Organizers of WaterFire on the Peconic are looking to get a boost with the allocation of $50,000 from the New York state “brownfields opportunities areas” grant Riverhead obtained in 2011.
The BOA grant would fund a feasibility analysis for creative placemaking downtown that would also encompass the WaterFire project, Community Development director Chris Kempner told the town board at yesterday’s work session.
“Creative placemaking” is the very mission of the WaterFire installation, WaterFire creator Barnaby Evans told RiverheadLOCAL in an October 2014 interview in Providence, Rhode Island, where he originated the installation in 1994. He has since taken the installation to numerous locations across the globe and around the United States and has continued to stage it in Providence at least twice a month for the past 20 years.
Hundreds of community volunteers come together to create something. Everyone involved is part of it, he told RiverheadLOCAL in an interview in Providence Sunday. WaterFire combines visual art, music, dance and the elements of earth, fire and water to transform Providence into the setting for a unique and very visceral experience.
Evans is an internationally renowned urban planner as well as an artist, Kempner explained. He’s able to look at our demographics and the trafic studies done for the town under the BOA grant contract with Nelson, Pope and Voorhis and help the town with visitor flow when it has large events downtown, Kempner said. “It could be very useful for much more than WaterFire,” she said, citing the town’s need to plan and stage for events like Paddle Battle, the Community Mosaic Street Painting Festival and the Riverhead Country Fair.
“The content will largely be provided by WaterFire International in collaboration with Nelson, Pope and Voorhis,” said WaterFire representative Lisa Lowenstein in a May 2 email. The report serve as the foundation for a creative placemaking plan, she wrote.
“One of the elements that we are going to focus on as the fulcrum of the plan is that the river is the area’s greatest (and largely untapped) assets — not only as a venue for WaterFire,” Lowenstein wrote.
Lowenstein said she’s been working with Southampton Deputy Supervisor Frank Zappone on a fundraising event in Southampton to support the overall project. Zappone confirmed to RiverheadLOCAL he was working on a fundraising event, but could not yet provide details, which are still being worked out, he said.
Southampton Town has embraced WaterFire. Its town board voted unanimously in December to support working collaboratively with Riverhead on the project.
WaterFire on the Peconic is an integral part of the Riverside redevelopment plan, Southampton Town Councilman Brad Bender said in an interview this month. It has also been incorporated in Southampton’s BOA grant, he said.
The project needs to have a nonprofit corporation serve as its driving engine, Riverhead Deputy Town Attorney Dan McCormick told the town board on Thursday, when Kathy Eiseman of Nelson, Pope and Voohris, and Pat Snyder of East End Arts, attended the board’s work session to discuss adding the creative placemaking chapter to the BOA report.
McCormick said he spoke at length with the city manager of the City of Sharon, Pennsylvania, a small city 75 miles northwest of Pittsburgh where a WaterFire installation has been mounted three times a year for the past few year.
The role of the city itself is just issuing permits, the board’s attorney said. The nonprofit corporation does all the fundraising and contracts with WaterFire International to put on the events, McCormick explained.
The nonprofit entity must be “viable, well-funded and highly staffed,” McCormick said the city manager told him.
Kempner said the WaterFire producers have told her it will take a total of about $3 million to get the project off the ground — $ 1 million to build necessary infrastructure and another $2 million to put on several events.
Riverhead Town, with the support of Southampton, applied for two substantial grants last fall, totalling more than $2.3 million: a $350,000 application to ArtPlace America and a $ 2 million grant application to the Bloomberg Foundation. Neither application was funded in this round. The towns can apply this year, Lowenstein said.
Completing the feasibility analysis will help the town’s prospects next time, she said.
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