Asset Driven Revitalization Strategies at Play in Newark's South Ward

Beth Israel Medical Center is centrally located in Newark's South Ward
and is seeking strategies to support improved corridor conditions. 

Economic development, particularly in lower-income communities, is frequently fraught with challenges that quickly connect to a complex set of social issues. Such was the case during a recent site visit to the South Ward of Newark, where LOA is developing an economic development strategy for the Bergen-Lyons-Clinton (BLC) Partnership, so named for the three principle streets where our efforts will be focused. It should come as no surprise that during focus groups with residents, as well as conversations with city officials, merchants and anchor institutions, the conversation quickly turned to public safety concerns, high rates of unemployment, drugs, homelessness and prostitution. One might assume these issues are beyond the scope of an economic development and small business strategy, but they clearly relate to the quality of the business environment and the ability of local businesses to survive and thrive under challenging conditions. While physical improvements to public realm, a mainstay of many corridor strategies, are important, they are wholly insufficient in this context.

A former bank located at a prominent intersection was recently purchased by investors who are interested in rehabbing the building. Will the BLC Partnership be able to influence the owners decisions regarding who leases the space? What carrots can be used to encourage the investor to turn this eyesore into a point of pride for the community?

The work is being funded in part by RWJ Barnabus, a regional health care service provider and operator of Beth Israel Hospital, located in the South Ward. The hospital is an anchor with a deep interest in addressing the holistic needs of the local community. We were thrilled to use this planning opportunity to explore how RWJ, together with LISC Newark, can marshal resources and advance advocacy for improvements that go beyond the look and feel of the corridor.

In many ways, our mission was one of identifying assets – many yet untapped – that could be put towards the complex challenges at hand. Early discoveries included a local church with surplus land on the main corridor and a desire to put it to work in service of community youth; LISC, a community development intermediary with deep expertise in affordable housing development and finance; Beth Israel, a hospital with a keen interest in a deeper level of community engagement; property owners willing to engage the BLC Partnership in discussions about development plans; and a public administration with a desire to see economic development activity spread more evenly across the City. These were all signs of starting points, opportunities to develop a comprehensive asset driven community development strategy that leans heavily on a set of place-based interests and resources, all unique to this particular neighborhood at this particular point in time.

An abandoned building located along Bergen Street
and controlled by the local Baptist Church.
Is this a development site with potential? 

These conversations were merely a starting point. As our work progresses, we look forward to a deeper exploration of solutions that get at the root of the challenges facing small businesses and the communities they serve. 

Larisa Ortiz is Principal of LOA. 

Round Up: Buffalo's Architectural Heritage, Peoria's Parking Problem, Baltimore's New Zoning, NY's Small Towns, Rural and Urban America

How Buffalo turned architectural heritage into an engine for reinvention

Knowing their strengths, Buffalo has taken their many masterpieces, created by some of the biggest names in architecture history, and turned it into architectural tourism. Along with tax-credits and small-scale private urban planning, the city with such a past is seeing opportunity and a future.

Peoria's Parking Problem

Like many cities across America, there is an issue with overabundance of surface level parking. Peoria is one of those cities and is "so full of parking that the amount of land devoted to surface parking in the county actually surpasses the amount of land devoted to buildings." This continues the debate of paved space versus productive space.

Baltimore’s New Zoning Hoped to Boost More Mixed-Use Development

The new zoning code, unveiled in June 2017, has been in the works since 2012 and was the by-product of public debates and multiple revisions. While many of Baltimore's East-coast sister cities have either stabilized or grown, Baltimore has continued to lose population. The hope is that this new code will turn things around.

Additional website of interest: Discover Baltimore City Neighborhoods

For Oneonta’s Aging Downtown, a $10 Million Face-Lift

New York State turns its attention beyond NYC and Great Lake adjacent cities to its small towns through the Downtown Revitalization Initiative. LOA was part of the DRI Oneonta consultant team and look forward to seeing what outcomes and future lie ahead for these often overlooked economies.

The Divide Between Rural and Urban America, in 6 Charts

Beyond the political divide - rural and urban America have other issues. While job growth is higher in urban areas, rural areas still lead the way in entrepreneurship and small business start-ups. Unfortunately, rural areas struggle with poverty and disabilities more so in comparison to their urban counterparts.  

Why is retail important to building strong communities?

Nur is an associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

Whole Foods Market covers over 428,000SF of ground floor 

retail space in St Paul, MN.

