The Chattanooga firm of Kennedy, Coulter, Rushing & Watson LLC will be helping to redesign both Nashville’s Cumberland River waterfront and Knoxville’s Cumberland Avenue corridor.

The Cumberland River Waterfront Master Plan will reunite KCRW with Hargreaves & Associates, the Cambridge Massachusetts based firm that guided Chattanooga’s 21st Century Waterfront Plan. The firms have been collaborating for the past year on the Knoxville South Waterfront Plan. KCRW will coordinate the public participation aspect of the planning work as well as providing urban design expertise for the plan, which encompasses nearly six miles of riverfront near downtown Nashville.

Ann Coulter, a KCRW principal who served as KCRW’s project principal on the South Waterfront work, said, “We are delighted to be working with Hargreaves again. They are the foremost waterfront designers in the world, and they have proven time and again their ability to provide designs that are unique to the place and the people.”

The Cumberland River project is being coordinated jointly by the U. S. Army Crops of Engineers and the Metro Nashville Parks Department. The design team also includes Hawkins Partners Landscape Architects, Everton Oglesby Architects, Glatting Jackson, Moffatt & Nichol Engineers, and Christopher Leinberger.

The Knoxville project calls for the redesign of Cumberland Avenue from Alcoa Highway to Henley Street, including the area passing along the UTK campus affectionately known as “the strip.” KCRW will be partnered with Glatting Jackson, the transportation design firm that re-engineered Chattanooga’s Riverfront Parkway. The project is being managed by Knoxville’s Transportation Planning Organization.

According to Christian Rushing, who will manage the project from the KCRW side, the Cumberland Corridor offers a unique challenge. “Cumberland is not only an important transportation artery, it is also part of the very fabric of the university,” said Mr. Rushing.

KCRW principal Stroud Watson, who will add his urban design expertise to the project, knows Cumberland Avenue from the inside out, having been a UTK professor. “Anytime you tackle a project with this much history and emotional connection, you have to be very careful to understand and respect it,” said Mr. Watson.

KCRW president Jim Kennedy said the two projects indicate the firm’s growing reputation outside of Chattanooga. “These two selections are really compliments to Chattanooga and the wonderful things this city has accomplished, and we’re delighted to be doing the work. At the same time, though, we plan to continue growing our client base here in Chattanooga,” said Mr. Kennedy.

KCRW offers strategic planning services for cities and their moving parts.