Best Practices for Working Waterfront Preservation: Lessons Learned from the Field

The Sustainable Working Waterfronts Toolkit seeks to engage and educate working waterfront stakeholders by helping to draw connections between abstract tools and concrete on-the-ground examples of successful implementation. The Tools in Action Work Group compiled a collection of 19 case studies of communities and states from around the country that demonstrate the implementation of a variety of tools for sustaining working waterfronts. Providing models of how tools have been used previously can be extremely helpful, especially as successful initiatives often utilize multiple tools. The following is a brief synthesis of common themes that emerged during development of the case studies. These themes were collected into a set of “best practices” that refer specifically to the 19 case studies. Practices have been sorted by tool category, which are represented by the bold, italicized headings. Additional information about these categories is available in Section V of the Final Report. Within each category, key themes are followed by a bulleted list of best practices identified by the Work Group and the title of the case study content that informed its selection as a best practice