Our work at LOA often entails diagnosing problems facing neighborhood retail corridors and offering recommendations and actions to take to revitalize these areas. More often than not, these retail corridors were once vibrant commercial districts that fell into decline following demographic shifts. This, as we all know, was a result of the flight that took place in the 60s and 70s as many middle to higher income families left urban neighborhoods for suburban homes. This shift led to urban neighborhoods falling into decay with increasing pockets of disinvestment and retail stores closing from the lack of residential and worker spending. Most recently, we have seen the trend impacting South Fourth in Mount Vernon, NY where retailers are struggling to attract local customers with poor sidewalk infrastructure, vacant lots and decaying buildings. Fortunately, this trend is beginning to reverse as more people move back to downtown neighborhoods and reap the benefits of living, working and playing in close proximity.

As this upward trend continues for urban neighborhoods, there is now an urgent need to revitalize the formerly vibrant neighborhood retail corridors that were home to a variety of businesses. Promoting and enabling neighborhood retail corridors can take the form of tenant recruitment and marketing strategies, however this assumes that the corridors already have existing physical assets to support existing businesses and attract new ones.

The typical market-led business attraction strategies may only serve to better inform commercial real estate agents and potential retail tenants about the untapped opportunity and market demand in these revitalizing neighborhoods. However, often, these neighborhoods themselves don’t have sufficient viable commercial spaces to support the retail tenants that might be interested in the market. This would then call for redevelopment and more specifically, mixed use developments that can both provide housing for residents hoping to move back to urban areas and provide commercial space for retail, restaurants and even offices.

In fact, the most direct intervention to promote neighborhood retail development is to develop new commercial real estate in the form of ground floor retail spaces and these may be led by the public sector, private sector, or even public-private partnerships. In fact, public sector-led projects can often “act as catalysts of further neighborhood development, with the expectation being that public investment in one or more key initial projects will lead to greatly increased private (unsubsidized) development activity.”

As urban neighborhoods start to get back on their feet with more ground floor retail, a myriad of economic and social benefits may also arise for local residents, particularly in areas that are still seeing a concentration of poverty or lower income families.

One South Market development in downtown San Jose.

Firstly, the presence of neighborhood retail at ground floor often has an incredible impact on overall neighborhood vibrancy and safety, and can create a positive image for the area. In fact, neighborhood retail has often been described as the ‘front door’ to a community, acting as a signal for the direction and types of changes occurring in the area. As retail offerings and storefronts improve, locals also will likely perceive the whole neighborhood as improving and becoming more vibrant.

In fact, ground floor retail, when designed well with transparent facades and welcoming signage, can result in additional lighting on the streets in the evening. If the stores operate into the night, for example restaurants and convenience stores, then these businesses will also contribute to more eyes on the street with patrons and employees coming in and out of the stores. These traits although often negligible can certainly contribute to neighborhood safety and other quality of life factors.

Neighborhood retail can also serve to provide key services to residents in the immediate area, including medical facilities, daycare centers, hair and personal care salons, and finance and tax service centers. These services would be especially important in neighborhoods that are attracting young families with children and working parents. Over time, the easy access to these amenities can even influence the location decisions of more households, potentially inviting even greater retail market demand from local residents.

Shops + Lofts at 47 in Chicago,IL features 55,000SF of retail

In addition, the retail and offices that fill ground floor commercial spaces can often become main employers for urban neighborhoods. Shops & Lofts at 47 in Chicago, IL for example is a mixed use development with over 55,000 ground floor retail SF. It is currently occupied by a Walmart Neighborhood Market, Subway, Burger King, Associated Bank and Uncle Remus Chicken, and as of 2016, there were about 35 full time employees working in the single development. Other than retail, medical service centers located on ground floors are also well-paying employers (in fact, ground floor commercial spaces are often suited to large medical institutions seeking outposts for supplementary services such as eye clinics). Overall, retail and services in revitalizing urban neighborhoods provide great job and even entrepreneurship opportunities, particularly in lower income areas.

Finally, neighborhood retail is key in solving for food deserts. Often neighborhoods that have experience the decline and decay of previous decades have lost major anchor grocery stores and are now the face of healthy food equity gap. By creating new and well-equipped spaces for large and small grocery stores to enter the neighborhood, many more residents will be able to gain access to fresh produce and essential goods that were not so easily available. Some revitalizing urban neighborhoods have even seen immigrant business owners that are bravely entering new retail spaces, offering culture-specific grocery items and thriving.

Pinecrest project in Cleveland will feature ground floor 

retail, office, residential, and public plazas.

Retail is important to building strong communities in our neighborhoods as it contributes to street vibrancy, neighborhood safety, job opportunities, and access to key services and healthy food.  As we continue our work on neighborhood retail revitalization and leading development, or business attraction strategies in emerging neighborhoods, we need to maximize the benefits to local residents who will continue to live, work and play in these areas for years to come. 

