City Dock Resiliency Design – Hillman Garage P3 Funding

Annapolis, Maryland, offers a powerful lesson in collaboration. The city’s historic downtown, with its waterfront character and economic vitality, was facing repeated tidal flooding. The challenge was how to build modern flood defenses without losing the essence of the community. After failing for 20 years to build consensus around building resilience and as well as new parking, the new Mayor went about making the city a facilitator, with a process focused on inclusive engagement — bringing over 100 business owners, preservation advocates, engineers, community members and city leaders into structured dialogue. Together, over a year effort, they identified shared goals around safety, heritage, and long-term sustainability.

A particularly innovative aspect of the Annapolis approach was the integration of a Public-Private Partnership (P3) around a new parking garage project. The city leveraged this public asset to generate funding and momentum for broader resilience investments. By aligning infrastructure, finance, and community needs, the partnership turned a traditional parking structure into a cornerstone for adaptation and downtown revitalization. Annapolis shows how even modest-scale projects can succeed when collaboration and creative financing work hand in hand. Attached is a powerpoint presentation from the FHWA Innovative Finance and Value Capture Program about how collaborative redevelopment of the City Dock-Hillman Garage in Annapolis helped project funding.