Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

step three: involve stakeholders Involve stakeholders in a dialogue about the future of their community with the express goal of choosing a single redevelopment area and a strategy to attract private investment to that area. Invite residents, business owners and community leaders to participate in the process of deﬁning the town’s assets, choosing an asset-rich redevelopment site and creating a detailed redevelopment action plan. By making community members key participants in a discussion about the future of their community, local elected ofﬁcials can tap into their expertise and opinions during the early stages of the process and ensure their cooperation in implementing the strategies agreed upon. This process will certainly take longer and be messier than hiring a consultant to write a strategic plan. However many consultant studies sit on a shelf because community stakeholders were not willing to “take the consultant’s word for it.” This is particularly true where consultants are giving unpopular advice, such as to target investment to one neighborhood and not others. Perhaps the best approach is to hire a consultant to coordinate the process, facilitate community meetings and inject healthy doses of market reality into the discussion when needed. That way a community can have the best of both worlds. The ﬁnal recommendations created by local stakeholders will carry a kind of credibility that no outsider can give them, yet at the same time an expert consultant is available to broadly rethink blight removal, preservation of valued existing assets, and key action steps to attract private investment. Of course, it is also essential to include the government leaders who will implement the action plan. A CEO of a leading American company based in Pennsylvania recently said “corporate culture eats strategy for lunch.”42 Government culture is no different. If the heads of departments or the town’s state legislators do not believe in the approach adopted, they will not wholeheartedly pursue the goals agreed upon, weakening the municipality’s chances for success. Help stakeholders to focus on a new future. When Southeastern Pennsylvanians are asked what their community should be in the future, their most common response is that it should recapture its past. With the highest percentage of residents in the nation who were born and have lived in the state all of their lives, Pennsylvanians have long memories and yearn for the time when urban areas were key industrial job clusters with jobs that paid good wages, when crime was rare and family members lived next door. Looking back, however, is not the best way to move forward. Preparing a community for a new future with a modern vision will allow leaders to judge quickly and efﬁciently whether developers’ proposals ﬁt within the community vision, and allow the developer to count on the town’s support if it does. Use three tools to help stakeholders identify, understand and exploit community assets. 1. SWOT the Problem: The SWOT analysis, developed by Harvard Business School to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats facing a community or business, is a simple tool to help local ofﬁcials and stakeholders understand their community. The SWOT evaluation is designed to provide valuable insights into the actions a community must take to use each strength or asset, stop each weakness, exploit each opportunity and defend against each threat in order to achieve their vision. 2. Time for Serious Self-Assessment: Another very helpful tool, included at newPA.com/revitalize, is the Municipal Self-Assessment Tool for Economic Growth and Development from the Center for Urban and Regional Policy. This tool provides a comprehensive series of relevant questions to help a community begin to assess its assets and liabilities. The questions include: What percentage of available sites for retail trade are within two miles of an entrance or exit to a major highway? What is the current average monthly square foot cost for existing retail manufacturing/ofﬁce space in the city? Does the city maintain a complete list of sites that are available for development in the city? 3. Map Assets To Reveal Asset Clusters and Helpful Patterns: With its ability to layer different types of information for a single location and place them on colored electronic maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping and analysis software allows a community to see data spatially and explore how different community assets may relate. GIS is becoming more commonly used by many universities, county and regional planning commissions and city governments across the country. Data showing where available land, blighted properties, job clusters, greenspace and other key features are located on a single map can provide a fresh look at a community and inform redevelopment decisions. GIS maps also allow city ofﬁcials to provide developers with a comprehensive picture of the attributes of the high-impact development site and its redevelopment potential. “ Allentown went through the 3 stages of mourning for what its city used to be: denial, remembering the heyday, grieving, over the exodus of retail and people, and getting on with life, accepting that it won’t be how it was. It will be a different city based upon a different economy.” – MAYOR OF ALLENTOWN, ED PAWLOWSKI GOAL ONE: CHOOSE ONE ASSET-RICH REDEVELOPMENT AREA step three: involve stakeholders 20 http://www.newPA.com/revitalize

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

PA Community Revitalization Desktop Guide Table of Contents How To Attract High Impact Investment to Core Communities Goal One: Choose One Asset-Rich Redevelopment Area Interviews with Pennsylvania Mayors Goal Two: Prepare Redevelopment Area for Market Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Three: Welcome Investment Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Four: Apply Strategies That Work Conclusion

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