Bobert:
I have been involved all my working life with events on canals/rivers/ the sea. I have had many decades of contact with two great northern English cities, Liverpool and Manchester, which have managed to start to regenerate themselves enornously, after great economic decline. And a lot of th the focus of this regeneration has been waterways led, and a lot of it was pumped up and driven by the arts in the early days. A typical scenario(taking many many years) goes like this
1) dirty old canal, no boats (trade finished) full of dead dogs,supermarket trolleys. beside the canal a large empty windowless warehouse, trees going out of the roof.
2) Volunteers start tidying up the canal, pressurise British Waterways to reopen it for boats,
3) Someone organises a Canal festival by it one summer. A few stalls, the local folk group, some morris dancers, a couple of boats.
4) School natural history projects on canal. Water is getting cleaner(businesses forced to reduce pollution). Bick colony of crayfish found, publicity in local paper.
5) Festival goes well. next year, more music, and a firework show on the Saturday night: shells fired off the roof of the warehouse, giant firedrawing attched to fire escape pn side of warehouse overlooking canal basin.
6) Community arts company hires premises by canal.
6) Enterprising developers (used to run a local trendy night club) take a look at the warehouse.
7) Grotty old pub by the canal cleans out the yard that is next to the canal, turns it into a beer garden.
8) 15 mile stretch of canal reopened to traffic, now connected to national system. Big marina opens in old canal basin.

9) Small industrial units (printing firms etc) open on site of demolished outbuildings beside ware house.
10) Warehouse bought by developers, turned into trendy flats. Locals laugh in derision. One year later, all flats let, trendy young professional couple and gays.
11) New concert hall for city orchestra built 1/4 mile up canal from warehouse. Coffe bars and ridiculous clothes shops start to spring up along back streets round canal.
11) Person who owned grotty little canal-side business hiring out rusty old beaters sells up his little bit of land for £15,000,000 and retires to private Caribbean Island (last bit's for you Bobert!).
   That is a mythical scenario, but it's roughly what has happened with the various bits of water in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, and can be paralleled in loads of town in England( and I am sure in America too). Go for it guys.