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Residents, business owners and other Asbury Park stakeholders came together to march from the city’s West Side to the beachfront on March 22, symbolically uniting both sides of the city.

The “Rebuild One City” parade was organized by members of the Rebuild by Design competition created by President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Task Force. By the end of the competition, the top design teams will be given Community Development Block Grant Disaster Relief funds to put their ideas into action.

Two of the ten competition teams selected Asbury Park as the location they would like to see their unique design ideas for future storm resiliency realized.

It was of no small coincidence that an underlying current of resiliency unites the locations where the parade began and ended. St. Stephens AME Zion Church was one of the first structures built after the riot of 1970, said Pastor Derizer Johnson, and Langosta Lounge had to be rebuilt after it suffered significant damage from Hurricane Sandy.

Members of the Shore Brass Band and alumni of the Asbury Park High School drum line led the way in front of students from Hope Academy Charter School [shown above], members of The Eloquent Charismatic Orator, Food Not Bombs, and representatives from Interfaith Neighbors, Coastal Habitat for Humanity, Asbury Park dignitaries and others who marched in the parade.

At an after party held in Langosta and throughout Marilyn Schlossbach’s various connecting restaurants in the Second Avenue Pavilion, team members interacted with residents and business owners. Multiple displays gave an overview of project ideas to the visiting public.

“I’d have to say, as someone who has observed the whole process, for me, this type of event really is representative of a resilient community,” said Alexis Taylor, a project manager for the Rebuild by Design Competition, “and what we are about is not just design, as in dropping a design down in some place that is resilient, it actually does come down to – is it a resilient community? Is it a community that can support a project that really is like a long-term vision? So, it takes a community that’s very invested in it.”

One of the teams is focused on flood protection and ecological conservation, and the other on commercial corridors that are valuable to the region.

“I like this, I really like what they are doing,” said Asbury Park resident Donald Davis. “I really want everybody, and when I say everybody I’m talking about black, blue, green — whatever color — we need to come together and make it happen.”

“This can bring people together to really do something for the West Side,” said Frank Syphax, president of West Side Citizens United.

The West Side is in need of businesses, he said.

“Our people on the West Side have to go all the way and catch a cab to get to the mall, to Shop Rite — we have nothing in the West Side,” said Syphax.

“This event came together really, really well,” John Weber, Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager of the Surfrider Foundation said. Surfrider has assisted the design teams for months as they gathered research about the area, he said.

“At Surfrider, we think, day in and day out, how can we make coastal living more sustainable?” he said. “How can we do this better – how can we not get crushed by another storm?”

Weber hasn’t pulled any punches along the way, either, making sure to alert the teams that any design ideas proposed for the beachfront may meet resistance from the Army Corps of Engineers, who are in the midst of conducting a 50-year beach replenishment project and survey, he said.

Schlossbach, who received just $50,000 in grants to rebuild her five Asbury Park boardwalk businesses in the wake of Sandy and got no help from her insurance company, remains a hopeful skeptic.

“We’ll see where the money goes, but I’m behind the concept of it,” she said. “I think we need to protect the future, and we need to work together and find smarter ways to do things. If we are going to be dumping money every time we have a storm, we need to be funneling it in the right direction — for protection.”

Overall, the event was a success.

“We were really happy with how the event turned out,” said Jerome Chou, Rebuild by Design project manager. “Our goal was to bring people together from all parts of Asbury Park and surrounding communities, and to highlight all of the great work people are doing to make the Jersey Shore more resilient. I think everyone involved with producing the parade and the party felt really energized by it, and are excited to work together on future events.”

All ten Rebuild by Design teams working throughout the Sandu-affected region will show their final work Friday at a juried presentation in New York City.

Gauging community support for the projects is a required element of the final project submission, said Brie Henshold, an urban planner working with one of the teams. To help satisfy the requirement, footage from two public information sessions held at Asbury Park’s ShowRoom Cinema and the “Rebuild One City Parade” will be included in their presentation, she said.

Members of the public will have another opportunity to view the project concepts at receptions and a final exhibit of all of the design proposals throughout the region on April 3 at Liberty Science Center at 8:30 a.m. and at 250 Vesey Street in Lower Manhattan at 5 p.m. Details are at rebuildbydesign.org.

The winners will be announced by Secretary Donovan of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development later this year, according to the website.

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