Dutch government official Henk Ovink (l) talks with Monmouth University faculty member Anthony MacDonald during a public forum for the “Rebuild By Design” competition at the Berkeley Hotel in Asbury Park on Sept. 18. KEITH HEUMILLER Renowned experts from across the globe toured Monmouth County last week with an eye toward building stronger communities throughout the region.
After meeting with mayors from Middletown, Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach, 10 teams of academics and industry professionals participating in the federal government’s “Rebuild By Design Competition” met with dozens of local officials, nonprofit leaders and residents in Asbury Park on Sept. 18.
Henk Ovink, a Dutch government official who is overseeing the competition with Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, said the goal is to create and implement regional planning strategies that could change everything from infrastructure to economics in the years ahead.
“The question is, ‘How are we going to prepare ourselves for the future?’ ” he said during a public meeting at the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel last week. “For that, we said we need the best minds in the world to work on this region.”
The competition is part of a comprehensive rebuilding strategy initiated by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force earlier this year. The task force, chaired by Donovan and established via presidential order in December, is charged with guiding billions of federal recovery dollars throughout New Jersey and New York, and promoting regional solutions to storm-related problems.
Ovink, the acting director-general of spatial planning and water affairs for the low-lying Netherlands, worked alongside the task force to select 10 design teams from nearly 150 applications in July. Through the end of October, those teams — representing nearly 175 architects, planners, scientists and more — will travel throughout the tristate area and meet with residents and officials in an attempt to design “future-proof” strategies. He said the competition will encourage innovative solutions that protect residents and build more resilient communities without upsetting the fragile economics of vulnerable coastal communities.
“If you build more resilient, you secure a more safe region,” Ovink said. “A safe region actually attracts investors like homeowners or big businesses.”
The 10 teams include staff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Mississippi State University, Rutgers University, Sasaki Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, Arcadis Engineering, and dozens of other public and private organizations from around the world.
Now in the second of the competition’s four phases, the teams are attempting to figure out the “right questions” to ask for the diverse range of storm-damaged communities throughout the region, before designing specific answers to them and finally implementing them with the aid of federal and private funding beginning next year.
At the Berkeley Hotel last week, representatives from each of the design teams sat down across the table from dozens of stakeholders, including Red Bank resident and Sea Bright Resource Center case manager Beth Hanratty.
Speaking with Ovink and members of three different teams, Hanratty described how communications infrastructure broke down in the wake of Sandy, making it difficult to keep track of displaced residents, power restoration efforts and the availability of supplies. Without a centralized information source, she said, many residents had to rely on local media.
Other problems included the unclear and ever-changing application processes for various relief programs, she said.
Anthony MacDonald, an Ocean resident and director of the Urban Coast Institute at Monmouth University, talked about the need to address the area’s aging and inefficient stormwater management systems.
“I’m surprised that nobody talks about it,” he said. “It’s such a critical element when you’re dealing with flooding.”
Across the room, residents drew on slips of paper and maps of the state to explain to the designers what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and what they think should have been fixed by now.
“I thought there would be more people back in their homes,” Hanratty said.
A Keansburg resident said many poor communities had been overlooked following the storm. Others said too many resources had been allocated to “boardwalks and beach towns,” instead of residential communities.
Suggested solutions ran the gamut from the mundane to the extraordinary. Some called for public telephones and the waterproofing of electrical infrastructure, while others said the entire New Jersey coastline should be remade in the image of a state park.
Others suggested providing new economic incentives to communities for creating open space, so communities don’t suffer from a loss of tax ratables when they decide not to rebuild in vulnerable areas.
All of the comments were transcribed and added to a growing list, which will also include input from similar meetings held in New York and Connecticut through Oct. 4. That information — along with first-hand accounts generated by guided bus tours of areas such as Sea Bright and Union Beach — will be shared among the various teams as they draw up specific design solutions for the region later this year. A jury will select the top plans for funding and implementation beginning in March 2014.
“This isn’t to solve the problems of today,” Ovink said. “This is to prevent the troubles of tomorrow.”
For more information, visit www.rebuildbydesign.org.