Inland Waterfronts… as aesthetic enhancements and economic development catalysts
Glen S. LeRoy, AIA, AICP, Alvin Groves, P.E., Michael B. Dollin, ASLA	© & Author Info

Abstract

Most inland American cities were established because of their proximity to a waterway. Throughout the United States, waterways often formed great ribbons of commerce along a vast hierarchy of river-oriented cities and towns. In the middle to late 19^th Century, transcontinental railroads provided a new framework for urban growth. Rail lines were often constructed on the flattest land available, quite frequently aligning with rivers. Waterfront aesthetics reflected these uses with wharves, factories, rail yards, and storage depots providing a common design vocabulary. In the post World War II era, the nation’s highway system grew in prominence. Although rail remained important, new freight portages were increasingly oriented to the growing trucking industries in outlying locations. Highways, mortgage practices, and general lifestyle decisions in the post World War II period changed the face of American cities. Suburban settlements prospered, while urban cores and their waterfronts suffered losses in population, employment, and tax base.

Today, many inland U.S. cities are viewing their urban waterfronts as a key element of their urban redevelopment strategy. Waterfronts vary greatly in their unique history, their size, and their current use strategy. This paper is devoted to exploring both general waterfront development principles, as well as examples of unique case studies of urban inland waterfront revitalization.

Case Study 1

Kansas City’s Missouri Riverfront Plan…

Along their Missouri River journey, the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804 camped in the area now known as Kansas City. At the confluence of two great inland rivers, a significant metropolitan area was to emerge on the great American plains. The city’s relationship to its rivers, however, was to change over time based on shifts in technology and attitudes.

Kansas City, like most American cities, was originally settled because of is relationship to water. In the early 19^th century, the city grew to prominence because of its Missouri River portage. In 1869, Kansas City won the regional competition for transcontinental rail. It became a major transfer point in the nation’s railroad freight network, a position the city still holds today. From the turn of the 20^th century forward, Kansas City’s relationship with the Missouri River has concentrated on primarily industrial functions. In the 1990’s, Riverboat gaming introduced a new form of commercial development and a new revenue source along the riverfront. With this new stimulus, as well as with the adoption of its strategic and comprehensive plan, FOCUS Kansas City, the city began to view its riverfront in a different light.

The City of Kansas City, Missouri has embarked on a long-range planning process to revitalize its once-booming riverfront. With the cooperation of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, the Kansas City Port Authority, and the Department of City Planning and Development, the plan encompasses thirty-nine miles of Kansas City’s Missouri and Kansas rivers. Waterfronts have a metropolitan-wide impact; therefore, the plan has also involved the active participation of seven cities, four counties, two states, and numerous other governmental jurisdictions.

As the plan was developed, it was recognized that successful riverfront revitalization required an understanding of several key planning and design principles:

Riverfront redevelopment must be tied to the city’s comprehensive plan and designed with real and symbolic connections to adjacent development. In Kansas City, the Missouri Riverfront became a point of emphasis in its comprehensive and strategic planning process and adjacent development planning. The Riverfront Concept Plan was developed with a profound recognition of George Kessler’s landmark 1893 parks and boulevards plan.

Since most cities began at their waterfront, history can provide a powerful planning and development theme. The Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Santa Fe Trail, the Midwest’s steamboat heritage, and the city’s rail prominence all played a role in the development of Kansas City. Ruins of the city’s original settlement, known as the Town of Kansas, still exist. Recognition of these and other historical achievements permeate the plan.

Most successful plans provide linear pedestrian connections along the water’s edge. With its industrial heritage and levee systems, this became problematic along Kansas City’s thirty-nine mile long riverfront. Therefore, a system of urban and rural trails has been planned. In places, the trails directly engage the rivers’ edge. When active industry or other impediments preclude a direct connection, the trails align with nearby roadways. The plan also addresses ways for trails to cross the river, to link with a metropolitan-wide bicycle network, and to connect with nearby parks.

As the riverfront develops, it is important to construct systems that promote a unifying visual theme. In Kansas City, this can be cumbersome considering the number of governmental jurisdictions involved. The plan addresses issues such as trails and signage standards, a bridge lighting system, and the development of a consistent logo to be used throughout the river corridor.

To stimulate private waterfront redevelopment, initial public investment is often required. The Riverfront Concept Plan conceives of a series of trails, trailheads, and public "gateways’ to the riverfront. Near downtown Kansas City, a publicly funded 20-acre park, connecting boulevard, and automobile viaduct are nearing completion along a one-mile stretch of the Missouri River. Concurrently, private developer interest is being sought for an adjacent 54.5-acre site.

