank you, good evening.

Um happy to be back.

Um so we've been working on this for over a little over a year now.

Um looking at the waterfront along the Elizabeth, the southern branch of the Elizabeth River, as well as the creeks and tributaries that feed it.

Um you can see some of the images of what the character is of the river.

Um, the study area here is mostly the the watershed of the the river itself, um, the industrial properties, as well as the adjacent neighborhoods uh along the river.

Um the goals of the study were to look at the economic development potential for the waterfront as well as uh thinking about climate impacts and future challenges to um to this part of the city, um, which is uh most of it is relatively high, um, but there are some areas that are quite low and at risk to future flooding from storm events.

Um so it's a working waterfront, as you know.

There's a lot of interest in the land that you have and the potential for it, um, as well as the new new industries that are coming in, um especially the offshore wind, um which is looking for parcels around this area.

Um so you have a great waterfront, lots of individual parcels.

You don't have one big port like uh Portsmouth or Norfolk.

Um you have a lot of individual users of the waterfront, you've got really great connections to rail and uh the road network, um, as well as draft issues.

So we were looking at all of these together, thinking about the forces of water, groundwater, tidal flooding, sea level rise, all of these together to come up with recommendations, as well as some of the other climate stresses that you're seeing sunny day flooding, standing water, uh, extreme heat, urban heat island effects.

So we're making recommendations about all of these things with the interest of advancing economic development along the water.

Thinking about different types of flooding.

You've got your chronic flooding, which will be areas that will be underwater in the future regularly.

Um, and you have it today in certain places that flood regularly when there's a nor'easter or just a high tide.

Um this impacts many roads in the area, as I'm sure you've heard and know from your residents, um, but we've been mapping that and looking at them specifically and trying to find uh ideas for improving that.

Um we've met with many stakeholders, including uh several of the industries themselves.

We toured sites, um, we met with the community and have had several design charrets and and meetings with the last one at the Portlock uh gallery there to come up with a plan that incorporates uh these these six sort of strategies and it's organized around the reports organized around resilience and adaptation, opportunities and connectivity, corridors and hubs, connected ecologies, community access and amenities, and then highest and best use, and I'll explain quickly what these all are.

So the resilience and adaptation is looking at that uh current flood risk and future flood risk and what can be done to address that.

Some areas along the waterfront can be defended potentially with projects, and some areas we're gonna be have to have to think in the future about how to adapt uh to rising waters.

Um and so we have some strategies and projects uh within the report, like raising certain roads to protect behind the neighborhood, as well as getting dry feet and dry cars uh access.

Um we organized different strategies around um you know different tactics around these strategies of of buffering, so trying to keep cut down the wave action from the water side, um, reserving space for ecology and for um also buffering those storms and then raising and protecting at the edge where possible.

Um and then once you're inside that protection, how do we think about adapting houses?

How do we think about um storing water when it rains uh and and slowing down water as it rains?

Um so this is an example of one of those uh projects that's in the report, which is looking at Bainbridge specifically, and there are segments of it that if you raise them and created some tidal control, you could protect the neighborhoods behind as well as providing better access to the industrial properties at the waterfront.

Um and so these are some diagrams about what that looks like and different elevations over time.

So these challenges will get uh more difficult in the future.

So thinking ahead um how to do this incrementally.

Um the industry and opportunity, we as I said we spoke to many of the businesses to understand what their challenges were.

We also were looking at specific sites that are underutilized or have potential for redevelopment.

And so those are talked about in more in depth in the report and what connection challenges they have to have access back to your infrastructure connectivity points like the interstate or the rail.

Um there at Dominion and investing in those areas in the future.

This other big idea is about connected ecologies.

This is about trying to create corridors throughout the city.

This builds on some of the work that the Hampton Roads PDC did in the past about green infrastructure corridors, but looking at making connected conservation areas that are both there to buffer from storms, also to create areas to store stormwater, but to also buffer the neighborhoods from the industry.

So in instead of just planting one or two trees because you're required to by code, maybe it'd be better to create more of a larger buffer between the neighborhoods.

And you've got some great examples already in the in the area of what this could look like.

Paradise Creek Park is one of the ones that uh we were very inspired by that is a mitigation project.

Um then what we heard a lot from the residents uh is how do you connect to the water?

The city only has a few access points to the water, so we saw the creeks because of the industry.

The industry cover takes up most of that waterfront, but the creeks that connect to the river are those places where you can connect the community to the water.

Um so looking at how you can create a connective trail network as well as some access points to the water.

Um so finally uh kind of vision for the whole waterfront here with the industrial focused more in the deep water sections of the river, and then sort of a future vision towards conservation and mixed commercial as you get further south along the river.

Um so we also looked at specific areas with the with along the uh the river with different reaches.

So South Norfolk was one.

We came up with some strategies and ideas for projects along here, Bainbridge Boulevard raising being one of them, but how do you connect to the river and leverage Elizabeth River Park that you already have that could be uh integrated more into the neighborhood behind it, as well as this um big underutilized piece of land that's owned by the state that could be a restore restoration ecology kind of project.

We looked at Crestwood, Deep Creek.

Crestwood is an area that could use a stormwater plan that ties it back to the parks and the and the neighborhood schools that could help with some of their flooding challenges, as well as raising Bainbridge along this section as well.