Be a Neighborhood Revitalization Spark Plug

To make neighborhood revitalization or neighborhood redevelopment more than a dream, you need these elements:

• At least one committed, determined person who can convince others to help

Oh, come to think of it, that's the only thing on the list.

If you're that one determined person, or you know him or her, then this article will help you figure out where to start.

Let's think first of the ideal neighborhood revitalization planning team. You'll need the most influential people in the neighborhood that you can find, plus anyone with public relations or marketing experience. If you are in a municipality and have an elected representative, determine what that person's ideas on the neighborhood are. If they seem fatalistic, or really not that interested, then you know you'll have an uphill battle to get them on board.

The more likely case is that you can find at least some part of the public official's opinions that you agree with. Begin to magnify those neighborhood revitalization ideas in the community, and start talking to others about how to infuse those ideas with energy and person power.

As you're talking, see who's really interested in the neighborhood and has at least some positive spirit and energy. Don't pick three of four depressed out-of-work people for your steering committee. Pick a mix of ages and stations in life, but don't start out with the lazy, unmotivated, complaining folks.

Because what you need is enthusiasm aplenty. Eagerness even.

Organizing for Success

To revitalize a neighborhood, you almost certainly will need an organization. So you need to read and skip around on the Community Organizations section of this website for plenty of tips on how to start an organization, how to raise funds for it, and how to keep it productive. You'll also probably need to read about neighborhood planning.

If you already have an organization, you'll see that we recommend pepping it up rather than starting a new one, but if you must start all over to avoid bad karma of an unpopular organization, it's time to get going.

The Major Topics to Consider for Neighborhood Revitalization

The first thing that needs attention is the housing. So stay within this Housing section until you've exhausted its resources also. Probably if you're reading about neighborhood revitalization, you need to understand affordable housing and maybe even community poverty.

However, both housing and too much of a concentration of poor folks in one area are long-range problems. So while we advise that you begin with those issues to the extent they pertain to you, it's also extremely important to have some short-term neighborhood revitalization wins. Something you can start and accomplish within three months. For that, we recommend a community beautification project.

If there's no need for making the place look better, and no need for housing, maybe you have an economic development concern. If people are out of work, they soon will be having trouble with housing maintenance and particularly in the current economic environment, you might begin to have a foreclosure issue. So yes, economic development is important.

Deciding What to Do First

What hasn't been explained on useful-community-development.org is your preferred sequencing for neighborhood revitalization, or the order in which you would address problem buildings and parts of the neighborhood.

This can be stated very simply:

1. First take care of emergencies. If a building is falling down, a bridge is closed because the needed repairs aren't available, a factory is about to lay off half the people in the neighborhood, you have a drug house, or you have open drug dealing, gunfire, and prostitution, those are emergencies.

Put about 80% of your energy into those issues, and 20% into whichever of the long-range issues above (housing, economic development, community organizing) struck a chord with you and/or your elected official.

And don't move forward with another neighborhood revitalization project until you conquer the emergencies, unless a true once-in-a-lifetime project drops into your lap.

2. Then chart a path carefully for how to move forward. This step requires quite a bit of talking, researching, and experimenting. So distract people with a short attention span onto one of those "fast wins," which is a clean-up, a social event, or beautification project such as painting, board-up, or flower planting. Then while the social butterflies are out having fun and doing things that will attract positive attention for the neighborhood, get to work on a strategy.

Most of the time, your first project that is not an emergency situation should build on a strength rather than a problem or a weakness. So here's what I want you to do. Take a Saturday (at least) and have a bunch of people help you map your assets, as in the Asset-Based Community Development approach. Then step back and notice where there are two or three assets near one another. If a block has a pretty old church and a four-family building being rehabbed, and that's the most assets you've mapped on any block of the neighborhood, there's your answer. Try to get something cooking elsewhere on that block. In short, for Strategy #1, find the block or half-block where assets are strongest, but something still needs to be done, and start there.

Use the relationships you're building with people of power and influence to shake something loose. You have to overcome your fear of speaking with property owners, and if you really need neighborhood revitalization, you'll find one who is discouraged enough with the current situation to sell. Now what you need is an investor to buy the building.