For more resources, check out:

Beyard, Michael D., Michael Pawlukiewicz, and Alex Bond. Ten Principles for Rebuilding Neighborhood Retail. Washington, D.C.: ULI–the Urban Land Institute, 2003. http://uli.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TP_NeighborhoodRetail.ashx_1.pdf

What difference can a few stores make? Retail and neighborhood revitalization. Rick Jacobus and Karen Chapple, 2010. http://communityinnovation.berkeley.edu/reports/Retail-and-neighborhood-revitalization.pdf

New York City Department of Small Business Services issues Commercial District Needs Assessments

We are thrilled to share the release of the City of New York's Commercial District Needs Assessments (CDNA's). These six neighborhood assessments set a tremendously high bar for the kind of information that government entities can collect and share on behalf of local communities. The assessments give neighborhoods a powerful tool that they can use to encourage investment and advocate for the improvements they want and need. They allow neighborhoods to communicate not only strengths, but also make clear the kinds of enhancements that are needed to improve quality of life and business opportunities for both residents and businesses alike.

Our connection to this project is quite personal. Over a year ago, the New York office of the Local Initiative Support Corporation provided funding for our firm, Larisa Ortiz Associates, to develop the framework for what eventually became the CDNA approach. In coming months we will be working with LISC  to turn the methodology in a practical 'how to' manual so that other communities can benefit from - and perhaps even replicate - the approach.

Our philosophy has always been that communities - particularly underserved urban communities - cannot and should not be understood by market data alone. The syndicated data that is available is often inaccurate. So when retailers or investors use it to understand urban markets they are often misled to believe there is limited opportunity for new business. To combat that perception we have developed an approach, honed over many years, that considers four key areas of inquiry as follows:

• Business environment - in particular locations of high retail density, as well as the quality and type of retail offerings
• Physical environment - including the conditions of the public realm (i.e. streets, sidewalks, and public spaces) and the private realm (buildings, and privately owned assets) as well as the degree to which the corridor is easily accessible the the resident and non-resident customer base
• Market and demographic data - not just for residents, but also for non-residents, including employees and visitors to the community who may alter the customer profile
• Adminstrative capacity - which reflects the organizations, institutions and local leaders whose engagement is critical to the success of commercial revitlaizaiton efforts. 

This approach results in a much more comprehensive profile of opportunities and needs - and helps put communities behind the steering wheel when it comes to advocating for the investments that they want and need. We couldn't be more excited to share this with the field. Congrats to the amazing team at SBS for the hard work that went into creating these wonderful tools!

To download the assessments and to find out more about the great work that the Department of Small Business Services is doing click here. 

IDA Atlanta: A Few Takeways

We came back from IDA Atlanta inspired with the exciting panels we had the opportunity to attend. For those who missed the conference (and the fun!) here are some key takeaways:

The rise of mid-tier cities – millennials are moving back to mid-tier cities attracted by real estate affordability and quality of life.  Some lessons learned:

•       Yes, millennials are moving back but they want to see positive change if they are to stay. They not only want to see those cities improving, but they want to be part of the change. Cities willing to attract (and especially retain) this population need to provide avenues for active civic engagement (and not just events).
•       Walkability and the availability of multiple transportation options are the main factors attracting residents and businesses downtown.
•       Availability of retail (eating establishments as well as stores) within walking distance of work is an amenity increasingly valued by employees and employers alike. Thus, investing in downtown commercial corridors, making them walkable and vibrant, is a necessary economic development strategy for those cities willing to attract the young skilled labor force (of the not so distant future).

Vibrancy is an economic development engine, but in districts with an active nighttime activity it is fundamental to balance the needs of customers and nearby residents. Some lessons learned:

•       After complaints from residents, Edmonton installed urinals and found that over 500 people used them every night. With that information in hand, local commercial district practitioners were able to successfully advocate for the installation of public restrooms. 
•        Night transportation is a problem.  In many cities public transit stops service before restaurants and bars close, forcing people to rely on automobiles. In many nighttime areas, traffic becomes a problem, with all the taxis, ubers and lyfts parking around to pick up customers. To address this problem, Austin created designated places for taxis and car service companies with strong enforcement.
•       The creation of a local Hospitality Business Association (or Committee) is a first step towards establishing better interactions between businesses and local communities. Having open meetings between the association and community members allows for constant communication and having issues addressed before they become a problem. 
•       A successful example includes the creation of local Community Court programs that allow people who commit low-level misdemeanors to avoid a criminal record if they complete community service and pay a smaller fine. The service typically ranges from clean up to graffiti removal events. The Beach Area Community Court in Pacific Beach has had an acceptance rate of 88% (of offenders accepting to participate in the program) and reports a recidivism rate of less than 5%.

