My understanding is that this is going to be a bigger topic in the next few years. Councilman Westbrook said that in an article I wrote this past week at:

http://www.cleveland.com/sunpostherald/index.ssf/2013/02/jay_westbrook_plans_to_retire.html

 

And this may be an opening salvo in that reform......

 

Neighborhood Progress Inc., two other nonprofits could be uniting

The groups are in talks to form an alliance that would save money and improve efficiency

By JAY MILLER

4:30 am, February 4, 2013

 

Editor's note: This story was changed from its original form to correct the last name of Jeff Kipp, executive director of LiveCleveland.

 

Just as businesses and even communities are looking for ways to collaborate and be more efficient, three nonprofit organizations that play key roles in economic development in the city of Cleveland are moving toward consolidating their efforts.

 

Cleveland Neighborhood Development Coalition, LiveCleveland and Neighborhood Progress Inc. are in talks to bring their organizations and their missions under a single umbrella organization that would work to fund, promote and revitalize commercial and residential development in Cleveland's neighborhoods. The groups have not yet committed to an alliance, though.

 

READ MORE AT:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20130204/SUB1/302049978#

Yep... as the city's population continues to plummet, so will the amount of CDBG funds it receives.  Not a good combination, worse yet when paired with the amount of reinvestment which will need to take place in order to make several of the inner east-side (and some west-side) neighborhoods more attractive to home buyers.  The CDCs play a major role in that, as they often take vacant housing from either HUD or the Cuyahoga land bank to redevelop.  The problem is that a CDC may have received funding which allows for the repair of, say 20 homes, while the neighborhood the CDC is located in may have over 1,000 homes (literally) which are vacant and abandoned.

 

I don't think there is any amount of urban planning which can tackle this issue without a growing population, unless the city concedes and takes on the "shrinking" approach Youngstown has. 

Not only are the feds reducing their CDBG money, HUD is no longer giving away homes/properties to the land bank. Tough combination....

True - but likely will end up with a better result. As long as those within each of those groups that remain look "out0side-the-box" to better their services

And while those particular revenue streams are shrinking, there are a ton of other large-scale pools of money out there for community development that we can and should be pursuing aggressively. In the Obama era, we've seen the birth of a lot of cross-agency programs that are trying to address community development more holistically, a perfect alignment with the new NPI model, and to scale of CDCs' current CDBG allocations, these awards are HUGE. High-visibility examples are HUD's Choice Neighborhood grants (CMHA secured $300,000 in planning funds) and Sustainable Community grants (the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium received $4.25 million). And this money is not just coming from HUD ... DOJ, DOT, EPA, HHS, etc. are all making neighborhood revitalization grants that would be windfalls for Cleveland neighborhoods.

 

Case in point ... tons of national money around the concept of creative placemaking, where Cleveland has garnered quite a bit of federal investment. Detroit Shoreway received $50,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts' Our Town program for planning of an artist warehouse space on Detroit. Northeast Shores secured a $500,000 grant from Our Town's sister program, ArtPlace, as well as more than $300,000 in additional support from national funders in its efforts around Waterloo. St. Clair Superior is now a finalist for a $675,000 grant from ArtPlace for its UrbanUpcycle program along upper St. Clair. That's collectively about $1.5 million in neighborhood artist investment all within two years ... a pretty hefty counterpart to CDBG and NPI SIA.

 

I definitely hope that a new consolidated community development umbrella will have more capacity to pursue opportunities like this. When we tell the story of Cleveland neighborhoods to national funders, we tend to win support :)

I think there's already a thread about this.  Consolidation is long overdue.  As Westbrook pointed out, many of the CDC's here are simply no good.  But from those articles, it doesn't seem like the plan involves reducing them in number, which I believe is necessary.  A city with 20-some distinct and unrelated plans has no plan at all.

From what I've heard, the plan absolutely is to reduce the number of CDCs. I doubt we're talking about having a city with 10 CDCs anytime soon, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if we start to see some mergers relatively soon, with attention on absorption of underperforming CDCs and expansion of service boundaries to areas not currently serviced by any CDC. At the very least, I think we'll see strategies like the Stockyard, Clark-Fulton and Brooklyn Centre Community Development Office operating under the leadership of Detroit Superior.

 

I've got to say, though, that this can be a double-edged sword. I'm on the board of St. Clair Superior, and I have to say that it's personally very difficult for me to wrap my head around being a good steward of our entire service area, which stretches from East 30th Street to MLK and has a secondary service area from East 18th Street to East 30th Street. I have to imagine this is the case for some other mega-CDCs like Detroit Shoreway, Slavic Village and Bellaire Puritas, too. Sure, everyone knows that you need to focus on your primary assets and grow outward. And sure, planning at a larger geographic level allows for less provincial strategies. But as CDCs, we also have responsibility for working on behalf of all residents, businesses and stakeholders, sprinkled throughout a neighborhood, not just in our "hot spot". When you're balancing the needs of 12,000 residents and 10,000 employees, spread over 2 Strategic Planning Areas and 3 council wards ... Just saying this can be pretty difficult with broad geographic areas.