A series of strategically positioned development anchors that can serve as catalysts for further development are envisioned in the Riverfront Concept Plan. Over the past decade, five riverfront casinos have been developed along this stretch of the Missouri River. Some have stimulated adjacent hotel and related entertainment development. Some casinos, through development agreements, have been required to contribute to the construction of public infrastructure along the riverfront. Other large-scale public and private development catalysts, such as an aquarium, corporate offices, and residential development are under consideration.

Riverfront redevelopment, particularly along a thirty-nine mile stretch, is a long-term proposition. It can only be accomplished through a series of incremental steps. In the case of Kansas City’s Riverfront, the vision must be coordinated across many jurisdictions. The plan envisions the creation of a regional body to help coordinate the implementation of the plan.

Case Study 2

San Antonio’s Paseo Del Rio…

The San Antonio River Walk is considered by many to be the preeminent example of an Urban River Walk. It is the lifeblood of a two-billion-dollar tourism industry and the center of social action and entertainment for the citizens of San Antonio.

Over the past fifty years, many physical changes have been made to the River Walk that have changed its operating characteristics and profoundly changed its usability. These changes provide a number of lessons that are being applied to similar projects across the country as other communities attempt to emulate San Antonio’s most famous landmark. This chronology of the evolution of the river walk profiles the river’s changing design pattern and the city’s complementary planning policies.

The Natural River

The San Antonio River is a winding intermittent stream. It originates in an area of springs in the northern portion of historic San Antonio. Its course through the city was marked by a number of horseshoe shaped bends which impeded the periodic flow of floodwaters which resulted from the south Texas rain storms.

Many of the bends were eliminated in an effort to decrease the flooding problems, but little thought was given to utilizing the attributes of the river until the 1920’s. Visionary architect, Robert Hugman, developed a counter proposal to prevent elimination of the great bend in the heart of the city. Hugman’s proposal envisioned creating a "River Walk" around the great bend with a bypass channel to carry floodwaters, as well as gates to protect the bend during flood. This was the birth of the now famous Paseo Del Rio or River Walk.

Upon completion of the physical development of the River Walk in March of 1941, the river walk was a linear park through the heart of San Antonio, but it did not accomplish the original vision of Hugman to create the focus for an area of commerce and entertainment. The River Walk, a beautifully landscaped passive green belt protected from flooding, was to languish for over twenty years with little notice from the pedestrians passing above on the San Antonio streets -- or from the numerous building owners backing toward the river.

During the mid 1960’s, as San Antonio prepared to host the 1968 Worlds Fair, plans were prepared to extend the River Walk into the Hemisfair grounds to create a major entrance to the fair. This extension, completed in April 1968, was coupled with a major private sector effort to create restaurants, shops, and entertainment areas on the River Walk.

Since the extension for the river had no outlet, there were new demands for addressing water quality. These issues were addressed by the inclusion of a pump station providing recirculation through a major waterfall. This feature added both visual and sound ambiance, while providing ample circulation and water quality enhancement.

Increasing growth of the convention and tourism business in San Antonio over the last 20 years contributed to a significant increase in the demand for boat traffic on the river. To accommodate this increased boat activity, a major change in the configuration of the River Walk was made. One of the 1940’s dams was removed and the main gate in the flood channel was relocated. This change allowed boat traffic to complete the circle around the island created by the great bend and the flood bypass. This change also eliminated the natural course of flow around the great bend and necessitated the addition of artificial methods to create circulation.

During the 1980’s, a major commercial expansion was developed on a second extension to the river walk. This extension provided river front space for a 1000 room hotel and the first major shopping center development in downtown San Antonio. Over the years, the design of the Paseo Del Rio has consistently evolved to meet the changing and growing needs of the city’s commerce and tourism industry.

Case Study 3

Rio Salado and the Rio Salado Crossing

The Salt River runs through the heart of the Valley of Central Arizona, home to the Phoenix Metropolitan area. The river is the reason that civilization has existed in this location for over two thousand years. The Hohokam Indians occupied the Salt River Valley until the sixteenth century. They built an elaborate system of canals, a network

that rivaled the great public works of ancient civilizations. These canals were constructed arteries to the Salt River watershed that allowed agricultural settlement to flourish. The fertile alluvial soil of the valley and the flowing Sonoran Desert river nourished a population of native Americans who, in addition to their considerable civil engineering accomplishments, included astronomy in their highly evolved and enduring civilization, a river and land-based economy which lasted fifteen centuries.

