Steubenville Summit Generates Ideas to Reinvigorate Historic Downtown

Guest Post by Evan Scurti, Executive Director of the Jefferson County Port AuthorityThis past October, the City of Steubenville, Board of Jefferson County Commissioners, and the Jefferson County Port Authority took the first step in a long-term journey of sustainable growth and reinvestment in historic downtown Steubenville. "Investing in the Ville--A Real Estate and Business Development Summit" was created through the collaborative efforts of the three local governments, a steering committee of passionate citizens, and sponsorship money and services from local merchants. The event exceeded expectations by welcoming over 100 local and regional developers, investors, building owners, and interested citizens. Organizers agreed that this successful inaugural event is only the beginning of a series of interconnected strategies focused on reinventing the CBD of a historic city that is striving to reposition itself in a new global economy. While the old steel mills employing tens of thousands on both sides of the Ohio River no longer exist as an anchor to support bustling downtowns, there is currently great potential for Ohio Valley growth as new industries like oil and gas extraction emerge. Steubenville's leaders are focused on guiding that growth back to the historic and large urban core of the city.

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Aerial shot of Steubenville, Ohio

The event featured Keynote Speaker Franzi Charen, Executive Director of the Asheville Grown Alliance, a nonprofit supporting grassroots development and local entrepreneurship efforts in Asheville, North Carolina's downtown. Franzi's message resonated with the Steubenville crowd, as Asheville has also had to adapt to industrial economy changes in sectors like textiles. Through the vision of creative local developers and entrepreneurs, Asheville has diversified its economy and strengthened its tourism trade, which are both goals that Steubenville is beginning to adopt as its own. To help make downtown Steubenville a renewed destination for locals as well as visitors, the City administration has developed an exciting streetscape and civic plaza vision for the heart of the CBD. Consultants' overviews of these plans followed Franzi's address. The event culminated in an inspiring address by a longtime downtown business owner and resident who emphasized the safety and strong potential of the CBD and a walking tour of prime development opportunities that are ripe for new visions.

Event organizers have agreed that this should be the beginning of an annual effort to celebrate successes, invite and brainstorm building reuse ideas, track the CBD's vacancy rate, and reassess the overall downtown plan. Downtown Steubenville is a special place with a large, impressive built environment. Local leaders are showing great commitment to current and future generations by engaging in the best kind of smart economic development--rebuilding and reusing the infrastructure and wonderful buildings erected by past generations. We firmly believe in, and will work toward, this event growing into a regional movement to renew one of Ohio's most unique places with enormous potential.

The UpDayton Summit

UpDayton Volunteers

Guest post by AJ Ferguson, Director of UpDayton

The 2015 UpDayton Summit will be held on Friday, April 10th at the Dayton Art Institute from 2pm to 6pm. You can learn more or register online at http://updayton.city/.

UpDayton seeks to spur economic growth in the Dayton region by attracting and retaining young creative talent. UpDayton wants to show young adults that the Gem City is a great place to live, work and play. And if top-notch creative young professionals want to live in our community, then top-notch entrepreneurs, businesses and investors want to be here, too!

UpDayton is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The vast majority of UpDayton’s impact stems from the work of volunteers who want to build a better Dayton for themselves and their peers. Volunteers lead and power UpDayton’s targeted committees and projects that address factors college graduates and young professionals employ when they decide what city to call home.

Each year, UpDayton hosts a young creatives summit, bringing together diverse young talent, business leaders, non-profits, universities and elected officials to address the flight of young talent from the region. At the each Summit, the Dayton region’s diverse young creatives come together to share their needs and concerns for the Miami Valley and brainstorm ideas to make the region a better place to live, work and play.

Primary goals of the annual Summit:

• Solicit young, creative professionals for their needs, cares and concerns and challenge attendees to devise ideas for making the region a better place to live, work and play

• Launch a community action plan based on the Summit ideas and recruit attendees and other young creatives to implement the plan

• Educate young creatives about regional assets through a Summit Resource Fair

• Foster great collaboration between the region’s young professional organizations

• Attract local media attention

The Summit is an annual event intended to sustain a constant, community-coordinated focus on attracting and retaining young talent in the region. Each year the Summit is an opportunity to highlight the progress of the previous Summit’s action plan and launch new projects.

During the breakout sessions, attendees discuss possible project ideas for the coming year and ultimately choose the three that will be implemented. Each project receives $1,000 in seed money and the support of UpDayton’s network of volunteers and partners.