 

Personally, I'd say the low-hanging fruit for merger talk are underperforming CDCs representing very small geographies. If you haven't been able to show measurable improvement in a 10-block by 10-block area, there's something a little off in your strategy.

I think there's already a thread about this. 

 

I couldn't find it. If you can, please share the link and I'll consolidate them.

My bad, I didn't mean thread consolidation I meant CDC consolidation.  I did find that other thread, but it's messy and better left to rot, honestly.  It's the one where people said CDC's aren't city funded, and I said yes they are, and they said no they aren't, etc.

 

8ShadesofGray, I think you've just described why I'd prefer to move away from the CDC system entirely.  Different neighborhoods require different approaches, certainly, but making each one a fiefdom sets up needless competition.  Someone at the top needs to say "Listen children, you're going to have to share that one plaza.  Your mother and I are not getting each of you your own retail plaza."  This same problem plays out at a regional level, among the burbs, as illustrated by Oakwood commons. 

 

How do you judge the Mt. Pleasant CDC against one that deals with West Park?  You can't.  They're playing completely different games.  Counter-intuitively, I think the separation of planning into CDC units actually causes a one-size-fits-all result for all of them.  Each CDC "owes it to their constituents" to keep up with others and show immediate returns.  None of this "we need a better plan" stuff, the answer to everything is yes, because you don't want to be the last kid on your block to get a new Walgreens.  How embarrassing, when the other kids are all getting Family Dollars now. 

 

The CDC system creates administrative mouths to feed, which spawns a rogues gallery of perverse incentives:  quantity over quality, cheap over solid, sprawl over density, redundancy over cooperation, cynical over aspirational, Chiefs over Indians... come up with your own, it's fun.  I believe in one plan.  A complex plan, negotiable along its many branches, but in essence a top-down approach.  Like a military plan, or a business plan,  or a budget.  No more development for development's sake, no more keeping up with the Joneses. 

"My bad, I didn't mean thread consolidation I meant CDC consolidation.  I did find that other thread, but it's messy and better left to rot, honestly.  It's the one where people said CDC's aren't city funded, and I said yes they are, and they said no they aren't, etc."

 

Let me revist that idea.  No they are not funded by the city.

 

I see you are here to poison the well again.  We get it.  You hate CDC's.

 

Now where is my ignore function?

^^ I think that's a fair critique. And I don't entirely disagree, but I do think that the CDC structure also creates something that we wouldn't see in one monolithic city agency or city nonprofit or redevelopment authority ... An opportunity for market competition for different ideas and a platform for urban innovation/exploration. For me, this is similar to "rightsizing" discussions around city council and county council. The problem at the county level? Too few commissioners and not enough geographic focus ... Let's move from 3 to 11. The problem at the city level? Too many council members and too much provincialism ... Let's move from 19 to 15. And while there are certainly many advantages to revisiting government structure and cutting waste, I'd argue that the best returns for fixing local government are to concentrate on what we're doing rather than just how we're doing it. At the federal level, Democrats argue big government, Republicans want small government, when we should all be talking about how to make good government, regardless of its size.

 

Similarly, I think you can make a case regarding the appropriate number of CDCs or whether there should be alternative structures to CDCs or whether these should be government agencies or nonprofits, but at the end of the day, the big question for me is how you maximize the amount of ideas we're bringing forward for revitalizing different types of neighborhoods in Cleveland and maximize the amount of urban innovation here. Structure matters, but shifting from open-ended general operating support to performance-based funding and more project support for testing ideas would also be helpful. So would a general attitude shift of all the partners involved toward being more risk tolerant and branching out and trying new things. The potential merger of NPI, CNDC and LIVECleveland is interesting and possibly a game changer, but the movement away from solely focusing on bricks and mortar to a more holistic approach to human development I think is the really more meaningful movement in Cleveland community development right now.

Let me revist that idea.  No they are not funded by the city.

 

I see you are here to poison the well again.  We get it.  You hate CDC's.

 

Now where is my ignore function?

 

If you want to ignore someone, that power is already inside you.   

If you want to ignore someone, that power is already inside you.   

 

BBC is doing some cool stuff with development along Kinsman and some TOD around the rail stations in the Opportunity Corridor...

 

Burten, Bell, Carr Development is seeking a Real Estate Development Specialist and a Community Outreach Coordinator

http://www.bbcdevelopment.org/2017/08/bbc-is-hiring-for-two-positions/?platform=hootsuite

BBC is doing some cool stuff with development along Kinsman and some TOD around the rail stations in the Opportunity Corridor...

 

Burten, Bell, Carr Development is seeking a Real Estate Development Specialist and a Community Outreach Coordinator

http://www.bbcdevelopment.org/2017/08/bbc-is-hiring-for-two-positions/?platform=hootsuite

 

I'm shocked at how badly both of the BBC positions pay.