The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project is a City-led integrated coastal protection initiative aimed at reducing flood risk due to coastal storms and sea level rise in Lower Manhattan. The LMCR Project spans the Lower Manhattan coast from Montgomery Street to the northern end of Battery Park City and seeks to improve access to the waterfront and enhance public spaces in the community. The goal of the project is two-fold: (1) protecting the neighborhood and the people who live in it and (2) ensuring that the community benefits from the project even when there is no flood or other climate change-related event. In Two Bridges, Hester Street (HST) collaborated closely with the design team at AECOM and the Mayor’s Office of Recovery & Resiliency to ensure that community priorities and resident input guided the design of the flood protection throughout all project phases from conception to final schematic design.
In the first year, HST developed the community engagement framework for the three project sub-areas (The Financial District, Battery Park City and Two Bridges) and managed a multidisciplinary team of sub-consultants to execute a brand and identity system and website for the project as well as an outreach and communications plan. In the second year, HST led the engagement and worked with Good Old Lower East Side to ensure robust outreach in the Two Bridges neighborhood. Over the two year span of the project HST was responsible for developing the outreach and engagement strategy, designing the engagement tools and techniques, facilitating the informal engagement sessions, and leading large public workshops for four rounds of community engagement. HST also produced reports synthesizing findings from each round of engagement for the LMCR design team.