Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture, Part 26: Place Based Community Regeneration

Episode Topic: Place Based Community Regeneration

Join us as panelists discuss strategies for allocating limited funds (to be catalytic), attracting (the right kinds of) investment, and addressing housing shortages (by addressing failed urbanism) in the process of reactivating downtown development in Midwestern cities. Watch regional leaders discard obsolete models to champion fiscal solvency and civic pride, proving that when we prioritize community over projects, we rebuild the American fabric.

Featured Speakers:

• Marianne Cusato '97, '17 MBA, University of Notre Dame
• Stefanos Polyzoides, University of Notre Dame
• Jim Brainard, Board of Governors of the Suzanne C. and Henry L. Lennard Institute for Livable Cities
• Dave Weaver, We Impact Group, LLC
• Rebekah Kik, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/1bcd20.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Restoring Reason, Beauty, and Trust in Architecture.

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Transcript

Welcome and Why the Center Began

1 0:20

Good afternoon Good afternoon, and,

Speaker 2 0:26

uh, thank you for coming. Um, this is going to be a friendly and informal, uh, evening's discussion about subjects that are very dear to our hearts. Um, this is the third, the third summit of the Housing and Community, Community Regeneration Initiative or Center for Housing and Community Regeneration, whichever way you want to, to, um, address it. And I'm particularly pleased that we started three years ago with our first summit with twenty-five people in a small room. Last year, seventy-five people in a bigger room, and today, a hundred plus people in this room with about fifty joining us tomorrow. So if nothing else, it looks like we might be doing something right or at least doing something that, um, is of interest to many people, including yourselves Uh, first of all, before I introduce Dave Weaver, a few, a few thoughts about, uh, the center itself. Um, Marian and I, Marian Cusato, Professor Cusato and I, three years ago, uh, in a fairly idle discussion, I remember some afternoon out in the cold, um, we had a, we had a very spirited exchange about the notion of setting up a, a, a set of activities like the ones that are, are being included at this point as part of this, of this, um, of this, uh, effort in the School of Architecture. Why, why were we, uh, eager to do this, and why were we certain we're going to succeed? We're eager to do it because we cared about the fact that, that the, um, the, uh, Rust Belt South, uh, South, uh, Midwest had been disinvested and its, its physical, uh, development had declined to an acceptable degree. But also because we were optimistic that that kind of state of affairs could be reversed, could be reversed through a clear thinking, serious research, positive action. So, um, we began in a, in a very simple way by examining what had been the factors that had caused this decline. What was it about the state of affairs that we lived out in this part of the Midwest that might have brought this, uh, situation to, to, to be, uh, the dominant manner of planning and, and development here. Very soon we realized, without, without too much effort, that the current models of planning and, and, uh, development were obsolete. And they were not obsolete because we said so, because there's some kind of evidence that, that was extraordinary at a, at, at a, at, at, at the institutional or person level. But because the effects of fifty years of building under these issues around us were devastating. Codes were in place that were-- they're backward-looking and completely, uh, keeping, uh, proper, uh, uh, design build happening. Pla- uh, planning and development that was based on, on visions of city making that were, uh, uh, that were just very, very passe in every, in every possible way. And in fact, what- whatever was in place were just fragments both of abandoned territories and ideas about building and planning, and new ideas which were not contributing to making a, a new coherent whole. Um, we also realized that the financial structure in place was not happen-- was not happening. There was very little interest in, in private capital that was native to, to these places we're, we're living in, we're working in, that was eager to come in and, and address the, the question of rebuilding. And also when, when the market came in, in the form of bringing money from Wall Street or further, or further reaches of the, of the financial universe of our country, the-- what was being built was basically absolutely unacceptable in its quality and its, and its impermanence, primarily. Then as we started working more intensely and connecting to, to people and places, we realized that, that, uh, citizens did not have a voice in what was going on. The, the, the citizens were voiceless. They were disconnected from what was going on. We also found out that mayors and other leaders who were in, in a, in a position of authority and, and had interest and ambition to do better could not do better because they were not properly supported, that their staffs were, were weak, uh, in many cases, and did not have the experience to address many of the issues that w- that were coming up, uh, during, during, uh, our, our, our outreach efforts. And so when you put all of that st- all that stuff together, you realize that we're li- we're living in a, in a dysfunctional, in a dysfunctional state of operations when it came to, to planning and design and construction. Uh, and, and also, uh, uh, a reflection of that was in the generating of a, of a, of a world, uh, to, uh, of a, of a building environment to live in, which was ve- very, of very poor quality and of very little promise for the future. So during these three years, we've dedicated sel- ourselves as a center for housing and community regeneration to a number of activities that you're going to hear an awful lot about in, in, in the next days. Uh, those are activities in both research and in practice, and on the practice side, they have to do with visioning and with, uh, and with, uh, following through and attempting to, to, to, to construct and, and, and, and advise all the way to the, the realization of, of projects. We have, um, we ha- we're positive, we're optimistic about what is g- what is going on because th- we, we, we explored and also discovered in the, in the process of exploration that this state is much stronger, uh, in, in this, in this area, in this field than, than we think we are. The, the, the, the existence of community, um, uh, of community foundations in Indiana is a source of immense help because it allows for seed money to exist to promote planning and building the right kind ev- everywhere in every corner of the state. That's a unique thing in the United States that this is so. I think that the, um, the READY programs, uh, as, uh, as not particularly well developed as they are in, at present, have also have b- are unique and extraordinary and, and, and always only happening here of all places and, and hopefully to continue to happen into the future. We discovered an immense reservoir of goodwill on the part of people, particularly, particularly, uh, residents. In 40 years of practice on the coasts, w- our work as, as architects and, and urbanists was constantly, uh, affected by negative vibes on the NIMBY upper reaches. Uh, working in architecture and planning was NIMBY rich, and in three years of work here with seven-- in seven client cities, there's not been a single negative voice heard. I mean, this is truly remarkable because what we need to do here is so, is so willed and wanted by the people who live here and lead here that, that I think we couldn't-- we can't falter, we can't, we can't not follow through. And secondly, and thirdly, and lastly, I should say, I'm sorry, lastly, we have, we've come across leadership of a kind that we did not expect existed in the form of, um, of individuals on the private side and particularly on the mayoral side, that they'll help us, um, they've helped us, uh, accelerate our work in a way that, that is extraordinary, which is reflected, I think, in the numbers of, of so many of you here. So, um- We are moving forward today. We, we are, we're, we're going to continue this effort and are going to continue, continue it in a very intense and, and heartfelt way Uh, because we are convinced that at the source of whatever we, we want to do, uh, what is most important is not only the I, the private interest, the, the, the my way, but also the we, the community interest and, and this force that binds people together for the common good. And I think the common good is not-- I, I, I would've discovered that the common good is not only an aspect of the mission of the university, this is integral to our work, but it's also a force that exists outside the university on the part of many among you who wish to see the places where you live and work, uh, be advanced and refined to the degree possible. We're also, um, we're also seeing these efforts as not being about, about, um, uh, work that is preparatory to action, but about action itself. That it's about work, that is about taking advantage of opportunities to operate through the market, not only to set up rules or to set up boundaries or barriers. And finally, um, we have come to realize early on, happily early on, that what we, what we discover, how we operate daily, uh, what, what we come across as positive, positive and bright information has to be essentially shared immediately. That's why the hundred year, uh, coalition was set up because as important as individual discoveries and works in various scattered places is, it is by far more important to imagine that whether it is in, in, uh, visioning or in, uh, in, in imagining that is, or in structuring or in following through or, or, or in, in manner-- in, in, in entrepreneurial activity within the projects we set up, that all of this work or the positive notes that we discover are, are working and are doing, are doing what we wish to happen in place. Uh, all of those things can really, can be communicated from one town and from one city to each other. And lastly, I want to make sure to tell you that, uh, in the, in, in the buzz in the air, uh, politically is that there is, there is among us and, and, and for us a choice between, uh, a job, uh, create-- begun job creation and, and civic and, and place regeneration. That, that it's either about getting jobs to work in some place or taking all that money and energy and making a place possible. And basically this binary, uh, approach to this political approach to this problem is patently absolutely wrong. What we need is both. The-- You cannot do one or without the other. This has been ec- our experience from, uh, from, from, uh, thirty years of work, and there is no question whatsoever that we both have to make places worth living in and worth identifying with And with, uh, with, uh, worth supporting our, our, our personal and, and our families' activities, but also places that people can find, uh, work and, and, and build their, their, their prosperity in a way they can enjoy their lives. So please think of what we're doing as being not only narrowly addressed to, to our, uh, professions and other interests, but they have to do with a much bigger effort to, to build a structure of society that is, that is generative and giving and, and productive to the extreme.

