As the City continues to make progress towards developing a whitewater park in Kent, we felt it would be helpful to gather all the different papers, studies and drawings about the concept in one convenient location — and this is it.
I’ve tried to include the numerous blog postings that we’ve done on the concept in chronological order so you can see the evolution of the idea and our progress towards building it.
We’ve also provided the orginal reports and studies in a down-loadable format so that you can have access to the specifics about the project and it’s various elements.
Whether you call it a whitewater park or river recreation, we think the project holds great promise for Kent and hopefully after reading through all these materials you’ll agree.
Enjoy!
More Kent kayakers in action
Take a ride down the Cuyahoga in Kent with one of our local kayakers by Clicking Here.REPORTS AND STUDIES
With Earth Day still in our rear view mirror, I thought it was a good time to share a story that combines river conservation and recreation with economic development since those are the cornerstones of the Kent community’s priorities. This is a story that reads a lot like Kent, where a once lost river was found again by people that cared enough to roll up their sleeves and get their feet wet. Thanks to decades of individual actions the cumulative results led to a river restoration and also spawned many unexpected benefits — including new corporate offices, university activites, and Olympic caliber rowing and kayak events that bring 50,000 people to town for an annual river festival. These are the kinds of hopes we have for the Kent Whitewater project as well but equally interesting is the way the river revival helped Oklahoma City see itself in a new way and re-brand its image to attract new businesses and residents.
If you follow Kent news much you would have seen some interesting discussions recently about the city’s interest in creating a new white water park in downtown Kent. The whitewater in the name gets all the attention but the whole concept is really about creating more passive and active recreational opportunities for everyone to reconnect and rediscover the mighty Cuyahoga River. The fact that we would actually want to get people in the Cuyahoga (and likewise they would actually want to get in it) is a testament to one of the most amazing river turnaround stories in the country. What was the national symbol for everything that had gone wrong with polluted rivers has reemerged as everything that is going right with environmental stewardship. Kent is proud to have helped rewrite the ending to the Cuyahoga’s story which is being featured nationwide with a new PBS documentary titled the “Return of the Cuyahoga.”
Last night the City’s whitewater park consultant (Mike Harvey of REP in Boulder Colorado) provided City Council with an overview of his firm’s conceptual recommendations for what could be done in the Cuyahoga River corridor in downtown Kent to enhance river recreational opportunities. At the meeting I promised to upload Mike’s draft report and conceptual renderings but he hasn’t provided the draft report in electronic format yet so I can only post the graphic illustrations. Of course, it’s easier to make sense of the graphic if you have the report available but I figured I’d go ahead and put the images up online anyways for those people who were at the meeting and they should have an idea of what they’re looking at. As soon as I get the report from Mike I’ll post that as well.
Whether it’s running the water plant or redeveloping downtown I always try to see what other cities are doing and even more importantly what the private sector is doing in those same areas. I figure that if the goal is to create new private investment I need to put myself in those private investor shoes in order to really understand what we can do as a city to inspire new investment. With that in mind, the National Real Estate Investment Magazine put out an article this month that said private investors should look for cities that do three things: 1)create an organization to bring together business leaders and city officials (Kent has two, the Downtown Kent Corporation and Main Street Kent); 2)design a masterplan to encourage investment (Kent has the Bicentennial Plan and we’re currently working on a blueprint for downtown investment); and 3)develop a way to leverage any special attractions in the downtown core (think whitewater park and university activities for Kent).
I sent City Council an email earlier today that provided a good summary of the status of the downtown whitewater project and I thought it might be of interest to Blog readers as well, so here it is.
I wanted to let you know that in addition to all our RFQ work for downtown redevelopment more work is also continuing on further developing the river/white water park concept. Main Street has paid for the white water consultant to come back to Kent this week to do more on-site investigation of the opportunties available to expand public access and usage of the river across a range of activities, from walking along the banks to canoeing and even kayaking. The consultant is gathering maps, existing plans, photos, data, etc., as well as meeting with stakeholders during the day and hosting a public meeting tonight at 7 pm in the Firestation to better understand what would fit in the Kent community.
You may recall that Main Street Kent worked with the City and an engineering firm to have a quick assessment completed of our section of the Cuyahoga for the feasibility of expanding river recreation opportunities. Since the consultant, and the community responded favorably to the idea, we are now in the process of reviewing an engineering proposal that would take the idea another step closer to reality by designing and costing elements specific to Kent. I’ve shared a copy of the proposal and an article from Springfield Ohio that offers some insight into what might come next here in Kent.
