Riviera Beach, Florida

Clean and Safe Action Plan

We also provided the Riviera Beach Community Redevelopment Agency with a comprehensive, integrated, and innovative approach to addressing both real and perceived safety in the three sub-districts of the CRA service area: Riviera Beach Heights, Ocean Mall District, and Marina District.

Our plan provided a series of action items that complement existing efforts by the City, including the Police Department. It suggested strategic locations for additional cameras and recommended a fully operational program of Clean & Safe Ambassadors that will actively clean and monitor the Broadway corridor, lead community cleanups and community safety audits in Riviera Beach Heights, and provide a friendly and fresh uniformed presence in visitor locations like the Marina District and Ocean Mall District, among a number of other activities.

Beyond the partnerships with the police, recommendations included detailed physical improvements related to lighting, land use patterns, streetscape improvements, public art, wayfinding, access control for vehicles and pedestrians, bus shelter designs, and much more.

With a special focus on managing and improving perceptions, the plan expanded traditional approaches to marketing and public relations; recommended a keen awareness of indirect messages about safety; suggested how to integrate positive, indirect safety messages throughout all marketing materials and channels; and explained the strategy of using different communications channels for internal and external audiences and target market groups.

To enhance capacity to implement our recommendations, we also provided a series of training sessions for a wide variety of staff and stakeholders, including a sample community safety audit conducted after dark in a key location.

Finally, the plan recommended a series of management and impact metrics ranging from new crime statistic analytics to perception surveys and pedestrian counts, including stroller counts. The use of metrics beyond raw crime statistics is an essential tool in determining where to invest limited funds, what programs need adjustments to better impact real and perceived safety, and how to best tell the story of progress and comfort in each sub-district.

Marina District and Bicentennial Park

Working with the Riviera Beach Community Redevelopment Agency, Viking Developers, a complete design team, and the City of Riviera Beach, we evaluated existing conditions and a series of conceptual to final plans for the complete rebuilding of this historically significant downtown park.

Elected officials, staff, and others recognized that safety perceptions were a major issue for the Marina District and Bicentennial Park, including the ability to attract more visitors to newly planned retail venues adjacent to the park. Our evaluation and recommendations were comprehensive as they proactively addressed historical fears about the area using our innovative Safedesign™ approach.

In addition to providing guidance for an adjusted design process that included improved photometric analyses, night-time renderings, and expanded phasing analyses, we developed a comprehensive list of suggested adjustments to design features, programmatic concepts, site signage, vendor programming, adjacent building designs, wayfinding well beyond the park site, ambassador roles and scheduling, phased seating improvements and parking systems, among other things.

Lighting was of particular concern given the projected high levels of use after dark. We identified the appropriate lighting standards, provided innovative lighting solutions for different areas of the park including restrooms and tree groves, and provided technical advice to other design team members about our 4 C’s of Lighting approach.

Another key element of our recommendations was careful event selection and phasing, including the best kinds of events to improve perceptions of safety at night – and those to initially avoid lest they make things worse. We also provided guidance about managing homeless camping and panhandling.

Bicentennial Park plans were adjusted significantly based on our recommendations, as were communications strategies, and construction is scheduled for completion in the Spring of 2016.