This West Side story garners award for extension specialistOn a crowded, 44-square-mile island that has been settled for over 350 years, community planning can be a challenge. After all, there aren’t a lot of unused areas left to make plans for. That’s why Aquidneck Island’s West Side Master Plan is so important. In a rare opportunity, a 10-mile tract of island land owned by the Navy may be made available to the public, and naturally, many people have ideas about what to do with it. The Navy and the municipalities of Portsmouth, Middletown, and Newport faced difficult decisions and brought in Jennifer McCann, Rhode Island Sea Grant extension specialist, to help guide the creation of the West Side Master Plan, one of the largest planning efforts in the Northeast and the first regional planning effort of its kind on Aquidneck Island. McCann is working with the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission (AIPC) to foster regional planning that incorporates sustainable development practices into the plan, which recognizes the importance of the coastal character of the West Side and aims to preserve and enhance public access to the shoreline, the recreational value of Narragansett Bay, and the possibility of reopening swimming areas and shellfish beds. McCann helped create a public process where hundreds of people from all sectors of the community came together to identify their needs, concerns, and vision for the West Side of Aquidneck Island. “A public process of this caliber had never been undertaken in the state of Rhode Island before these events,” says Robert Quigley, chairman of the AIPC West Side Master Plan Task Force. With McCann’s assistance, the AIPC was awarded a $600,000 federal appropriation to complete the West Side Master Plan and implementation strategy. For this work, McCann received the Northeast Sea Grant Network’s Outstanding Outreach Program Individual Award at the network’s biennial regional meeting in January. According to a reviewer, “The widespread impact of her leadership in bringing together such a broad-based constituency to work towards a coastal master plan is truly an extraordinary achievement that will impact coastal resources far into the future. The capacity building that resulted from the process will allow similar planning activities to proceed in other areas, expanding the reach of her efforts.” —Monica Allard Cox
Related Link: Aquidneck Island Planning Commission
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