NEWPORT – Newport Collaborative Architects (NCA) and the Fort Adams Trust received the 2009 Achievement in Rhode Island Sustainable Tourism Award last week from the Sustainable Tourism Planning and Development Laboratory of the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council.

Presented for the first time this year, the distinction rewards individuals, groups or agencies that work to integrate environmental, social, historical, cultural and economic planning in their tourism development work.

Newport Collaborative Architects and the Fort Adams Trust have worked together since 2000 to upgrade the fort built in 1824 and its surrounding buildings. In the past nine years, the trust has undertaken more than $8 million in improvements to the National Historic Landmark.

Newport Collaborative’s restoration projects include rehabilitating the North Casemates into an event facility and museum, designing a waterproofing system for the earthen ramparts, converting five casemates into a reproduction of 19th-century barracks to be used for youth groups, civic groups, re-enactors and conference attendees, and restoring the redoubt and jail. Recent renovations also brought the redoubt and jail up to U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards.

“Fort Adams Trust was excited to work with NCA to carry out an authentic restoration and reconstruction while at the same time incorporating energy-saving and sustainability goals to the maximum extent,” said Eric Hertfelder, executive director of the Fort Adams Trust. “The results have been excellent, and we are able to explain to our visitors the many interesting features of the building and the benefits of green construction, beginning with the fact that restoring an old structure preserves all of the embodied energy represented by the materials and labor that went into building the structure in the first place.”

The Sustainable Tourism Planning and Development Laboratory, established in 2005, is certified in tourism governance under the United Nations World Tourism Organization. It helps communities utilize the principles of civic tourism and geotourism to grow sustainable tourism.