In the mid to late 1800's, while Arizona was a territory, settlers of the westward expansion arrived in the Salt River Valley. They found a river flowing in a wide plane, a meandering stream in summer, a ragging river in spring, following the snow melt of the Colorado plateau that drains into the Valley, on its way to the Colorado River and the Gulf of California. The river was home to beaver and other wildlife. It required the construction of ferryboats to cross the wide desert river. These early modern settlers also discovered the remnants of an elaborate canal system. The system that the Hohokam abandoned several hundred years earlier was reactivated and reconstructed. A new modern agricultural economy arose from the ashes of a previous civilization. Thus, the name Phoenix was given to this place.

This thriving modern agriculture system required a more predictable river than the flooding one that served the Hohokam, one that would stay within well-defined banks. The massive federal water control projects of the Theodore Roosevelt era resulted in the construction of a series of lakes and dams that contained and finally controlled the flow of the Salt River. In fact, the Salt River, to this day, flows only during times of high runoff, when the dams release water under controlled flows, occasionally allowing the Salt River to flow at full force, being the mighty river it once and still is. The rest of the year, the riverbed is dry.

Development patterns for most of this century have been consistent with other urban, inland river corridors, becoming home to industrial uses and landfills. The Salt River has been generally considered a scar upon the land for most of the 20th century. A few visionaries had the dream of a resurrected Salt River as the Central place of the Valley, which has now become a sprawling urban metropolis.

Over thirty years ago, an Arizona State University architecture studio under the direction of their Dean, James Elmore, developed the concept of "Rio Salado", the Salt River. The studio envisioned a river reborn as a vital urban waterway, a stimulus of economic development, of community, and a place of recreation and commerce. A massive development proposal covering the fourteen mile urban frontage of the river and requiring a large tax increase was proposed and defeated in a county-wide election in the mid 1980's. Cities then decided individually to pursue smaller local projects rather than a large regional scale proposal. It has taken over thirty years, but the first stages of the Rio Salado are now close to reality.

The City of Tempe Arizona has initiated its "Town Lake" project, comprised of two inflatable dams. They will create a permanent body of water, two miles in length. The banks of the Town Lake are slated for new mixed-use development. Several projects, including a new 1,000-room hotel, are planned. New office buildings are beginning to appear. The lake will be filled at the millennium.

To the west, the City of Phoenix is proposing a less dramatic, but more ecologically sensitive project with the Army Corps of Engineers to establish a riparian wetland in the riverbed. To the east, the City of Mesa is examining a project that will appear on the May, 1999 ballot for "Rio Salado Crossing".

Rio Salado Crossing is a master planned, mixed-use, infill redevelopment/reclamation project within a parks and open space setting. It contains the proposed one million square foot Arizona Exposition Center; a new 67,000 seat multipurpose stadium to be home of the Arizona Cardinals professional football team; over three thousand hotel rooms in five hotels, and sports, entertainment, and recreational uses, including two golf courses and one hundred acres of public parks and open space. Additionally, three thousand residences and businesses that will occupy 750,000 square feet of retail space and two million square feet of office space are contemplated. The project site is set upon the mesa of the south bank of the Salt River. Among its many features is a continuum of public park land. This park land contains many features of both an active and passive recreational nature.

The Rio Salado Crossing project is seen as an opportunity for the City of Mesa, the third largest City in Arizona and the fifty-first largest City in America, to create an identity and an economic engine. At a projected cost of 1.8 billion dollars, the project is slated to go before voters for the approval of a quarter-cent sales tax for a period of twenty years. This sales tax will fund about one-fifth of the project; the balance being funded by private investment and local State sales tax recapture mechanisms. If approved, the project will be the largest project of its kind in the western United States. It blends urban design, master planned community design, and hybrid professional sports/entertainment/and exposition destination development. The initial phases of the project are expected to be complete in 2003, pending a successful vote. The ultimate build-out is projected to occur by 2013.

The project is expected to generate substantial revenues for the city of Mesa, local school districts and the metropolitan region. The Super Bowl is expected to take place at the new stadium complex on a regular five-year rotation.

Glen S. LeRoy, AIA, AICP, Principal, Gould Evans Goodman Associates, Kansas City, Missouri;

Alvin Groves, P.E., President, Groves and Associates, San Antonio, Texas;

Michael B. Dollin, ASLA, Principal, Urban Earth Design, Phoenix, Arizona.