SEB's neighborhood revitalization experience includes: project-specific programs and citywide plans and strategies; design and implementation funding mechanisms; and extensive work with community-based development organizations. Examples of our work include citywide strategies and neighborhood-specific implementation plans in Des Moines, IA; New Haven, CT; and Peoria, IL. In Des Moines and New Haven, the proposals were accepted and converted into policy and program designs that remain in place today. In Peoria, the future plans for three large family public housing developments were at the very center of the work to define a citywide revitalization strategy. SEB has participated in strategic planning assignments and organizational assessments of community-based development organizations. For example, in Detroit, MI, members of the firm managed concurrent assessments of 16 organizations funded by the Detroit Community Development Funders Collaborative. Past and present principals of SEB have also conducted extensive training and technical assistance in Massachusetts and several other locations across the country.
Some of SEB’s representative neighborhood revitalization projects are:
- Des Moines, Iowa
In response of local housing problems not uncommon to many cities, the City of Des Moines and Polk County jointly selected SEB to analyze past patterns and methods of housing assistance and neighborhood planning in order to make recommendations to new policies and initiatives. SEB’s report proposed a designated neighborhood revitalization effort which coordinated neighborhood-based planning with targeted services and financial support from the City and County, including capital improvement programming. Included in the report was the proposal for a new Neighborhood Finance Corporation which was created and subsequently won a national award by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. As of December 2003, the NFC has closed loans and grants is excess of $122 million in support of the neighborhood revitalization strategy and plan put forth by SEB. Moreover, 19 neighborhoods have now created and had plans approved so that they could be designated for targeted funding based on those plans.
- New Haven I - New Haven, Connecticut
The City of New Haven created a Housing Task Force that retained SEB to address concerns about the decline of the City’s housing stock as well as the City’s public and private housing delivery system. SEB’s final report led to the reorganization of city government which resulted in the creation of a Department of Housing and Neighborhood Development. This department combined widely scattered functions into a single department and produce a coordinated approach to neighborhood and housing-based issues. A variety of new programs and initiatives were also created as a result of the SBE report.
- New Haven II - Dixwell/Newhallville Neighborhood Revitalization – New Haven, Connecticut
When the City of New Haven, Yale University and the Olin Corporation decided to create an 80 acre Science Park in the center of two neighborhoods in decline – Dixwell and Newhallville, SEB was retained to create a neighborhood revitalization program in concert with the Science Park development. The program focused on the causes of decline and to recommend concrete strategies to reverse the current trends in the areas of housing, commercial uses, open space, public infrastructure, facilities and services, neighborhood confidence and capacity-building. The report proposed a five year timetable for implementing the various action steps recommended and targeted the financial resources necessary to carry it out.
- Living Cities
Living Cities, Inc. is a non-profit, public-private partnership working to improve physically and economically distressed inner-city neighborhoods. Established in 1991 as the National Community Development Initiative (NCDI), Living Cities combines the vast resources and expertise of 15 leading national non-profit, corporate, financial and government institutions, with the most promising community-based organizations in 23 cities. The organization changed its name to Living Cities in 2002.
In its second decade Living Cities has begun a new program called the Pilot Cities Initiative. Since 2003, Gordon Brigham has served as the Program Director of the Pilot Cities Initiative for Living Cities, Inc. (PCI). PCI now operates in four cities – Baltimore, Chicago, Miami and Minneapolis/St. Paul. At each site a host foundation has taken a leading role in shaping a partnership whose goal is to bring new expertise and economic leverage to bear to implement comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategies. In Baltimore and Miami this initiative targets large-scale comprehensive neighborhood redevelopment. In Chicago plans are being prepared for 16 neighborhoods through a thorough community-based planning process. In the Twin Cities, the focus is on business districts and the need to create support systems for emerging entrepreneurs in neighborhoods with a strong influx of ethnic populations.
