Neighborhood Docks: Get on Our Waterfront with the Waterfront Alliance

Neighborhood docks are platforms to host educational, cultural, and historic vessels for boat rides, tours, and environmental education; they provide venues for hands-on educational programs, and citizen science projects; and act as satellite classrooms for local schools and educational institutions, providing a destination for water quality testing, fishing instruction, and ecology lessons.

The Waterfront Alliance provides community programming at docks throughout the New York Harbor, including in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; Astoria, Queens; and Fort Totten, Queens, among others. This project will support the Waterfront Alliance’s goal to host at least four dock events that will collectively reach more than 1,000 people, primarily children and their families, during the 2016 season.

In collaboration with program partners, local politicians, community groups, and educators the Waterfront Alliance will work to identify locations, dates, and themes appropriate for each neighborhood dock. Programming will occur on weekends to reach the greatest number of residents.

With more than 700 miles of shoreline, New York Harbor is right outside our front doors! Yet, many New Yorkers don’t have the opportunity to experience the joy and wonder of the water. Neighborhood docks are a stepping stone quite literally between our lives as “island people” and the waters that surround us.