Two weeks ago a prominent white water designer visited Kent to perform a preliminary site assessment of the recreational opportunities available in the Kent section of the Cuyahoga. The firm was careful to point out that they look beyond just white water kayaking; their goal is really about creating more opportunities for people to interact with the river and its ecology. Sometimes that’s as simple as building more trails, expanding river access and creating wading areas — as well as the more traditional canoe and kayak activity areas. I was glad to hear that they look to incorporate elements for all ages and all types of interests. The river parks that they build are less about kayaking than they are about creating public spaces for people to enjoy and reconnect to the outdoors through water. The public meeting they held was standing room only so this concept seems to have broad appeal. Here’s a short synopsis from the firm regarding Kent’s potential.
On various occassions I’ve rattled on about the prospects of using the river as a catalyst for downtown redevelopment and I’m pleased to report that after enough talk there’s actually going to be some action. Thanks to Main Street Kent and City Parks and Rec, a river expert will be in Kent next Wednesday to investigate the river and to meet with community stakeholders in the evening for further discussion. So consider this your invitation to be a part of the community meeting beginning at 7 pm on Wednesday, July 25th at the Kent Stage.
Summer is always hectic because of vacation schedules so I thought it might be a good time to catch up on a few items that we’ve been working on.
1. Cuyahoga River Recreational Opportunities Evaluation — After seeing what other cities have been able to do to give their local economy a boost through river recreation, e.g., walking trails, kayaking, canoeing, rafting, etc., the staff and I have been looking at how our river resource could be expanded for economic gain as well. We’ve been researching the issue for a number of months and thanks to the assistance of a new Main Street “River” committee, we’ve enlisted a number of local experts who share a passion for river recreation.
Main Street paid for one of their committee members to attend a conference in Maryland that brought together experts from all over the country to discuss creating whitewater parks in existing rivers. The local kayakers already consider the Kent segment of the Cuyahoga to be one of the best sections of the river to ride but they went to the conference to learn how we could do even more to highlight Kent’s portion of the river for eco/sports tourism. At the conference, the Main Street volunteer talked to one of the leading river recreation engineering firms in the country from Boulder Colorado and it turns out that the firm has been hired by the City of Dayton OH to evaluate the river recreational opportunties in Dayton. The firm offered to visit Kent as part of the Dayton trip and provide a similar evaluation for us (at much less cost since the travel costs from Colorado are already being paid by Dayton).
May 28, 2007
Paddling the New Whitewater Course at ASCI
By David Hill, Guest Blogger
I have been trying to coordinate a trip to the USNWC Charlotte course in conjunction with a work trip but things never seem to go as planned. Then while I was pitching the idea for some whitewater features in Kent to the City, they asked me to participate on the Sports & Leisure Subcommittee for the Main Street Program in order to present a paddlers’ perspective. The Main Street Program was designed to assist small communities in evaluating various downtown redevelopment ideas to promote economic benefits. About this same time I heard about the 2007 Whitewater Courses and Parks seminar being presented at the Wisp Resort and Adventure Sports Center International (ASCI) Whitewater course in McHenry, MD.
In my quest to find ways to take advantage of the great river that we have right in the heart of downtown Kent I’ve been really impressed with the way other cities have created their own white water courses where mother nature had not seen fit to do so on her own. These home-made courses let kayakers and rafters get in the river and do their thing. And when they’re doing their thing, other people like to come watch and catch the action and plug-in to the whole eco-vibe.
It’s safe to say that my armchair anthropology is unlikely to garner any Nobel nominations but still, at the risk of offending Margaret Mead, I can’t help but offer my thoughts of the relationship between rivers and people. From the first Bedouins settling in the Fertile Crescent, through the Yangtze, the Nile, the Thames, the Danube, and even Mark Twain’s Mighty Mississippi, people gravitate to rivers regardless of religious, cultural or political persuasion. Rivers transcend us.
Since our arrival in Kent my family and I always seem to end up down by the riverside. And we’re never alone down there. We see a lot of fisherman, rock sitters, stone skippers, tree huggers, dam admirers and just old fashioned nature lovers. As we walk the banks the river seems to bring out those deep philosophical discussions and because you can never turn a city manager’s brain off, we often end up talking about how underutilized the Kent riverfront is economically.
