10/20/2004 11:17:00 AM International honor recognizes Maritime Center dock
Residents explore under the Northwest Maritime Center dock on a low tide walk in July. The dock opened in May 2004. – Photo by Shelly Randall, Northwest Maritime Center
The Waterfront Center in Washington, D.C., announced Oct. 15 that Port Townsend's Northwest Maritime Center’s new education dock is one of eight urban waterfront projects to be honored in its 2004 international “Excellence on the Waterfront” Awards Program.
The NWMC dock is the sole awardee in the category of Environmental Protection and Enhancement.
“Everybody was anxious to applaud this project,” said Brian Court, one of the NWMC project architects from the Miller/Hull Partnership in Seattle. He traveled to Milwaukee, Wis., to receive the award at the Waterfront Center’s annual international conference, and to present on a panel entitled, “Waterfront Ecology: New Green Design Techniques.”
“Although ours was the smallest project to win an award – both in scale and in cost – the dock was applauded for being so tuned in to its ecological site,” Court continued. “It sets a prototype for seamlessly integrating ecological concerns with design concerns.”
The “Excellence on the Waterfront” Awards Program, now in its 18th year, is a juried competition to recognize outstanding urban waterfront projects.
Jury Chair Alex Lifschutz, director of Lifschutz Davidson in London, England, called the dock “a $1.5-million experiment – a relatively small undertaking – that has the potential to influence thinking and design elsewhere.”
In describing the rationale for the NWMC award, Lifschutz said, “The jury commends the project’s use of scientific research, its sensitivity to the marine environment, its imaginative design moves, and its ability to influence projects elsewhere.”
This latest accolade for the Maritime Center’s eelgrass-friendly dock, whose opening last spring coincided with a non-mitigatory eelgrass restoration project, presents the overall design as a far-reaching prototype for balancing marine development with environmental protection.
The award nomination contained a quote to that effect from Dr. Ron Thom, staff scientist at Battelle Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sequim, which was responsible for the dock’s ecological design.
“The next big challenge is how to have development and have it result in a more productive ecosystem,” Thom said. “With this project, I can see that. In my opinion, it’s really ground-breaking.”
The Waterfront Center jury also was impressed by the Maritime Center’s plans for monitoring the eelgrass plantings to determine the effectiveness of the dock design, an effort that began this month with data collection by local high school students.
Other awards went to projects in Minneapolis; San Francisco; Milwaukee; Kent County, Mich.; Corvallis, Ore.; and Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
In 2000, the Northwest Maritime Center received a Clearwater Award from the Waterfront Center for the grassroots citizen’s initiative to purchase and protect the waterfront industrial site.
Serving on this year’s jury were Alex Lifschutz, director of Lifschutz Davidson in London, England; Michael T. Dawson, director of The River Alliance in Columbia, S.C.; Sylvia McLaughlin, co-founder of Save the Bay in Berkeley, Calif.; Robert Searns, project development consultant in Littleton, Colo.; and George Stockton, president of Moriyama & Teshima Planners in Toronto, Ontario.
The Waterfront Center (www.waterfrontcenter.org), a nonprofit education and urban planning organization, was formed in 1981.
The Northwest Maritime Center (www.nwmaritime.org) is working to design and build a facility on Port Townsend Bay that celebrates Puget Sound, its people and maritime traditions. The dock was the first phase of construction; next to be built are two buildings totaling 27,000 square feet and a waterfront public commons.
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