Mississippi River project: Waterfront Alliance offers free waterfront-design training to Davenport commissioners

A visitor to the meeting invited Riverfront Improvement Commission members to free waterfront-edge design training provided by the Waterfront Alliance and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

The presenter said the Quad Cities has been selected as one of three Mississippi River focus areas for the Waterfront Alliance program, joining projects in St. Louis and Memphis. She described an online training module (about eight hours) that commission members and staff can take at their own pace and said a workshop tied to the commission’s October Mississippi River conference would bring national designers and funders to the Quad Cities. "After the workshop, the Walton Foundation will see that one of the projects gets installed, gets implemented, gets put in the ground," the presenter said.

The training emphasizes resilience to changing water levels, ecological shoreline design and public access at the river edge. The presenter encouraged commission members to register through River Action and said the presenter and staff had already taken the course themselves and could provide enrollment links.

Commissioners asked for clarification about how the guidance would be used; the presenter said the materials would be available for commissioners to apply when evaluating riverfront projects and could be used to seek recognition or "a rating" for a given project. The presenter estimated the self-paced course takes about eight hours and described occasional virtual sessions that allow participants to interact with designers.