Redeveloping Neighborhoods and Revitalizing Housing Markets: A Tale of Two Cities — Baltimore and
New Bedford
Challenged with abandoned housing and neighborhood disinvestment, Baltimore, Maryland and New Bedford, Massachusetts are using creative approaches to encourage reinvestment in their neighborhoods. The City of New Bedford, working with non-profit partner TRI, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and Massachusetts Housing Partnership, is using a number of tools including receivership to address troubled properties and to create new ownership and rental opportunities. “Vacants to Value” is Baltimore’s Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s market-driven, block-focused initiative that utilizes the private market to maximize rehabilitation of blighted properties. Strategies that include streamlined code enforcement, enhanced marketing and homebuyers’ incentives are applied depending on a block’s housing market to rehabilitate houses, revitalize markets and rebuild communities. Attendees will learn about innovations, challenges and strategies to consider in their approaches to eliminating blight.
Speakers: Michael Braverman, Baltimore Housing; Julie Day, Baltimore Housing; Rita Farrell, Massachusetts Housing Partnership; Michael Galasso, The Resource, Inc.
Jumpstart Your Community: Rethinking Closed Auto Dealership Development
While much of the nation’s focus has been on home foreclosures, commercial spaces have experienced similar vacancies and abandonment. Frequently, the most visible properties are car dealerships that occupied large swaths of land and now lie vacant due to the auto industry’s reorganization. Treating this as an opportunity as well as a challenge, communities are embarking on strategies for redevelopment. This roundtable will highlight three innovative projects: the diverse coalition re-envisioning of “auto row” in Oakland, California; a revitalization study of a former car dealership in Leon Valley, Texas; and an area-wide study of closed dealerships in Long Island, New York. Panelists will highlight the challenges, opportunities, strategies and lessons learned. They will discuss many of the larger questions, including how to advance the process during fiscal crisis, authentically engage diverse stakeholders, determine the market-appropriate mix of land uses, incorporate sustainability, and maintain auto-oriented uses.
Speakers: Donna Boyce, Sustainable Long Island; Karen Peycke, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Marla Wilson, Greenbelt Alliance
Redevelopment Incentives and Innovative Financing
Now more than ever, it is necessary to identify incentives and innovative financing techniques for the reuse of distressed and abandoned buildings, neighborhoods and infrastructure. This session will focus on examples of redevelopment projects that have employed various grants, tax credits, and financing techniques that have leveraged finite local resources for a broader area benefit. Panelists will discuss their experiences and the benefits of using Brownfield incentives, Environmental Remediation Tax Credits, Historic Tax Credits, Residential and Commercial Tax Credits, Bond Financing, Investor Equity, Tax Increment Finance Districts and other state and federal grant programs to leverage and facilitate development.
Speakers: Scott Bishop, Stoss Landscape Urbanism; Michael Freeman, Center for Community Progress; Richard Karp, Karp and Associates; Gary Sands, Wayne State University
Mixed-Use Neighborhoods as Economic Engines: A Transatlantic Perspective on the Reuse of Former Industrial Sites
Abandonment of residential and commercial properties is not a solely American phenomenon. In fact, cities throughout the world are experiencing and grappling with repurposing land and buildings in ways that will support their next economies. Featuring speakers from cities in Spain, Germany and the United States, as well as the German Marshall Fund, this session will explore key lessons to be learned from several large-scale redevelopment projects in former industrial neighborhoods in Europe. Among the case studies discussed will be Barcelona’s 22@ District, formerly home to the city’s textile industry, which has benefited from a highly effective partnership between city zoning officials, project managers, and the local economic development agency, Barcelona Activa, whose incubators and entrepreneurship support center form the centerpiece of the new neighborhood.
Speakers: The Honorable John Callahan, City of Bethlehem, PA; Tamar Shapiro, German Marshall Fund; Josep Pique, Barcelona Activa; Thorsten Wiechmann, Technical University Dortmund
Restoring Land to Productive Use through Cargo-Oriented Development and Transit-Oriented Development
Amid great changes in the nation’s economic structure, rail and inter-modal activity represents a thriving and growing sector, with such facilities located throughout urban areas. The session will focus on strategies for cities to regain prosperity by redeveloping vacant and underutilized land around key freight and passenger transportation assets. Learning objectives will include conceptual understandings of cargo-oriented development (COD) and transit-oriented development (TOD), and the economic and environmental value of implementing the two simultaneously; the benefits of regional collaboration; and solutions to development barriers, including land acquisition, brownfields reclamation and infrastructure improvements. Regional strategies to implement COD and TOD will be discussed, including the Chicago Southland Green TIME (Transit, Intermodal, Manufacturing and Environment) Zone, which has generated millions of dollars in public and private investment, and more recent efforts in Wood River, Illinois and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Speakers: David Chandler, Center for Neighborhood Technology; Reggie Greenwood, South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association; Robert Kerns, Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC; CJ Rog, MI-Jack Products
