Lessons from CNN story on Allentown, Pennsylvania

The once thriving Bethlehem Steelworks in Allentown is now an arts complex.  CNN photo.

Allentown is a Pennsylvanian community that has been crushed by deindustrialization.

It along with nearby Bethlehem, had been home to a significant proportion of the country's steel production, along with other manufacturing such as Mack Trucks (since closed and consolidated into a plant in Hagerstown, Maryland).

Benefiting from relative proximity to New York City and Philadelphia, it has some ability to regenerate.

 A number of years ago, the State Legislature created a special form of "tax increment financing" district (TIFs are used to support bonding authority--the idea is that new development will spark tax revenues that wouldn't have been generated otherwise, and the new tax revenues are spent solely on paying off the bonds) which even includes income tax revenues from new residents("State level initiatives to support center city revitalization in smaller towns," 2014).

There are other programs as well, including:

• a neighborhood improvement zone initiative with the acronym ANIZDA, the large scale arts initiative aimed at reviving "The Steel" called the Bethlehem SteelStacks Arts + Cultural Campus (ASLA award discussion; "Factory-Turned-Arts-Campus Forges Future from Industrial Past," Metropolis Magazine), which takes up under 10% 
• of the 120-acre site that is part of the overall regeneration program including small scale manufacturing and logistics related business development
• colleges and community connection efforts
• community food initiatives -- a chapter in the Island Press published book Food Towns USA focuses on the area.

Over the weekend, CNN ran a longform story on the town, "Reinvention in the Rust Belt."

Two elements stuck out.

How community organizations can contribute to crime reduction.  First, it's not always easy to grasp, but Professor Patrick Sharkey in Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence argues that community organizations and community responses to crime were a significant factor in the crime drop period that followed the increase in crime that peaked during the crack cocaine era.

The CNN article describes one such organization in Allentown, Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, and the various programs and initiatives it sponsors and operates to redirect people from criminal activity.

It's a great illustration I think of what Prof. Sharkey was writing about ("Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime," American Sociological Review, 2017). 

Although we have to remember that there are plenty of ineffective organizations and initiatives as well.

The need to include entrepreneurship within community revitalization programming.  Community focused "microenterprise development" is a key element of the approach outlined in Community Economic Development Handbook by Mihalio Temali. 

-- presentation

I think of "community economic development" as incorporating many more ground-up approaches, which I also call "Building a Local Economy," versus more traditional "economic development" which tends to be top-down and focused on large organizations as the leads, and often these organizations are not local.

The second point from the story is about how most public programs on community revitalization in poor areas don't foster self help and entrepreneurship very much.  The article discusses JB Reilly and his City Center Investment Corporation, which is the developer behind much of the new construction in the city center--hotels, housing, retail, etc.

After a tour of some of the neighborhoods of the city outside the core, he came up with a program called Real Estate Laboratory, to work with potential entrepreneurs from the community, in rehabilitating and improving individual residential properties, so that they can participate in and benefit from real estate led improvement.  From the article:

... another outgrowth of Reilly’s engagement with the community: a program called the Real Estate Laboratory that would provide mentorship and financial connections to help local residents buy and rehab distressed apartment properties. The goal was for them to become property owners and landlords in their own community. Through a partnership with Reilly’s alma mater, Lafayette College, participants would attend classes and receive intensive coaching on investing and entrepreneurship, as well as hands-on training in how to maintain and fix their properties themselves to keep costs low.

Reilly pledged $1 million to get it off the ground. He also offered his influence with the banks to help make the case that those who completed the program — many of them with unconventional credit records — would be loan-ready. The goal was to begin to create a consistent pipeline of local developers who could have a hand in redeveloping and strengthening their community from within. The program would be housed in a glass-fronted street-facing corner unit of one of Reilly’s office towers.

Also see "City Center developer presents plans for ‘The Real Estate Lab’ to ANIZDA," WFMZ-TV.