Chicago River Blue

People, Water, and Wildlife: Blue Principles for River Design

“Sustainable development can create opportunities for your business. As well as making financial savings, you can enhance your reputation and brand value by fostering customer loyalty and motivating staff. You can also use sustainable development as an opportunity to encourage innovation, increase investment and open new markets.” ~Businesslink.gov.uk

In 2010, Friends launched Chicago River Blue and the Blue Ribbon Awards to educate, encourage, and reward developers, architects, and designers who employ river sensitive tactics when they develop or redevelop sites along the Chicago and Calumet river systems.

This new initiative utilizes web-based resources to provide guiding principles and best practices, ideas, ideals, professional resources and supporters, a best practices wiki (coming soon), and the annual Blue Ribbon Awards to make sensitive river-edge development accessible to everyone.

In 2010, the program’s inaugural year, award recipients will be celebrated at Friends’ Big Fish Ball on June 9 with honorary chairs Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Merchandise Mart Properties President Christopher G. Kennedy. Award-winning projects can be displayed at this premier event and Blue Ribbon level winners will receive two complimentary tickets to the event. Limited scholarships are available to Silver and Green award winners.

Why River-Friendly Works for Business

Developing river-friendly riverfronts is good for business because as corporate executives, civic leaders, and the general public become more aware of the pressure we place on the environment they are seeking solutions that include living and working in healthy environments. Office settings where there are places to go to reenergize through natural relaxation show a direct link to productivity. Studies have shown that employees with access to natural area are more productive. Homes with water views and open spaces are worth more than those without. In addition, sustainable development drives innovation, improves efficiency standards, makes for happier and healthier people and creates new jobs.

Including habitat design as part of a project not only forwards a sustainable development goal, it also provides valuable marketable business benefits. Numerous examples illustrate that water quality improvements result in an increase in the value of properties adjacent to the resource. People who work, play, and live along the Chicago River are people who are learning or already appreciate natural scenic beauty.

Natural buffers along the river are great places for people to gather to view wildlife, fish, or watch the river flow. Though property values are already increasing for river views, even more value can be added by including a natural and welcoming green buffer. The use of native plants in the landscape or a green buffer can also decrease the amount of water needed for a development, leading to an overall savings in water consumption and associated usage fees.

Managing stormwater on site and therefore contributing to improved water quality for the Chicago River has direct business and economic connections as well. Cities are moving towards creating a utility cost for wastewater and stormwater treatment. For those cities who are already doing this and for developers who are preparing for a wastewater fee, reducing the amount of water a site contributes to the treatment facility can be a major cost saving measure. Green water management techniques often cost less in materials, require less maintenance, are less expensive to install, and use less land that could otherwise be used for development.

Sustainable Creation: Show Them What You Do

Essential to good design is understanding river sensitive principles and practices that address environmental issues on watershed scale and being able offer creative development and design services or sustainable products that support them. To help project managers and decision makers find firms that believe in “blue” Friends has invited companies to be a part of our Green Directory.