Dave Weaver and the River District

Speaker 2 12:15

So with this, with th- this long introduction and hopefully a way of, of having you understand where we're coming from and where we're going, I want to, to talk briefly about our speaker. Um, well, he's already the external developer, so there's not much else I can say other than by beginning to say that, b-by saying that, that Dave, uh, Weaver and Brit Croyle, uh, who is, uh, sitting behind him, um, have supported this effort financially for three years and have continued to do so in a way that has enabled us to get where we are. So we're deeply thankful for that. Uh, Brit and Dave are members of our advisory council, and our contributions to our school and this program, this project, have come through that, through that effort. But most importantly, I think, of all the, the clients and all the places over the seven years that we've been involved in, uh, Elkhart is the place that because of Dave's efforts, has gone the fa- the fastest in the implementations of the, of the, of, of implementation of the ideas we've pursued. And in fact, his lecture is going to indicate how that has happened and why it has happened. But suffice for me to say that it's both because of an eye of restructuring the financial conditions of making projects, the, the, the planning structures for making pro- and, and, and the nature of governance in making p-projects, and also then entrepreneurship and the individual prerogatives of developers from making entrepreneurships, uh, for making, uh, projects. All three of those are connected in a way that has, has generated the enormous, uh, work, uh, of he has done and its impact, uh, uh, being at the forefront of where we hope to be in the months and years to come. So we're deeply thankful for that, Dave. We welcome you, uh, to the school, and we hope that this remains a rather informal discussion. So after your lecture, there might be some questions and answers. Thank you.

1 14:22

Hmm. Make a distinction Steph, thank you

Speaker 3 14:24

very much for that warm introduction. It's been a real pleasure of, uh, Brit and my life to be engaged in the university, and specifically the School of Architecture, learning and working alongside you. Um, my name is Dave Weaver. As Steph said, thank you for being here tonight, um, as we discuss and explore our experience and themes we've uncovered as we develop in Elkhart's River District. We impact as a small family office. There are nine of us in Elkhart, Indiana. I retired in two thousand nineteen. Uh, eight of the nine folks on our team came out of automotive supply chain. We had nothing to do with development. I've done industrial development since twenty ten. We have over a million and a half square feet of industrial, um, uh, projects in Elkhart, Indiana. But we really created We Impact because we saw a need in the community where we thought philanthropy wasn't taking enough risk. And entrepreneurship, we weren't focused-- or entrepreneurs, we weren't focused on persistent issues. There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to do. There's nowhere to live. Has anyone ever heard that in this region? Now, if we're great entrepreneurs, why don't we change that? You know, why don't we use the resources that we have to change that narrative and that experience? We hear this a lot, right? Why don't kids go outside anymore? And really, for the last three generations or the last seventy-five years, this has been the predominant way we've developed in the United States. Single use, single u- um, generation, nondescript buildings that create an urban form that's miserable. You have to drive from one place to the next And this really came out of the '50s, um, post-Euclidean zoning and post-World War II. We started to systematically decamp the city of the five key elemate- elements that codify the social fabric of a city. We started with housing in the 1950s with white flight, right? The office park. 1972, this is opening day of Concord Mall in Elkhart, Indiana. Cultural and civic assets, we're continuing to do this today. This is our brand-new $107 million courthouse in the middle of nowhere. And in 1954, uh, this is, um, Penn-Harris-Madison School District. And so we've created this really disrupting, uh, and disruptive pattern of development that concentrates a use, it forces people into their car to go from various use to the other, and it has an adverse implication on the, the type of city that we want, right? Everybody wants a great place to eat downtown. We want great little shops and quaint little places to live with front yards. But the reality is the way we've invested for the last seventy-five years is in direct conflict with the way we want our cities to perform So in 2016, I was still focused on, on growing our organization, but I had agreed to start a visioning process with the community foundation and with the city of Elkhart to imagine what an extension of downtown Elkhart might look like. And this is the River District. This is the final published plan in 2018 by David Dixon and Jeff Speck. Again, the idea, the historic... Let me see if I can get this to work. The historic Main Street is right here. This would be the 100% corner of Main Street. And the idea would be this hundred and five acre extension was a, was, uh, uh, an extension of the downtown, not a replacement of downtown, and was really surrounded on three sides by two rivers, with the confluence of the rivers being in the, uh, west corner there. Our team is predominantly focused then on the area called the Delta. In 2019, when we had assembled some property with the city, um, for those of you that are familiar with Elkhart, this is Elkhart Health and Aquatics, and this is the new Martin's grocery store along Jackson. Um, when it was clear that building, Elkhart Health and Aquatics, the fifth-largest natatorium in the United States, was going to be built, the city let out for RFP these six acres around Elkhart Health and Aquatics. That facility is a seventy million dollar public-private partnership. Every fourth grader learn-learns to swim in that facility at Elkhart Community Schools. It's our high school's competition pool. We have sixty-two hundred members. One in nine Elkhart residents is a member at Elkhart Health and Aquatics. That RFP was let out to a hundred and forty developers, and exactly zero responded. And we thought, "Oh, shit. What did we just do?" We just deployed thirty million dollars of public infrastructure spending for the streetscape along Jackson, um, Elkhart Avenue, and Junior Achievement Drive. We'd created a one-and-a-half mile, um, path around the district. Um, we procured a lot of property, and zero, zero, um, developers were interested. So we actually went to Tim Sexton, we went to a few folks and said, "Can you introduce us to Kite and a few other, um, developers in the region, and let's have a conversation?" We went to maybe five or ten developers, and they said, "This is a cute plan. This is great. This is a lot of money anywhere. So very professionally done, but we're not gonna take the risk of coming into Elkhart when we can go to Carmel or Naperville or name the community, um, and it's much, much lit-- uh, uh, less risky proposition." The idea of the River District was really an ante in to having a relevant conversation about recruitment and retention. In a time and place in which, uh, most choose place over paycheck, jobs really can no longer be the currency we use for economic development. And so how do we, you know, Elkhart's unique, 60% of our GDP is still in manufacturing. We have two rivers in our downtown. If you look at just the demographics of Elkhart, it's, uh, we're definitely below the socioeconomic status of both the state and nationally. However, if you drop a pin downtown and draw a 10-mile radius around it, our incomes in the region are 50% above the state average and above the national average. Our argument was this was not an economic issue, this was an investment issue. That point we separated ourselves from, um, the public private partnership and five families, uh, including ours decided we would build the first project. Today we have roughly 700 residents in the district and 500 apartments of which we're one of the f- the three developers. Um, our team plans on building roughly 400 more units, uh, with a mix of for sale and rental. There are 40 businesses, 11 restaurants, five parks. We talked about the River Walk. Elkhart Health and Aquatics sees 45,000 patrons a month. 15 18-year-olds qualified for the Olympic trials in that facility last year. Our first project was the River Bend in the center, and we called it a project because at that time, that's how we saw this work. We said, "You know, we're gonna build a project and the market will take over." The reality is we were building a, a large industrial building at the same time we decided to build the River Bend and nine hundred Jackson, and we could see the pro formas playing out right before our eyes, and it was clear that the market had indeed taken over. Paying the most for land we've ever paid, paying the most for steel we've ever paid, our cash-on-cash return on a big dumb box we call it, is twenty percent. Return on invested capital annually is thirty percent. Eight subcontractors roughly right to build a big dumb box. Conversely, for the River Bend, ninety-two contractors and the cash-on-cash pro forma return was three percent. It was clear the market was working just fine. The highest and best use of capital was gonna go towards industrial buildings, and if we wanted to, to build this type of, of, um, project, we knew that we would have to intervene. The market had already made its determination on where the capital was going to go. And so at that time we pivoted. We started to read a lot of books. We started to visit a lot of places, and we started to understand what makes a community a community. And today, um, we have twelve families, everyone's from Elkhart, uh, County, committed to this work, and our family's personally committed to thirty buildings in thirty years. We're breaking ground this month on buildings nine and ten with buildings eleven and twelve in design. We name every building. We got out of this practice as a culture when we stopped building na- uh, buildings worth naming. We started building nondescript, single-use, single-generation buildings. A hundred years ago, that's not how buildings were built. It's not why they were built The idea is to establish a sense of place, and we no longer call it a project, we call it a neighborhood What we've seen in the last 24 months are 13 new leases. We're working on number 14 right now, six relocations into downtown, six new investments in the River District. We've seen the highest concentration of reinvestment and relocation of modern history. And between, uh, REDE and IEDC participation, local municipal support, uh, philanthropy, and private investment, we've seen about $250 million invested to date. We think another $250 million will be invested over the next five to 10 years. We've traveled to maybe 70 cities in the United States and abroad discovering, exploring, learning what makes a city a city. In the United States and in the development world, especially in the industrial Midwest, we believe there's a crisis of confidence and a proliferation of hindsight bias, rationalizing away why we can't hold ourselves to a higher design standard, while at the same time explaining why certain communities are indeed successful. Communities like Carmel or like Greenville. Carmel's a great one. People say it's successful because it's close to Indianapolis. Really? Or how about Greenville's successful because it's close to Clemson. It's 45 minutes away. It's so easy for us to rationalize why another community can be successful and hold themselves to a standard, but we can't do the same for ourselves. So we ask the question, how do you create a market where there is none? And we'd argue there is one. We just haven't figured out how to unlock it. What anchors your community? What hospitals or headquarters or cultural and civic institutions do you have? What sport complexes or keep-- public spaces do you have that you can, can build off of?

