Great Lakes Resilience: Advancing a Novel Regional Prototype from Concept to Construction - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 09/16/2026

Landscape architects are redefining regional infrastructure. This session highlights the client and consultant teams collaborating to advance the Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS), a $500-million, 40-year initiative. Speakers will unpack the practical realities behind implementation—funding, partnerships, complex regulatory coordination, and community trust—transforming a vision into lasting lakefront infrastructure.

Learning objectives:

Describe how landscape architects can help communities move innovative shoreline resilience solutions from master planning to implementation through strategic refinement, regulatory navigation, and sustained multi-agency and community collaboration.
Demonstrate the (unexpected) roles landscape architects play in leading public realm improvements, and how communicating the benefits of ecological restoration and biodiversity strengthens public health, regulatory frameworks, and funding outcomes.
Navigate regulatory approvals for a 100+ acre waterfront project using dredged material, and how long-term stewardship and relationship building support environmental justice and resilience.
Identify work products (Benefit Cost Analysis, technical fact sheets, workforce development plans, and graphic communications, etc.) that best demonstrate project value, support grant applications, and enable advancement through permitting processes.

Jared Edgar McKnight, ASLA

Senior Associate, Designer + Researcher

WRT

Jared Edgar McKnight is a Senior Associate + Designer at WRT (Wallace Roberts & Todd), a landscape architecture, planning, urban design, and architecture firm. His professional work and research focus on projects that support both environmental and social resilience, through community engagement and design interventions that challenge the structures that isolate and exclude communities and ecosystems, with an empathetic lens that considers those whose voices, and identities, are not often heard, or designed for. Based in Los Angeles, Jared practices across WRT's Philadelphia and San Francisco offices, and serves as ASLA Southern California's President-Elect (2025-2026), and future President (2026-2027).

Kelly Coffman, ASLA, PLA, LEED AP

Principal Planner

Cleveland Metroparks

Preserving natural areas and connecting people to the outdoors have shaped Kelly’s 35-year career as a landscape architect. Her role as principal planner at Cleveland Metroparks includes leading park and strategic planning efforts for the 25,400-acre regional park system. Kelly co-manages the Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS) effort to transform Cleveland’s east side Lake Erie waterfront and works to coordinate plans, projects, and partnerships across the Park District.

Kara Slocum, PE, WEDG, ENV SP

Civil and Resilience Engineer

Arup

Kara is a licensed civil engineer and resilience specialist with a focus on climate-adaptive infrastructure and waterfront design. At Arup, she leads interdisciplinary teams on projects that integrate engineering, ecology, and community engagement to deliver long-term resilience outcomes. Her work spans coastal adaptation, stormwater management, and beneficial use of dredge material, including her leadership on the Cleveland Harbor Eastern Embayment Resilience Strategy (CHEERS) and Liberty State Park Revitalization Plan. Kara brings a systems-thinking approach to infrastructure planning and is passionate about advancing equitable, nature-based solutions for communities at large.