      Civic engagement is no longer an option -  it is a must in creating more authentic and inclusive revitalization initiatives. Some of the main challenges include avoiding narrow interests to hijack the public dialogue, including the voices of the typically missing groups (minorities), and maintaining public trust in the process and the players. Some ideas and tools to address these challenges include:

•       One way to generate meaningful participation includes the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach by focusing (and valuing) on what is working in the district, analyzing why it is working and fostering more of it. The basic tenet of AI is that a district(or organization) will grow in whichever directions the people in the district focus their attention.
•      One way to reach people that are typically absent from the discussion is to bring the questions (the process) where they are and at the times that they are there (i.e. engage local students and have them interview their elders; bring the project to a local coffee shop, or the farmers market, and ask only one or two questions to make sure more people participate).

Some interesting engagement tools include:

Liberating Structures is an engagement model that facilitates relational coordination and trust. It consists of microstructures that foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone. The website has a menu with 34 structures on how groups can organize interactions and work together in multiple ways.  

Neighborland is a platform that allows civic leaders to collaborate with local communities in an accessible and participatory way. It does that by integrating on-site and online community feedback within the project website and allowing for continual feedback and online discussions.

MetroQuest is a community engagement software designed to educate communities and collect informed input in a short period of time. Participants can see the impact of their choices in real time and learn alternatives and tradeoffs based on their own priorities.

What is the secret to a sustainble neighborhood economic development strategy? Start by understanding regional market trends and clusters

This here is a cautionary tale about good intentions gone awry. ("Cuomo's $15 Million High-Tech Film Studio? It's a Flop", NYTimes, 8/22) The story starts innocently enough. The goal was to create jobs in an area with a struggling economy. In this case the State of New York invested $15 million in the creation of a high-tech film studio. The idea was to "build a sustainable film industry in Central New York from the ground up" according to this press release.

But there is a problem. Economic development simply does not work like this.  "If you build it they will come" is largely a myth. Creating jobs, much less building an industry from scratch, is more often than not a fool's errand. A viable economic development approach must therefore be rooted in local opportunities, strengths and market reality. In many cases, it means being on the look out for industry clusters that have already deemed the market suitable. This is about developing a strategy that rests on improving the business environment for an existing industry cluster--a much easier lift than starting from scratch. While the cluster approach is not new (it is embedded within a long history of market-based economic development planning synonymous to many with Prof. Michael Porter) it unfortunately remains mysteriously absent from major public or non-profit led economic development decision-making strategies. And I'm not alone in thinking this. The Brookings Institute recently released a great paper, which I wrote about a few months ago, entitled "Remaking Economic Development" that made the point about clusters precisely, "Economic development should prioritize building strong business ecosystems for core industries, improving the productivity of firms and people, and facilitating trade— the market foundations from which growth, prosperity, and inclusion emerge."

So why all this discussion about regional economic trends and clusters? Aren't we talking about neighborhoods? Well, without the region there is no neighborhood economy. So when it comes to developing a viable neighborhood economic development strategy we need to next these efforts within a larger regional market. This means identifying industries that are already making a go of the opportunities and competitive advantages of an area, from a skilled labor force to critical infrastructure to the presence of complimentary firms. These are all the factors that enable a business to generate profit. Consider the unique local factors that led Hershey to build his factory in Pennsylvania--proximity to lots and lots of cows who produce milk, the main commodity in milk chocolate. Or why Detroit's auto industry has stuck it out in Detroit--there exist a cluster of suppliers, manufacturers, distributions, researchers, etc. that are quite difficult to move and replicate elsewhere. Putting these clusters on a more aggressive growth trajectory, whereby they are able to lower costs, grow profits, hire more people and fill more vacant real estate space is the opportunity that we have in our urban neighborhoods.

A study commissioned by Indianapolis LISC
offers insight into how a local
non-profit can tap regional economic trends to
build a real estate investment and job
growth strategy in low-income urban neighborhoods. 

The Indianapolis chapter of the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) is helping lead an effort of this kind by commissioning an report that served as a guide for industrial investment strategies in urban places. The findings? Three clusters showed "particular promise and a competitive edge for Indianapolis...Food Manufacturing and Distribution, Business to Business (B2B) and Technology." The recommendations offer the beginning of a road map for how LISC, one of the nation's largest CDFI's, can help grow industry clusters through targeted, place-based real investments. Some notable recommendations include supporting feasibility analysis for industrial buildings and developing accessible expertise around site selection, industrial building re-use and conversion.

Another approach is helping to absorb build out costs for the kinds of capital investments necessary for the Food Manufacturing Cluster. Ensuring space can accomodate enhanced refrigeration and electrical loads, or can support high-quality processing and distribution all while maintaining high health and safety standards requires a site by site analysis to determine feasibility and any gap financing needed to make a project viable.

The solutions aren't always easy - in some cases they involve developing regional working groups that will open lines of communication between the public and private sectors to guide and inform investment and policy initiatives over time. As it turns out, engaging a broad spectrum of private sector partners and ground-truthing potential public investments might have made a difference between a great New York Times piece and an embarrassing one.