Six Development Lessons

Speaker 3 26:15

Next, we'd like to talk about the themes. It's, it's hard to imagine that the visioning process for the Ri- River District took place nearly 10 years ago We started as leaders in a public-private partnership with the City of Elkhart and Community Foundation, and today we're developers in a district working alongside the city to implement that plan. These are a few of the takeaways we've learned so far. It's important to know we don't just build buildings, we also get involved in the food and beverage. We get involved in, in, um, programming the public space. The idea is if we just build buildings, we haven't succeeded. We want people to-- We wanna build traditions. We wanna build emotional connections between place and, and the community, and so these are what we've... This is what we've learned so far Every developer we've met, including ourselves, has a bias. That bias is usually marked by the word market. When a developer uses the word market, your radar should go up and say this is their bias It's our responsibility to consider the neighborhood. So instead of using the word project anymore, we use the word neighborhood. How is this building going to activate the street? How will people experience it? How does it add to the neighborhood? And so at the bottom left, you'll see a picture of Carmel. In the bottom right, you'll see what a developer might say the market can, can afford to do. We should hold ourselves to a higher standard, um, especially as it relates to design and urban form. Next, local capital is always greater than out-of-town capital. No one is coming to save our communities. No one's coming to save Elkhart. It's been our experience that there are two types of development: development that adds to a community and an extraction of wealth model. How can I build to the lowest rung of the ladder, build to the market, and then sell off that property? In real estate, there's something really weird in the dynamics of how we lend a project, how we stabilize it, and then the value of that project once it's been stabilized, and the gap between the two could not be wider. And so there's incentive in place for developers to figure out how we can go to the lowest rung of the ladder, what the market will support, and then to sell that asset at what's called a cap rate. What's fascinating about a cap rate is we also, um, have a family office that focuses on buying companies. Real estate multiples are sometimes twice as high as multiples for going concerned businesses. Think about that. And so it's our, our thesis that, again, no one's coming to save your community, no one's coming to save Elkhart, and that the utilization of local capital tends to be more patient, tends to be more committed, and, and can be deployed in a more, uh, tactful way. This is our typical capital structure at WeImpact. We put in twenty-five percent hard equity, twenty percent, uh, down and five percent for cash losses, fifteen to twenty percent for state funding, and then fifty to fifty-five percent of debt, uh, loan to value. And then we tend to take, uh, request eighty to one hundred percent of the TIF. Hundred percent of the equity is local and what we call permanent. We've asked our partners that if this generation needs to access that capital, that they not participate. If they can wait for the next generation or thereafter, then we'd welcome them to join us Lesson number three, you're going to deploy incentives, so you might as well get what you want. We have found a lot of time and energy is focused in the industrial Midwest of figuring out how to minimize incentives, and we think that's upside down. We think the argument should be, how do you maximize the value of development? If you can maximize the value of development, then we, we can figure out what that incentive needs to be. And most likely, if it's a maximum, uh, value question over an incentive question, you can, you can, uh, get to a better outcome. The other thing we found in the capital stack is it doesn't really matter if you're modifying an, an existing structure, building market rate product, or building affordable product. The capital stack looks roughly the same, plus or minus ten percent in any of the categories. All right? And so if... It's really important in our mind that a community identify what form and to what standard they want a building to be built and then find the appropriate partner on that project. Time stops for no one, financial resources are finite, and deal fatigue is real both for a developer and municipality. Think about how much time and energy we spend on a single deal. And I don't know about you guys, but in Elkhart, we have about twenty years' worth of buildings to build, and so it's really important for us to figure this out, figure the capital stacks out, figure out the relationship, and get to work We know too much to simply churn dollars every generation. We should be focused on building neighborhoods that outlast their incentive and provide long-term value for community and for the developer. Why this is really important, if you think of a city as a, as a business, um, if you're incentivizing, we're incentivizing low value developments like a Walmart, they pretty consistently assess at $500,000 an acre. That's true in Carmel and Elkhart. The Walmart in Carmel assesses on a per acre value the same as the Walmart in Elkhart, Indiana. And that's a form issue, right? The utilization of land is very high relative to the amount of, of, of investment that goes into it. Conversely, prior to the River District, the highest assessed value per acre in Elkhart was a building built in the 1800s. Six generations of increment have been provided by that building, and it assesses 10 to one over the Walmart. In the River District, we have the highest assessed value per acre in the, in, uh, the county at $11.5 million. And that's where you see per acre, and that's where you see a departure in the economics between a Carmel and an Elkhart at $25 million an acre, let's say, and 11 and a half. And that's representative of the economic differential between those communities. The Walmart at half a million dollars an acre is representative of the issue of form Lesson number four, buildings should provide what we call a gift to the street. Each of our buildings must have a design feature which enhances the pedestrian experience or has a public art installation. So we've budgeted well over a million dollars for the first three buildings in public art. Um, and then outside of our private development, uh, our families have committed to half a million dollars a year over the next ten years or, or five million dollars in public art installations for property we don't own that is in the district. Not everyone's going to live in the neighborhoods we're working on, and so the idea is how do we create that emotional connection between place and the people, uh, that live outside the boundaries of that space? How do we bring back that sense of civic pride? How do we make it so that it's not so easy to leave this neighborhood or this community or this region because of the quality of life and the quality of place that's been established? You can see the three installations to date, uh, Who Rescued Who along Jackson, a new fountain along Clark Street in front of Elkhart Health and Aquatics, and then this is a new, um, thirty-five foot sculpture we have going out in the public space, um, late spring Our fifth learning is the street is the most underappreciated economic development quality of place tool This is one of our favorite streets in Paris, Boulevard Saint-Germain in the sixth. And you can see the architecture plays a major role in the quality of the street This is also one of our favorite streets in which architecture does not play a major role in the function of the street, but the urban form does. This is Main Street in Greenville, South Carolina, arguably one of the most successful main streets for a relatively small town in the United States. And any given weekend you'll see tens of thousands of people of a city of seventy thousand, um, marching down their main street This is East Jackson in Elkhart, and to the right, this is what it looked like about 10 years ago, 14 years ago This, in the River District plan, that was the last holdout. Uh, so all of the real estate that was acquired in the River District was a handshake and, uh, us knocking on front doors. No one was forced out or they could say no, and this family did say no. And I got a call from the daughter one day of the gentleman that owned the building, and she said, "We're ready to sell." And I said, "Well, something must have happened." They were pretty hell-bent on not selling, so I looked up the news, and the father had been convicted of or arrested for a cocaine operation, a distribution operation that was happening in the basement of that building