In 2014, projects included:

Dayton Inspires - A community pride social media campaign encouraging the community to recognize how Dayton inspires our own personal greatness, ambition and achievements, and to remind us why we’re proud to call Dayton home.

Wright Now Downtown - An effort to better connect the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base community to downtown Dayton.

Downtown Disc Golf - An effort to bring a new disc golf course to Dayton well within the reach of downtown residents.

Other notable projects:

SR-35 Pedestrian Bridge Mural - This bridge mural brought new life and vibrancy to a bridge connecting two of Dayton’s strongest historic neighborhoods.

Walkable Dayton - This project team put up basic wayfinding signs throughout downtown Dayton that emphasize the city’s walkability.

Streetvival - This placemaking project brought an inspirational and interactive mural to a Dayton neighborhood. The mural included chalkboard paint areas for community members to add their own messages of hope and optimism.

A Lesson in Pivoting a Legacy City from the Hamilton Mill

Guest post by Antony Seppi, Operations Director of the Hamilton Mill in the City of Hamilton, Ohio The “pivot,” according to Merriam-Webster is the “action of turning around a point.” The legacy cities of Ohio and other Midwest cities need to be adept at making these “pivots” for the sake of their long-term survival. Hamilton is pivoting with significant downtown revitalization strategies that will reclaim our urban core. “The Mill,” as it is affectionately known throughout Southwest Ohio, is Hamilton’s small business incubator and is just one piece of the many exciting initiatives taking place in this rustbelt community. Our City’s Economic Development Department has been recognized on several fronts and the pieces are in place to carry the momentum forward. This is all after being dealt several crippling blows in the early 2010’s that included the shuddering of two paper mills, the loss of a major downtown employer, and the after effects of the Great Recession. This is all happening in a legacy city that was built on manufacturing – automotive, beverage, paper, and steel.

In July of 2014, the new and improved Hamilton Mill was unveiled. A new era of business incubation is taking place at The Hamilton Mill, which is conveniently located between Cincinnati and Dayton in the city of Hamilton, Ohio. We are Southwestern Ohio’s only small business incubator dedicated to green, clean, water, digital and advanced manufacturing technologies. We are leveraging the extremely progressive City of Hamilton utilities department that delivers gas, water, electric, waste treatment, and broadband services to our residents and businesses. The municipally provided utilities will be 75%-80% renewable energy when the Meldahl Hydroelectric project comes on-line in 2015. This revolutionary change is taking place now.

The Kauffman Foundation, one of the leading organizations promoting entrepreneurship and small business, has determined that younger firms are the job creators, and The Mill will be an important part of that going forward. We have succeeded in developing significant collaborations with organizations that share our passion for transforming the region’s innovation landscape. It is a formula that has proven itself countless times, and it is a valued principal that has come to define us, as well as the advancement of the region’s start-up community.

We are not new to the game, just more engaged with the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem and the needs of Southwest Ohio. The incubator has served Butler County and Southwest Ohio since 2003 and will continue to provide a home to high growth startups that are building things, specifically around manufacturing, clean technology, and digital applications. Below are some key metrics and awards that we have been recognized for since we began our relaunch initiative one year ago.

Mill-Stats

As you can see, our mindset at The Mill is all about innovation and making the swift, key pivots that are required from organizations to be successful. The Mill, in and of itself, is a start-up – just like the start-ups that we are mentoring and recruiting to be part of our journey.

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Economic Recovery in Southwest Ohio’s Clinton County

Clinton County RPC wins the APA Award

Guest post by Christian Schock, Executive Director of Clinton County Regional Planning Commission

Like much of Ohio and the nation, an economic recovery has been ongoing in Clinton County and Wilmington in southwest Ohio. This is especially poignant locally, following the dramatic economic disaster of DHL’s departure from the Wilmington Air Park in 2008. While there have been many successes locally in job creation, corporate attraction and expansion of businesses at the Air Park, another key story has also been the re-appreciation of local businesses and revaluing of local assets following the disaster, and has led to new community and economic development policies and programs in Clinton County.

Last year, the Clinton County Regional Planning Commission and our non-profit arm Energize Clinton County won a National Planning Achievement Award from the American Planning Association for these policies and programs rooted in a five-part strategy focused on: local business, local food, energy, young professionals, and community visioning. Each of these areas were highlighted as observed local leakages in the economic system at the time of disaster, and by developing pragmatic programs focused on these issues, we were able to address both short-term and long-term development needs of the community.

