The Projects
In 2022, a Miami City Commissioner attempted to ban new mangrove tree plantings in City of Miami parks. Waterfront Alliance—along with seemingly every other environmental organization working in Miami—pushed back. A year after the proposal’s defeat, we learned from Mariana Boldu, then Director of Resilience and a WEDG Associate at Curtis & Rogers Design Studio, that WEDG® (Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines) was a significant factor in stopping the ban.
The impetus for that disastrous proposal was Curtis & Rogers’ design for WEDG Verified José Martí Park. The city and design team had included WEDG Verification as part of a grant funding the park’s design. They recognized that removing mangroves from the plan would put the WEDG Verification at risk—which, in turn, would jeopardize the funding itself.
In other cases, WEDG Verification has helped spur greener, more nature-based shorelines in Manhattan and has protected ecological features on projects from value-engineering processes that might otherwise have stripped them away. Curtis & Rogers was an early supporter of WEDG and led the charge for its inclusion on the José Martí Park project, as well as in two separate ordinances with the City of Miami.
“In response to the constantly evolving challenges posed by climate change, the Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines have proven to be an invaluable resource, aiding us in the pursuit of a safer, more inclusive, and sustainable future for our waterfront communities,” said Curtis + Rogers Design Studio Principal, Aida Curtis.
The excitement around WEDG in Miami is something we aim to replicate elsewhere. At a meeting (ironically) in Miami Beach, the WEDG team connected with the Walton Family Foundation, which embraced the idea of bringing WEDG to the Mississippi River Basin. This connection led to an incredible promoter of our work and a new local partner: Kathy Wine.
Kathy, the Executive Director of River Action, connected us with dozens of environmental advocates and new partners throughout the Upper Mississippi River region. She also featured WEDG at her conference in Moline, IL, where WEDG is now working with the City of Moline and landscape architects MKSK on a WEDG Verification project.
“The Waterfront Alliance’s interweaving the WEDG workshop with our Upper Mississippi River Conference in 2025 gave us all the confidence we needed to reach out to every river community and say, ‘Don’t imagine riverfront planning without these guidelines.’ Since, they have been incorporated in flood planning up and down the river as well.”
Bolstering our reputation in the river world was our first riverine WEDG Verified project west of the Mississippi: The River Mile: South Platte River Restoration Project in Denver. A workshop and bike tour of the South Platte, developed by then-WEDG Fellow Tom Klein, helped secure a partnership with Revesco Properties, Calibre Engineering, and Wenk Associates to pursue WEDG Verification.
Revesco leadership leading a bike tour downstream of downtown Denver. Credit: Tom Klein
Like Aida, Kathy, and many others, the team at Revesco immediately saw the connection between WEDG and their work.
“It was validating to learn that our vision already incorporated many WEDG principles; prioritizing healthy, durable waterfronts that support ecological performance while creating meaningful recreational access and everyday connection to the water. WEDG allowed us to take these foundational principals to an even higher level which we hope will be repeated and further improved throughout the country,” said Evan Kurtis, Director of Development and Construction at Revesco Properties.
This project marked a major turning point for WEDG, as it was the first to demonstrate the program’s efficacy in a non-coastal environment.
Expanding Our Reach
WEDG’s growth has been remarkably organic and sustained, particularly given the small size of the Waterfront Alliance team. Still, we have not done this work alone. Over the years, we have engaged a small but powerful group of partners to help build staff capacity and advance our goals. Among them are WEDG Fellows like Ilana Haimes, who drafted much of the current WEDG v3.0.
Two people stand out as being especially critical to building WEDG’s internal capacity. In 2024 and 2025, Ray Fusco—an independent consultant and longtime water access advocate—led WEDG to his hometown of Baltimore where he helped build momentum for the program. Baltimore was already a place where local and state agencies, along with the private sector, were beginning to converge around WEDG. Under Ray’s leadership, we brought these stakeholders together for an evening of networking and discussion.
Ray helped forge lasting relationships and partnerships in the region.
“WEDG & Baltimore are like peas and carrots!” Ray shared. “All the incredible work at the Inner Harbor, to Reimagining Middle Branch to Living Shoreline at Maryland DNR to ongoing watershed work by the Baltimore Office of Sustainability – there is a compelling through line with WEDG and it’s incredibly important public engagement component coupled with the highest and best resilient design criteria.”
Another key member of our team is Sharai Lewis‑Gruss of Two Degrees Adapt and Brizaga. Sharai was WEDG’s most prolific reviewer, having participated in nearly half of all WEDG reviews. She now project-manages those reviews in close partnership with Waterfront Alliance staff to ensure they are completed efficiently and expertly.