1 36:29

It's not progressing here. Well, there we go. And then this is what Jackson looked like six years ago. You can see the construction has actually

Speaker 3 36:37

started. I think this is off There we go. Yeah. I think you can see here the, the construction has started on Jackson. Uh, but this is what Jackson Boulevard looked like six years ago, and this is what it looks like today. You can see the street, um, along with the architecture has made a, a large difference in the, um, experience that you have on that street. This is what Pacific Street looked like six years ago. Five car lots. That was a typical rental. Someone lives there right there. Uh, this was Edgerton's Travel. They had left and left the building in, in decay. Uh, a abandoned, broken down RV. Pete McCown always makes the joke, the president of the Community Foundation, that he could have parked a car lot down here and no one would've known the difference because no one went down here. And this is what we think it looks like in the next 16 months. The architecture of these two buildings is Corey Vogt, arguably one of the great architects and, uh, architecture firms in the United States right now. They just won the Seaside Prize, and you don't even see the architecture because the muse, how we've turned this into a pedestrian street, is so powerful Lesson number six is be prepared to iterate and adjust while keeping fidelity to the plan. This is really important. When we published the River District plan, Jeff Speck in 2018, these buildings were all mixed use commercial. And what happened in the world of COVID? People didn't go to the office. And so we went to Jeff and said, "We got a problem with our plan. We got to figure this out." And we, we brought Stefanos and, and Jeff together and published this plan. And as we started to work through it, we figured out we could bring Pacific Street back. And a great deal of argument and discussion took place as to whether or not that should be vehicular or should it be pedestrian. And we won't know the right answer until it's built and we're done, and we've been able to experience it. What's been great about the River District is so little has been done for so long, and there's such a need and a tailwind to be downtown that we can get away with testing different typologies and different designs that have been proved out in other communities, and see how they're received in our very own community. You can see that not only do we move it from residential... Excuse me, from commercial to predominantly residential with some mixed use commercial elements. We put a parking garage in. Even when the Jeff Speck plan was published, Jeff and our team didn't believe we would ever be able to get to the density to be able to absorb a garage. Thank goodness we didn't put the garage in, because it allowed us to put in lower scale buildings and test them out and figure out what we could accomplish with various densities and typologies. You'll see what we finally ended up doing is moving the garage closer to the historic downtown and on the south, uh, west side of the street. Today, this is the final site plan that we're executing on We also added retail at the front door of Elkhart Health and Aquatics. You would not typically do this. This is a B street, and the retail should conventionally be along Jackson. There are 1,500 people that come and go outside of that door every day. And so we had a unique opportunity once Elkhart Health and Aquatics was open to bring the folks back in and to have several deliberations and charrettes as to does this u- unique condition, uh, provide for the opportunity to do something unique in, in the retail? This is what the site plan looks like as a rendering. These are the two buildings that, uh, will go under construction, uh, this month. We'll have four sale townhomes to the north, and then we'll focus on the south side Jackson. And this is, uh, what it looks like this fall,

1 40:50

not today, but, uh, this fall This is what we think the district looks like in the next five years

Speaker 3 41:05

Looking east and then looking west. So in summary, think about the neighborhood not as a project. How's this building going to activate the street? How are people going to use it? How are they going to engage with it? What's it gonna feel like walking by it at night? We think that local capital is far superior to out-of-town capital. Number three, you're going to deploy incentives, so focus on maximizing the impact of the project, not on minimizing the incentive. Buildings should provide a gift to the street. The street is the most underappreciated tool, uh, we have in this type of work. And be prepared to iterate while keeping fidelity to the plan. Thank you very much

1 42:04

Are there any questions for Dan? No questions? That's unheard of That is one question, yeah

Speaker 4 42:21

That was like a six-course meal, I gotta tell you. That was wonderful. I, I'm curious, what did the citizen feedback look like as you were flushing this out? Obviously, this was radically different than what had existed before. Um, when you began with the 90-round community meetings, what did that feedback look like?

Speaker 3 42:40

It's been evolving, Joe. I can tell you that, uh, uh, narrowing Jackson was like, you know, taking someone's firstborn baby. It was, uh... And, and you gotta be empathetic to that, right? Because for the last three generations in Elkhart, we literally are able to park in front of the front door that we wanna walk into. If you reframe that to what's your experience in Chicago, people have a completely different expectation. But the problem is, uh, in Elkhart, we do not have a highly functioning downtown. You know, we have a lot of work to do, and it's still very fragile. And so I'd say the biggest angst was the road diet If, uh, I would tell you today, if you live in The District, you think Jackson moves too fast. If you're just trying to get through town, it's still too narrow. Uh, someone asked me today, you know, what we have to do to protect these developments, and I asked them what they meant by that. And they said, "Well, do you have graffiti or vandalism or anything like that?" And I said, "You know, interestingly enough, we've had vandalism on every industrial project we've ever built in Elkhart." I've had porta potties lit on fire in the middle of the buildings. I've had guns pulled on people because we're tearing down trees. We've had so many issues with every building. Knock on wood, we've never had vandalism on any of our downtown projects. And as I think about that, I wonder if it isn't that people are ready for a change, they're ready for progress, they're ready to have buildings that evoke a sense of pride and purpose and sensibility, and we just, we just haven't had any issues, so that's been great. The first buildings that went up in front of Elkhart Health Aquatics, people complained that we were blocking the view of Elkhart Health Aquatics. As we've continued to round out the development and cross, um, Clark, most of that has gone away, and you can just see, I think, a lot of excitement. The food and beverage, uh, even though we're adding additional food and beverage, we try to add one restaurant a year. The restaurants are up year over year. They're performing extremely high. Um, so things are going relatively well. A lot to learn, but it's been a process and will continue to be a process. We talk about parking every day

1 45:01

Without ready grant funds?