Last month we presented on our award-winning strategy and programs at the Arizona Rural Development Council’s annual meeting—also a statewide organization—whose mission is to advocate for economic development and issues in rural areas in that state. The conference highlighted the importance of understanding and supporting broad localism within community and economic development strategies—whether in locally made products or locally-owned businesses or through locally engaged community plans and programs. The theme of the conference tied closely to our story, which has been one of resiliency and recovery, and also highlighted our cautionary tale of the need for economic diversity and for communities to better understand and identify trending economic vulnerability, and the need for a greater focus on the value of local assets.

In an article in the International Economic Development Council’s journal earlier this year, we highlighted that a strong localism strategy—proactively addressing key leaks within the economic system as we have attempted to do in Clinton County—could be a key component to economic disaster preparedness planning. In the field of natural disaster response, there are many steps toward understanding vulnerability and there are well-accepted best practices for delineating risk such as the 100 year flood line. But within economic development there is dangerously little consensus about what constitutes vulnerability to an economic disaster and what factors should be risk benchmarked.

Greater Ohio has led on this topic, especially in legacy cities, and it is perhaps especially true in rural areas where the economy may be more reliant on only a few key areas of industry. Resilient communities must be ones that plan for potential disasters, understand and define risk vulnerability, and those that develop diverse, multifaceted programs to address that vulnerability from both a top-down and bottom-up approach.

In addition to the existing programs, the pipeline of program and idea innovation is important if we believe that economic risk is an evolving and changing vulnerability that brings new threats and opportunities regularly, so it is critical that communities continually look for new innovative and collaborative ways to tackle the observed leaks or highlighted risks. Just recently, with the current programs established, we unveiled a series of new programs including a young professional homesteading we call Wilmington Succeeds. A unique partnership with the Wilmington City Schools, Southern State Community College, Wilmington College and the City of Wilmington, focused on offering incentives for young people to go to school and stay in the community after graduation. We also recently collaborated with Treehouse, a nationally-recognized code training platform company, on an initiative called Reach Clinton County, which focuses on coding training for local residents. These programs have opened yet another front to address the strategy and attack challenges like brain drain and workforce development in ways our community had yet to attempt.

But there is always more to be done. The lesson from the Arizona Rural Development Council and from organizations leading the way like Greater Ohio is that continued collaboration is needed. Whether it is small towns and rural areas, or legacy cities and metropolitan issues, resiliency is rightfully a hot topic of discussion. For economic development to be meaningful and effective there must be a better understanding of vulnerability to economic disaster and a greater appreciation of the value of localism and local strategies.

About The Clinton County Regional Planning Commission:

The Clinton County Regional Planning Commission was created in 1970 and represents Clinton County, City of Wilmington and the Villages of Blanchester, Clarksville, Port William, Midland, Martinsville, New Vienna and Sabina. More information is at www.clintoncountyrpc.org and our Energize Clinton County nonprofit at www.energizecc.com.

Reinventing Mansfield

Concert

Guest post by Jennifer Kime

The revitalization challenges in downtown Mansfield are not unlike those of other mid-sized Legacy Cities where the struggle for right-sizing and redevelopment has been a harsh reality for decades.  While we have watched population, median income and property values plummet; we have only grown stronger in our resilience and commitment to a better future for our community. The process of reinventing our economic strategies here is unique in that it joins together commercial districts and neighborhoods where the programs and projects work together for the mutual benefit of the regional population, of which Mansfield is the urban center.

This community wide approach has allowed us greater flexibility and has enabled us to blossom in our revitalization years ahead of what we thought was possible. Because of our community’s size and lack of economic advantages available to larger cities, we began losing businesses and industry well before it was notable on the national scale. In fact, by the time the mortgage crisis hit, our business and retail environment had already been struggling for years, couple that with the manufacturing loss that we sustained with the closing of our GM plant and the loss of total income and resources to our community was nothing short of devastating. To many, it seemed impossible that we could come back from that loss and transition our economic fabric into a community with a downtown that is not only surviving, but is authentic, lively and thriving.