“I keep coming back as a WEDG reviewer because it keeps me up to date on the most current work happenings in the waterfront resilience industry. Getting to work through these project submissions with experts in different fields during the review process is a great way to keep learning and stay connected,” Sharai shared.
Making WEDG a Business Strategy
We can conduct reviews and host meetings endlessly, but WEDG is only effective when the right people use it. Michael Hunton’s work at Langan exemplifies the successful integration of WEDG into a firm’s business development strategy.
“At Langan, we incorporate WEDG into our business development to offer our clients a distinct market advantage.” Michael said. “By aligning our collaborative design process with this rigorous, third-party framework, we help clients deliver projects that stand out for their resilience, performance, and commitment to the public good.”
Langan is currently leading four projects pursuing WEDG Verification and has positioned itself as an industry-wide leader in WEDG implementation and strategy. This is fitting, given that colleagues like Kenneth Huber helped write portions of WEDG, and Langan now has more WEDG Associates than any other firm. Michael and his team have also opened their professional network to WEDG, creating speaking opportunities, dinners, and networking events centered on the program.
Other partners—including Luce Bassetti at Jacobs; Scott Streeb at Michael Van Valkenburg Associates; Kara Wilson and Chi Chi Truong at Arup; and Pippa Brashear at SCAPE—have taken similar approaches to embedding WEDG in their work.
Wayne Cobleigh at GZA GeoEnvironmental has organized conference panels and initiated strategic conversations with key leaders as GZA positions itself as a WEDG leader as well.
“GZA was an early adopter of WEDG because we realized that waterfront development projects were becoming more complex to design and improve for climate resilience,” says Wayne. “The design process and principles of WEDG offer our planners, ecologists, and engineers a framework to communicate to our clients for designing waterfronts to meet the future conditions rather than the past or present.”
From the very inception of the program, WEDG’s greatest asset has been the WEDG Professionals Network. More than 1,500 consultants, city agency leaders, environmental and community advocates, and early-career professionals have trained on WEDG and now serve as ambassadors for the program across the country.
Of those 1,500 WEDG Associates, nearly one in five work for a Minority- or Woman-Owned Business (M/WBE). We now have likely the strongest networks of M/WBEs working on waterfront issues anywhere in the country.
Credit for this achievement goes to Ørsted and Kevin Hansen, Head of Government Affairs and Policy, Northeast. Ørsted is the offshore wind developer behind Sunrise Wind off the coast of Long Island. Ørsted provided scholarships to 250 M/WBEs and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses across New York State, enabling Waterfront Alliance to reach a new market of firms and build partnerships extending far beyond offshore wind. Every single scholarship was utilized in less than 18 months and demonstrated the vast demand for high quality waterfront training that existed in the state.
And for Some, It’s Personal
Being part of WEDG’s growth is exciting—and for many, it becomes deeply personal. A favorite example is Aaron Baltich‑Schecter, who at the time worked in environmental permitting at an offshore wind developer. His role did not involve the company’s port facilities, environmental certifications, or community relations efforts. He simply believed strongly in the idea of their flagship port facility pursuing WEDG Verification.
It did (announcement forthcoming).
That decision proved to be a tipping point for the program, leading all but one offshore wind developer in New York State and New Jersey to commit to WEDG in some form. One person’s passion helped catalyze one of WEDG’s most significant breakthroughs.
Past and present Waterfront Alliance leaders—including Sarah Dougherty and Tom Klein—have also built personal reputations around WEDG. (In full transparency, present Chief Waterfront Design Officer Joseph Sutkowi has taken pride in being greeted as “The WEDG Guy” at events in multiple states.)
As a landscape architect, Tom is most energized when embedding nature into planning and design processes in communities across the country. For Sarah, the inspiration grew directly from community engagement.
“We met with every waterfront community board in NYC to learn about their needs and visions for the waterfront. Across the incredible diversity of waterfront communities, it was powerful to find the same issues rise to the top: concerns about flooding, lack of safe waterfront access, and changes in communities, especially job displacement. We shared WEDG as a community-based tool to navigate these questions and competing interests, and also to advocate for higher standards with developers beyond building code and policy.”
With 1,500 WEDG Associates and countless partners and advocates nationwide, this article inevitably leaves many contributors unnamed, especially those who helped get the program off the ground in 2015. WEDG has always been—and will remain—a team effort. Its success, past, present, and future, depends entirely on our ability to harness the energy of people who care about the program, the natural world, and our waterfronts.