Speaker 3 45:04

So our first project, we received RTC, uh, redevelopment tax credit. Um, we would have, in fairness, I, I know there are a couple in the room that close your ears. Uh, first building, we, we would have built it regardless. We operate on the edge of the razor's edge, and so going forward, no, we would need some type of RTC ready, historic tax credit, something to fill that gap in, and if it's not at the state level, it would need to be at the local level. The other thing we do, uh, unique with TIF that I'm not sure every developer does is for our first projects, we weren't concerned about the capital stack. We were worried about the operating costs of the project going forward, and could we sustain those into perpetuity. Eighty percent of town centers fail and go into bankruptcy. We really don't consider ourselves a town center. We really didn't wanna be in that situation either. So we bought our own bond in order to, um, enhance the cash flow over the period of the TIF so that we could make sure that the operating expenses for the, the project were intact or in check.

1 46:25

Mm-hmm. Good. There, there was, was there a question there?

Panel: Lessons from Other Cities

1 46:29

There's probably one question there. Let's see, last one.

Speaker 4 46:32

Trusts One lesson is

1 46:36

maybe from what, say, uh, has happened in Detroit where there's been, you know, concentrated investment from a few groups. Well, would you repeat the question?

Speaker 3 46:48

I think the question is, can you compare and contrast Detroit, uh, versus Elkhart effectively? I'm not a s-- I know enough about Detroit to be dangerous. Um, Detroit geographically is much more spread out, uh, which is their main issue, where Elkhart, we can make a change in Elkhart by... You know, we, we really in the River District only have two highly functioning blocks in the district, the Martin's block, where the grocery store is, and our block, where Elkhart Health and Aquatics is. In between, it looks like a bomb went off. But in a small town where there's been so much disinvestment for such a prolonged period of time, you can make an, a massive change by bringing online two or three buildings because there's been such little progress. In Detroit, I think Dan had to intervene a lot more, uh, than what we've had to because of, of the wreckage of urban renewal and, uh, how spread out that town is, city.

1 47:49

Dave, um-

Speaker 3 47:54

Sure.

Speaker 6 47:57

My name is Marianne Casado. I am the, um, director of the Housing and Community Regeneration Initiative here at the School of Architecture. And thank you everyone for coming, and thank you so much, Dave, for that incredible talk to kick us off. We're joined now with, um, an expert panel. We have, um, former mayor Jim Brainard from Carmel, Indiana. When he started in Carmel, it was a suburb of Indianapolis that no one would imagine could be a city and turned, s- took a vision and created a place and transformed in his 28 years of mayor, being mayor, um, a suburban community of 25,000 to a city of over 100,000 people. And what's fascinating is the parallels which we're gonna talk a lot about. And we have Rebecca Kick, who is the assistant city manager in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on the city side of what Dave has been presenting here in, um, with Elkhart. Um, and the theme of this panel is we're all working in places and especially sort of building on Stefanos' opening remarks. We're building on places that no one believed in. And we're reinventing a system that really hasn't meaningfully operated in 100 years. If you consider that in 1929 when the stock market crashed, we stopped building in our cities. Um, we had public works buildings, big buildings that banks and bridges and things, but we weren't the economy and we weren't building the fabric of a city. We weren't investing in the fabric of the city because there wasn't money for it. Then we went to war and when we came back, when we came back from World War II, we backed the suburbs. And at that point, we systematically dismantled and tore down our downtowns. Ever since then, policies, finance, all of the design practices that everything is set up to incentivize the suburbs. And now we're waking up and coming back to these places and realizing the amazing opportunities that are there. Um, that's gonna be the theme of, that's the theme of all of the work we do, um, and essentially kicking off the theme of this evening's panel and all day tomorrow. Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick it to you, Jim, to, to talk about the compare and contrast with what you, what you felt when you arrived in Carmel to how you, and sort of I'm asking you to do a 28-year talk in about 10 seconds. Um, but you arrived in a place that no one believed in and identified a vision and then had to go about dismantling a system that was set up for that vision not to happen. Um, I'm wondering if you could compare that with the amazing talk that, that Dave, Dave's experienced.

Speaker 7 50:39

Well, I think there's great similarities throughout the United States among cities that need to be redeveloped, whether they're suburban style development, could be in a suburb, it could be on the edge of a traditional city Uh, what, what happened after World War II, I think it's important very briefly to put it in context. Prior to the war, uh, the majority of Americans still walked or used public transit. We didn't get over 50% of the households owning a car until after the war. Um, and, and that really is what made the difference because we have to store those cars somewhere. And that's why cities, uh, throughout the country, including Elkhart, tore down what third to half of their downtown buildings and installed surface parking lots. And the suburbs are dealing with the same thing. They have been built, uh, not for walkers, not for pedestrians. They've been built for cars. Uh, and to make it worse, we segregated our, our uses, our, our zonings as all the stores over here and all the houses over here and the factories over this way. And what, what that's done is required people to drive. You know, I read a statistic not too long ago that the average American spends two hours a day in their automobile. Um, and, and that's the case throughout the United States except for the f- few cities like New York and, and Chicago where we've, you know, where people are walking, which tells me that if that two hours a day is an average, some people are spending even more than two hours a day in their car. So, so, so that's really the theme. There, there's a lot of other sub-themes to it, but the similarity between Elkhart, Carmel, and every other place outside of a few large cities in this country is that, uh, we've built our cities with single-use zoning, uh, and made it impossible to get around as a pedestrian, and we have to store the darn cars. We all like our cars, but we have to store them somewhere, and we've destroyed most of our downtowns creating surface parking. So the question is, how do we, how do we fix that?