While the overall approach is multi-tiered, some of that success has been due to intense and relentless marketing and promotions, including entertainment programming aimed at showcasing the restoration of our built environment. The tipping point of community redevelopment is arguably the point at which the general public begins to believe that change is not only possible, but it is happening. The only way to change the stubborn, ingrained negative perceptions that flourish within the population of rust belt communities is to show them first hand. Through a combination of property tours (vacant, for rent, rented), shop hops, neighborhood block parties, car shows, farmers markets and free concerts, we bring thousands of people downtown each month. Those activities have spurred development interest from several new property developers, business owners, employees and mostly, the public, who are now coming to downtown for the first time to shop and dine.

While promotions and place-making are sometimes seen as the feel good neighbors of tax credits and fiscal incentives, their impact is real and tangible. When done correctly and sustainably, they create new businesses, new jobs and they retain the very community fabric that is at stake when the supply and demand of a region are not in our favor. It’s happening right now in Mansfield, Ohio.

For more information on the impact of the programs of Downtown Mansfield, Inc., see these recent news articles:

“Downtown after dark: nightlife thriving” by Chike Erokwu for the Mansfield News Journal on Aug. 3, 2014

“Final Friday Concert Series a raging success, spurs economic growth” by Emily Dech for the Richland Source on July 25, 2014

About the Author:

Jennifer Kime is the Executive Director of Downtown Mansfield, Inc. Currently, Jennifer's main focus areas are in long term planning, preservation based planning, new program and project development and community development for the downtown and near downtown neighborhoods of Mansfield, Ohio.

www.downtownmansfield.com

www.facebook.com/downtownmansfield

Investing in Over-The-Rhine: Highlights from 3CDC

Greater Ohio's partners continue to create innovative programs and models that are building prosperity across Ohio. This month we spotlight the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) as an innovative private-public partnership that is providing catalytic leadership in revitalizing Cincinnati’s urban core.  This month’s guest blog post comes from Anastasia Mileham, Vice President of Communications at 3CDC.

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The Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) is a non -profit, full-service, real estate development company formed in 2004 by Cincinnati’s corporate and civic leaders. Its mission is to strengthen the core assets of downtown by revitalizing the Central Business District (CBD) and Over-The-Rhine (OTR).

Over-the-Rhine is one of the most economically distressed areas in the country with a poverty rate of 58%, unem­ployment rate of over 25%, and median household income of $9,895. Geographically situated just north of the center city, the troubles in OTR have contributed to a destabilization of the CBD. This unstable environment has prevented growth and investment in the city’s core, which has in turn impacted the health of the entire region. In the absence of a major turnaround, the region was in danger of losing some of its largest employers, further exacer­bating the persistent distress in Cincinnati’s center city.

 3CDC's efforts to revitalize low-income communities are funded by five separate revolving loan funds, totally over $195 million.  3CDC has also been awarded three New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) allocations to date, totaling $103 million. (The NMTC Program provides a credit against federal income taxes to privately managed institutions investing in distressed areas.)  Since its formation 3CDC and its partners have invested more than $324 million in the CBD and OTR by making below market-rate loans to commercial, residential and community real estate projects. Without access to the funds’ low-cost capital, such efforts would not be financially feasible.

 3CDC’s redevelopment efforts in OTR have resulted in 186 condominiums, 68 rental units, and more than 91,000 SF of commercial space, mostly created in historic, vacant and vandalized buildings. More than 85% of the condominiums are sold, the rental units are 100% filled, and a vibrant shopping and dining district has replaced empty storefronts with over 80% of the completed commercial space now leased. Since 2004, crime has dropped more than 51% and continues to decrease.

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 The first NMTC allocation of $50 million is used as a revolv­ing loan fund, which has enabled 3CDC to invest $69.6 million in real estate projects throughout Cincinnati’s urban core. The second allocation of $35 million is invested into three critical developments: (1) Washington Park, an 8-acre public park with a 450-space underground parking garage, (2) 21c Cincinnati, a 160-room boutique hotel with public art museum, and (3) Saengerhalle, a 32,000 SF mixed-use office and retail complex. The third allocation of $18 million is invested into a vacant building (Maisonette) being renovated into a restaurant/entertainment complex in the CBD, and an historic building in OTR (Paint Building) being developed into 10,000 SF of commercial space.

 3CDC has set high standards with its investments using proceeds from the previ­ous $103 million NMTC allocation. Its successful track record would not have been possible without the Federal New Market Tax Credit program. All of these projects, endorsed by the community, were catalytic in nature and resulted in significant commu­nity and economic impact felt throughout the region.