That's harder to come up with than you might think, so if your neighborhood has any rich and powerful friends, this is the time to be talking with them. Plead with them to network in their social and business circles on your behalf so you can identify someone who's interested. Try to get a little project going, whether it's a new sidewalk or rehabbing of the second building on that block. Only it won't seem like a little project to you at the time, because it can take you six months or a year to begin to see some progress. And much longer than you think to complete a project.

As you figured, there's also a Strategy #2. If Strategy #1 doesn't feel right, Strategy #2 is to begin at the other end of the spectrum, with the worst thing in the neighborhood. Get rid of it. This is what people who make money in real estate do. They find the worst house on the block and make it the best house. That could be your neighborhood revitalization goal.

Find the very worst building or eyesore or condition, and get rid of it. If it's empty but the building has a nice shell, try to find a developer who would help you convert it to a new use. If it's never ever going to be any good, because the owner let the roof leak and people crawl in through the broken windows indiscriminately, try to convince or help the owner demolish the building.

Then dig into the topic of redevelopment, and learn about the world of possibilities that await you for the site. A new building where your worst building formerly stood might lend a whole new perspective to your neighborhood.

If you have a homelessness or drug pushing problem on your streets, get rid of it. That's harder than getting rid of a building. But root out the conditions that make the congregating easy, rocking the boat to get law enforcement to help you to the extent necessary.

For Strategies #3 and #4, you have to make a decision.

If you have only one strong part of the neighborhood, use neighborhood revitalization Strategy #3. Begin with your strongest area and slowly work outward from your building, block, or series of blocks that are "O.K." Be very disciplined about this, to the extent you can do so in a free market society.

If you're following redevelopment, rehab, and serious owner maintenance down the street, try very hard to twist the arm of the next investor to stay contiguous (next to) the finished buildings. If they insist on leapfrogging over to the next block, you can't stop it, but work with real estate agents and investors to convince them of the logic of going in order. Because it's very helpful to neighborhood revitalization.

And for neighborhood revitalization Strategy #4, we assume you've identified two or more strong areas, with some weaker parts of the neighborhood in between. In Strategy #4, strengthen your two strongest areas, if necessary, and then work toward the midpoint between those blocks or areas. Again exert discipline and persuade real estate folks to help you stay contiguous (right next to) the well-maintained parts of the neighborhood that are your two growth magnets, to the extent possible. But reach outward toward the other growth magnet.

In instances where the two positive poles are along the same major street, you'll be able to watch development literally crawl from each end until it finally meets at some point in the middle, and whole block faces are solid. In neighborhoods where demand is fairly weak, you can see this improvement along one block without any significant progress on the adjacent blocks behind where the progress is being made.

However, once the ends are about to meet in the middle, investors start trying to out-do one another in selecting the next area, so you'll see them jump over to the next block to take a risk.

One Caution About Strategies

Be careful to be somewhat realistic in your approach. If you want to attract commercial development, particularly retail and restaurants, you're unlikely to be able to do so before you have a stable residential base. In almost all cases, business follows rooftops, as the saying goes. Most businesses want the market for neighborhood-scale purchases to be demonstrably present before they will invest.

Certainly don't turn down commercial investment if it comes knocking on your door before you think the neighborhood will support it. But be careful how you manage resident and media expectations if you think they're highly unrealistic. It doesn't do you any good to have a very popular local restaurant jump over to your neighborhood, make a high profile launch, and then have to shutter the business in a year. So certainly welcome everyone and every hair-brained idea, but don't interpret to your residents that this investment will be our salvation if you think it won't succeed.

Trumpeting Your Success

That leads to our last point. With every little genuine success, make sure that the press blows it all out of proportion to its importance. Cultivate reporters, offer them freebies, take them on tours, make their work easy for them in any way you can. Take the trouble to explain your neighborhood revitalization strategy and all the thought and energy that's gone into it.

If you don't have anyone in your community organization with a marketing background, turn to a local university for an intern for a semester. Better yet, manage an intern every semester for the university's benefit and yours.

Enlist your young people, beginning with middle school, to help you. They have the patience to hang out on the Internet for hours on end to blog about your neighborhood revitalization, where it is, what's happening right this minute, why it's important, how cool it is, who they saw there, and all that stuff. That's really the way to stir up talk in your town. And you need a lot of hype, even if some of it is too extreme and silly. You need buzz, and young people will create it for you.

Now you should go outside and play on this website, because there are many other useful articles to explore.

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