Speaker 6 53:08

Great. Thank you. So Rebecca, so Rebecca Kick ha- has an extraordinary background because she comes to city government from the design le- with a design lens, which is so essential because it's not just a matter of, of doing individual projects but considering a whole composition. And one of the things that Rebecca is really amazing at is one of the, our proudest sort of talking points from housing and community regeneration is that in just the last few years, her work has been able to convert vision into funding of $98 million plus to implement visions. So I'm wondering, Rebecca, if you would talk about, um, again, keeping on theme with pulling from Dave's talk, how from the, the point of view in the city of, of Kalamazoo, you entered into a place that no one believed in, and how you convert... how you made that conversion, what your, what your lens was as you were doing it

Speaker 8 54:04

Thanks for that. Yeah. Uh, so coming at this from n- never worked in municipal government, worked for municipalities as a designer, as a, a planner through experience, but then took the leap and, uh, crossed the threshold. And the first thing I realized was everything that Jim has just explained is how those city folks were taught. That's how they implement things, and they literally had no idea how to implement anything differently. And so the first master plan that I got to write, I made it very clear that this is our work plan. It's a very beautiful work plan, um, but it's our work plan. And we did it ourselves because I thought it was really important that staff had a handle on that vision because otherwise they weren't gonna know how to even begin to implement it. They had to know how did it connect to zoning? How did it connect to our resources, our budget, our operations? How did, you know, street sweeping and how many streets can we, um, actually effectively patch and, and build every year? We had to really get down to what were our core services and then build on top of that this extremely beautiful vision, which, um, ended up being, you know, turn our one ways to two ways, um, that all parking lots are underutilized land Period. Like, we had so many conversations about the storage of cars and the fast roads. And the vision, I kept asking, "I- is this what you want?" You know, you had to keep comparing and contrasting these pictures like Dave showed of Greenville or of Carmel. Or we asked people to bring pictures to our community engagement events. What's, what city do you want Kalamazoo to become? Or is there a piece of a city that you wanna see located somewhere in Kalamazoo? What is a world-class city? What does that mean to you? Um, what would it mean if we brought it to the city of Kalamazoo? And the overwhelming pushback that I would always get was, "Well, we don't have any money, so why are you asking me these things?" I said, "Well, we never will get any money if we don't bring the vision together." You have to have that vision. And so when people ask, "Well, how did you raise $98 million?" It's because we can take a page out of our master plan or our sub-area plan. We have described our vision so well that we can just put it into a grant application. And I think that that has been incredibly powerful, and we've engaged thousands of people. Kalamazoo is only 75,000 people, and we engaged four thou- over 4,000 people during our master planning process, and then we engaged them on each of those neighborhood projects as they move forward as well. So there's tons of community buy-in, um, and thoughtfulness about this, uh, vision as well. So when we go out to ask for letters of recommendation or other things in terms of getting foundation support or, um, grant support, it seems to come pretty easily to us because we're all on the same page.

Speaker 6 57:41

I have a quick question for, um, Dave, and then I'm gonna go to Stefanos. Um, you said you got a 3% return on that first building. Are you still getting 3% returns? Has it turned... Ha- Are you seeing now that you've, you've made the... It's a, it's... When you say, "We're gonna be here for 30 years"-

Speaker 3 57:59

Yeah

Speaker 6 58:00

there's gotta be something more than 3%. So I wanna go back to that.

Speaker 3 58:04

Well-

Speaker 6 58:04

Or

Speaker 3 58:04

potentially yeah, remember everyone, so everyone's committed to Elkhart being a place they want to live, right? And, um, I mean, I'll never forget September 2020, we had the plans for the Riverbend, and the five families were sitting around the table, and I said, "What do you guys wanna do?" And our oldest investor, Bob Deputy, our oldest partner, he's 82 at the si- time. He said, "Dave, I'm 82 years old. I don't care what's going on in the economy. Build the buildings. I wanna see 'em in my lifetime." And so we have focused s- uh, we have people focused about impact on the community. I think that helps out a lot. When we went to the 12 families, though, we did say, "Hey, this has gotta be palatable for everybody." And so if we're gonna raise this, we've deployed something like $85 million. We've overtaken Elkhart Health and Aquatics as the largest redevelopment project in the history of downtown Elkhart, and we have about 115 to deploy in the next five years. We have... This has to be sustainable. And so, uh, what we shoot for, uh, is a 10% cash-on-cash return by year five. For four years, we run at a loss, and, uh, the hope is by year 10, or by year five, we can get to a ca- 10% cash-on-cash return.

Speaker 6 59:15

Great.

Rethinking Zoning and Sprawl

Speaker 6 59:16

So Stefanos, one of the things that in, in multiple conversations that we've had, and I think is a really important u- unifying point to the, the three cities that we've, we've been hearing about is one of the things you say in meetings is if you wanna see why the big Texas donut, and by the Texas donut is the garage lined with all the buildings, and why if the big move, um, if you wanna see why the business as usual doesn't work, basically look at every American city and it'll, it'll show that. Will you talk about that? Will you talk about why business as usual won't work and a couple of the kernels of the things that will? Because that's the theme here is none of these guys have done business as usual, and it's a really key point to highlight.

Speaker 2 1:00:03

Well, I think, I think business as usual is, um, is deploying capital in a way that delivers two things in the United States when it comes to housing: single-family detached houses and double-loaded corridor buildings. And in most of these cases, particularly in the denser building cases, this money comes from Wall Street, and it comes with extreme expectations for return in a very short period of time. And the result is that you end up with people accelerating the design and building process in such a way as to respond to the dire, uh, conditions of their, of their financial obligations. And therefore, the easiest way for them to do this is to grab yesterday's building from another place and build in the cheapest, fastest, and less consequ-- least consequential way, which then leads to, um, this condition of the mall in, in, uh, in, uh, Elkhart and the mall being dead and demo- on the way to being demolished. The, the mall here being almost dead and, and the building, the buildings you grew up in Elkhart, the suburban buildings being demolished and the suburban areas in this county, uh, this county, surrounding cities and so on, not having an expectation of, of a life beyond 30 to 50 years. But the infrastructure that is underneath those places is extravagant in its amount and its cost, in its amount and cost, and its commitment to building things that don't have a long lifetime or a high enough density to see that money return in taxes. So the economic system that, that do-- that underpins convention development is, is, um, corrupted, uh, in the, in the computer sense of corrupted because it is set up to deliver a system of living and a way of investing that is just not returning the expected results. And it's time to wake up and say, "This just does not work." Conventional development schemes are not doing anything else other than delivering a very small profit, 3, 5%, probably not much more than that In a, on, on a, on a, on a project basis and without any other long-term benefit, financial or otherwise, to cities. That's why we're n- we are in the mess we are in, and we're continuing to do the same thing over and over and over despite the evidence.

Speaker 6 1:02:44

So I think that's a really good point, and it questions for both Rebecca and Jim on two sides of this is the cost of not getting it right because we keep... We're failing both from the general public who can't afford a house and the municipality who can't afford to, to have services, ha- can't afford the road, let alone the services. So I'm wondering, Rebecca, if you'd talk a little bit about, because so far we've focused to, to this, to this point really on the, the downtown, but there is a housing component and affordable housing component. So I'm wondering if you would talk for a minute about some of the things you're doing in Kalamazoo to address the affordability. Um, and in a second, Jim, if you'd talk about paying for roads and the municipal side. So Rebecca?

Speaker 8 1:03:31

Yeah. The first part was, um, the very broken zoning codes that de-densify your city. And that de-densification of the city then leads to less property taxes, which means less infrastructure. Um, so less money for infrastructure. So we made sure that we basically pulled out the Sanborn maps and looked at some of the traditional parcel sizes and said: "Why can't we do this anymore?" And so, you know, looked at the building codes, looked at zoning codes, and basically reversed all of that. We had, um, our code every lot, every residential lot, 60 feet, uh, wide. So that meant tear down two houses to build one in every neighborhood and in every context, in every situation. So, um, that meant that nearly 80%, maybe more than 80% of our entire city that was zoned residential could not be-- was non-conforming and could not be built. So, uh, when we-- That's all we did. This was incremental zoning change as well. So we didn't go and, you know, tear down the whole zoning code. We just changed lot sizes, and we changed setbacks, and we changed the, the front, you know, build-to lines. And we went to now we have less than 10% of our lots are non-conforming and can all be built on. So that's, that's the big affordability piece of it too. You're buying less land. You're paying for, um, less house. We can build smaller houses. We also, uh, changed that in a way you can build up to, um, four houses on a lot as well. And so we have a stacked duplex, you know, with a garden, uh, unit and an ADU with a unit above, and there you go. You've got what looks like a single-family home with four units on one lot that can be, um, 33 feet wide, 110 feet deep, and it really helped, um, uh, helped us look at our finances and how much you could actually invest per parcel, um, in a totally new light.

Speaker 6 1:05:56

So- So Jim, yeah, talk about the, um, from the municipal side

Speaker 7 1:06:03

How many times have we struggled as city leaders? There's not enough money to pay for good schools. There's not enough money to fill the potholes. There's not enough money for the social safety net. There's not enough money for anything. So we started to analyze from a fiscal standpoint our zoning decisions in Carmel. It suddenly hit me. I wasn't trained as an engineer, and I was amazed when I first became mayor at the cost of infrastructure. So today in Indiana, a two-lane road from scratch is going to cost between 12 and 14 million miles, 12 and 14 million dollars a mile. That's not a four-lane road. That's a nice two-lane road, maybe with a bike path along the side, storm sewers. So it's just not a ditch along the side, but a city street. It's going to be 12 to 14 million a mile. That's a lot of money. When you think a city, even Carmel size, I think we have 1,300 miles of roads. And so h-how many miles of roads we have are driven by our land use decisions. So going back to that example Dave used, he showed the big box store, I think it was a Walmart, paying roughly, and that's correct, uh, or Meijer store in Carmel, I use that example, pays, pays about, or it's assessed at about half a million dollars per acre. Yet we have a condo/apartment building with underground parking, beautiful center courtyard that's open to the public with a fountain, uh, that's paying, that's assessed at $25 million an acre. So that's the revenue side, and it's, you know, uh, 50 times more revenue. But that's only part of the story. Going back to that road cost, first of all, there's only so much capital. You have partners in your investment. There's only so much capital in each city and each area. And when that capital's played out, it's played out. You might attract some from somewhere else, but local capital, there's only so much. There's only so much business that people in a particular area can support as well. So is that capital, capital gonna be sprawled out over a huge distance, or is it gonna be more concentrated? So as we started to do the math, we realized that, um, the suburban areas don't pay for themselves. Fire departments are another great example. It costs-- We have f-f, you know, four firefighters per vehicle. Uh, we respond, which is necessary to keep decent insurance rates, to 95% of our runs within five minutes. That means the stations have to be strategically placed. But if we're on 50 square miles with X amount of capital invested in our city versus, say, 15 miles of capital invested, how many more fire stations at $4 million a year do we have to have? Uh, four? Say we, say we need an extra six fire stations. That's $24 million a year. But that money could go to other uses if we had designed our city differently. I was talking to one of, uh, uh, a major grocery store owner at one point, uh, is now deceased, but he told me a number of years ago that it takes 7,000 families to support a grocery store. So let's say two trips a week to the grocery store. Is that right? Two? All right. Okay. And so if the average drive to that store is seven miles versus one mile, depending on the dense pattern, let's see. So that's times each way, so that would be 12 miles each trip, 24 miles. Uh, say, say an extra 20 miles. Just make the math easy. An extra 20 miles times 7,000 families. That's what? Over 100,000 road miles a week. And who has to pay for those roads, maintain those roads, fill the chuckholes in the roads, police those roads, pay for water lines to run down those roads, pay for electric lines, cable TV lines to run down those roads? Maybe 50 times as much as we would otherwise. So when we start to do this fiscal analysis, we can't afford to build suburban areas and cities that are all suburbs are gonna be underwater forever. They'll never be bankrupt. They've got next year's tax revenues, but they're being solvent. They won't be able to provide the basic city services that we want. We won't be able to focus on things that create true civic wealth, parks, bike trails, great schools, all these things that we want for our families in the place that we've decided to call home. So we've got to start to analyze, uh, our zoning decisions, our land use decisions from a fiscal standpoint if we wanna be- build beautiful and great cities.

Speaker 5 1:11:16

Excellent. Are there questions from the room? Yeah, Kevin

1 1:11:23

Uh, Dave, thank, well, thank you to all the panel. Sorry

Speaker 9 1:11:27

Thank you to, uh, all the panelists up there, guys. This is, this is awesome stuff. Dave, I wanna address you and ha-have the question about this. Um, the community I work for actually had the Jeff Speck, uh, partially designed, um, downtown as well. Not to this scale, um, a little bit more bite-size. Um, but I'm also reading part of Jeff Speck, and he talked about how the, the knowledge of having economic centers to then pull talent and pull, uh, workforce and economy is started to switch with this, uh, this-- or the generations now, that you work on quality of life first, and then they're making that decision to, to relocate for work and things like that. And I'm trying to, to envision if, if you guys are seeing this as, um, you know, something that you know will pull in that talent to, uh, not only to live, but partially to work. There's some, you know, economic opportunity mixed in with the residential. Uh, and you, do you believe that the, the area around it, Elkhart, and the area around it, and people regionally, uh, will be pulled to this area to, you know, to, uh, make it as vibrant as these, you know, the renderings and as the plan is?

Speaker 3 1:12:43

Early indications are yes. So we started moving people into the apartments, uh, in August, and it's been a staggered launch through October. Fifty percent of the residents are moving in from out of state. Fifty percent And so as they're relocating for work, um, you know, they're choosing, uh, to live in this type of de- development. Folks are relocating from DC, Pittsburgh. Uh, we have an NFL player from LA. Um-

Speaker 2 1:13:11

Very close.

Speaker 3 1:13:12

Yeah,

Speaker 2 1:13:14

yeah.

Speaker 3 1:13:14

Um, not all RV related. Uh, we have the CFO of a box company. We have a underground utility locator. We have a pediatric dentist. I mean, it's not all industry. The River District is uniquely positioned in that we're flanked on all four sides by industrial clusters. There are 42,000 workers within a 10-minute drive of the River District. And so, uh, that is beneficial.

Speaker 7 1:13:39

Dave and I did not compare notes on this before that question, but, uh, we actually pulled the data on who's moving to Carmel over the last 20 years. Um, 50% from out of state. We also had about 10 corporate headquarters when I became mayor in 1996. Today we have over 150 headquarter operations of regional or national significance that have to attract the best and brightest people, otherwise they're not gonna come to Carmel or they're gonna locate somewhere else because they need that talent. And, uh, somebody said, you know, we, we don't always have perfect weather around here. Today may be an example. Um, we also don't have mountains and oceans. Um, we have Lake Michigan up here. I grew up in Elkhart, so used to go there. But, uh, Central Indiana, we don't have Lake Michigan either, unless you wanna drive for two, two and a half hours. Um, and, and so we really had to focus on the built environment in order to do that economic development. But it paid off for us. Uh, w- we have, uh... You know, s- sometimes I always joke it's hard to get people on the plane in New York City or Boston or DC or Miami. Once they get off the plane and they see the place, it's just fine. You know, we had that experience over and over again, and you're gonna have that experience too as your development progresses. We saw a change over the years. But 50% of, uh... And Indiana's out of people. We need to attract people from other places. Um, 50% was our number, and it was, uh, fairly well-researched.

Speaker 6 1:15:13

Excellent. Is there one last question?

Speaker 5 1:15:16

Yes. How do you redensify communities that have, you know, they built on the suburban model even though they're a pretty big city? Not only helping us, but if you could address that.

Speaker 6 1:15:28

So the question was, how do you redensify a city that's-

1 1:15:37

So for the suburban areas, how you re-densify existing suburban neighborhoods? They're within the city. Yeah. Um, anyone who

Speaker 5 1:15:50

Jim's an expert

Speaker 7 1:15:51

I'll, I'll, I'll jump in first and, and you can all add or criticize whatever you think is appropriate. The, uh, there has to be a reason to come downtown. And so what we did in Carmel's case, again, we were suburban sprawl. We didn't have a recognizable downtown. Uh, we had some resources, but we're also capped by the state the same way every other city is. And, and so there's never, uh, extra money. Uh, we had to be very creative with it. Um, but we went ahead and Indianapolis invested a lot in sports facilities and sports organizations, and so we thought there'd been an underinvestment in the arts. So we built a big concert hall. We built two small theaters, and we built a cabaret and a hotel the city had an interest in, and we created this, uh, beautiful arts hub. And w- and then we created other community amenities in the area. We, we, uh, took a, a rail-to-trail project. Some of you may be familiar with it, called the Monon Trail. The tracks had come up in the 1970s and, and in essence, it was a linear junkyard. We turned that into Main Street. Um, but we provided a reason for people to come to our downtown area. Then the housing came, and the restaurants came, and the boutiques came, and all the things that help make it a fun place to be. But we had to lead with that taxpayer investment for it to work. And there's some risk to that. Um, my opponents in the elections pointed out that risk on a regular basis. Fortunately, they would only get a, a minority of the percent of the community to agree with them. But, uh, there is some risk to that. But I, I really believe the city needs to lead with things that make up the civic wealth, civic amenities that, uh, will then w- And when the private sector sees that taxpayer investment, they'll follow. They're afraid to do it on their own. Um, so I think it's appropriate for the city to come and, you know, dream big and figure out how to finance it and take some risks, and then the private sector will follow, and that's how you start.

Speaker 8 1:18:02

Just quickly, um, to kinda talk about Kalamazoo's point, 300 vacant lots, um, really near the city, uh, center, near the downtown. Um, and we have a land bank, so they're our partner. They own most of those vacant lots. The city owns some of those vacant lots. But we needed, again, it's the mantra, the T-shirt we should all have, "No one's coming to save us." So that visioning that we did on the lot had to act as a model, and it had to really show people, like, what the, what the new zoning could do and how it could be facilitated, and then we had to build it. So we started building houses. Um, we, uh, some of you may know, we have pre-approved plan, uh, catalog, nine different types of houses, and we started to build those houses. And we started to do it in a clustered way so that you could see... It goes back to what Dave says. I, I wasn't doing a project, we were rebuilding a neighborhood. We wanted them to see this is what a block looks like. This is how you fill in, you know, the missing pieces. We used the love your block mentality of, um, if we were building next to houses, then we made sure that those houses got roofs, windows, um, power wash the siding, you know, landscaping, new lighting, uh, plant trees along the streets. You have to do place-based initiatives. Can't do the scatter all over the city kind of, uh, work. And yeah, start small and eventually when you get to seven years of doing it, it feels bigger. But we started with eight to 10 houses per year. But if you do it in a way that, um, is, is focused, you'll start to see the impact. Yes.

Speaker 6 1:20:09

Did,

1 1:20:10

did you- Tim you raise your hand?

Speaker 6 1:20:10

Okay.

Closing and Call to Action

Speaker 6 1:20:11

Well, we are-- So we are, this is the beginning of a conversation, um, and most exciting, there is a continuation of this conversation across the street. So we're, we're at the beginning of our event. We have, um, a reception across the street to carry on this exact conversation with all of us and with you guys. Um, so we're very fortunate that, um, that Seven Diamonds has very, very kindly, um, agreed to sponsor a reception, um, at Legends. Um, and then we will all day tomorrow not be in this location, but be at McKenna Hall. So make sure that you're going to a... It's-- And everybody should have received that map, and if you didn't, come see me or Stefanos, and we'll make sure you know where you're going. Um, I want to start by thanking Dave for your absolutely incredible talk to kick us off. Um, it was inspiring and kind of a call to arms of basically saying we can, we can do these, these things that, that we've basically been told we can't do. And so it's really, it's amazing to see you putting your, your capital and your time and your, all of the, the, the love that you've put into Elkhart. Um, thank you to Jim and Rebecca for your wise insights and sharing knowledge. Um, all of us will be throughout the day tomorrow, so this is just the beginning of this conversation, um, which is why I'm kinda s- cutting it short. Stefanos wants to say one more thing. I wanna wrap up before giving Stefanos the final word. Um, and thank you to Stefanos for kicking us off and creating the, the framework for both housing and community regeneration just in general and this, this 100 Mile mission that we're on. One of the things, um, when you were talking about the 100 Mile Coalition, wanna highlight that we were, we actually, we were talking about 300s when we started. We, we didn't know what to call it. We landed on 100 Mile Coalition 'cause it's 100 miles from, from South Bend. Um, we, we do go farther. That's why there's a larger loop on our, on our thing. But one of the things that we had talked about was, and it, as you were speaking, it, it reminded me, um, that we had also-- we'd looked back 100 years before our cities were dismantled, and we're looking forward 100 years, that all of the work that we're doing together from our pizza lunch across the street is because if we do our jobs right People will benefit from our work that we will never meet, and that's the bar that, that we're holding ourselves to. Um, so it's really grateful that you are all here. I'm gonna give Stefanos the final word.

Speaker 2 1:22:46

I want to, I want to simply summarize, uh, this discussion. If you were listening to it very carefully, you realize that, that th- we are in deep crisis in this country on a variety of fronts, the political front, the economic front, the administrative front. Part of it has to do with the way in which we try to build our world over the last two or three generations, and we build our world backwards in a way that is not productive or leading us to, to, to consequential results. So I w- I would go, uh, as far as to say that we don't have a housing problem in this country. We have a, a prob- a housing problem that ma- uh, we have a, a, um, a model of, of urbanization problem that, that masquerades as a housing problem. We are burning all the land that we need every year. We're burning it away. We're throwing it away. We're using the resources and capital in, in bringing infrastructure to this land, and then we're building one-fifth or one-eighth of the density or the mix of density or the complexity of uses that we need to in order to have consequential, consequential results. And then the people that buy in this place or have bought in this place is going back 60 years, most of them end up with zero in their pockets at the end of, of, of the useful life of these buildings 'cause this building's, this building's value, uh, as single objects and this neighbor's performance full of these kinds of buildings just absolutely dips to the lowest possible level. So I think we're here to discuss how we go from, from house making, which is a, a primitive 1945 level concept that we pursued for short profit by a few p- a few people for all this time, almost 80 years, to another kind of model that is civic at its core and financial, administrative, and wealth building for everybody on the other side over a long period of time. That is a task that we have to work on, and that is why a, a, um, an academic program like ours, which combines research and, and practice, can do that much more effectively than people who do either research or practice. Because let's face it, research in the, in, in the United States is about asking very difficult questions and coming to conclusions without concrete recommendations. You, you find something, but that something does not have an application, and practice is all about application. And so what we're trying to do is think our way out of this problem with your help through Hey, action. That's what the center is about, and that's what the next day and the next months and years are about. And we are in an incredible place in the country to do that. The land is cheap. There's a lot of resources that are financial. There's a lot of energy. There's a lot of people coming. There's a lot that, that g- you know, um, is, is... There's a lot of res- of, of ingredients that are in place to make, uh, Indiana a center for this kind of regeneration