Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Community

One project at a time

Pittsburgh, a beautiful city at the confluence of three rivers, once had twice the population it has now. De-industrialization and loss of employment, namely the collapse of the steel industry, saw a rapid decline in population during the 1980s. A wealthy industrial history left Pittsburgh rich with culture and endowed with medical centres, museums, parks and research centres, but a shrinking population brought with it an economic trough.

Since then there has been an amazing transformation. The economy has diversified – regionally as well as locally – and there are now five new primary industry sectors: financial services, IT, energy, advanced manufacturing and healthcare. This diversification is especially important in making a robust economy that can withstand recessionary periods.

Still, for Pittsburgh and the region, lack of population growth is holding back an expansion in the economy.

How do you help an economy expand?

One person, Lance Chimka, thinks about this 24/7. Lance is director of Allegheny County’s Economic Development Department in Pittsburgh. They have a mission to work on the macro economic health of the city and the region. Lance is optimistic about the future of the region’s economy.  And he is squarely focused on this goal – to build a diverse and growing regional economy and to create healthy and vibrant communities.

The department invests in the areas of housing, industrial and commercial development, infrastructure development and parks and recreation to name just a few. In particular, Lance sees opportunity in the intersection points between AI, robotics and advanced manufacturing, and between energy and healthcare.  And he has a personal goal too. He wants to make the public sector more user-friendly and more efficient and he intends to work on that as well.

“I am very project focused. And I believe that markets are built one great project at a time.” Lance Chimka.

Listen to my interview with energetic, people-focussed leader, Lance Chimka, to learn more.

Pennsylvania, Carrie Furnace by Randy Mower, CC BY-SA 4.0

Home.

Katie Swenson is a Senior Principal at MASS Design. She joined Mass in 2020 after having worked for many years on affordable housing with Enterprise Community Partners on issues of design and sustainability. Her role at MASS, which has built a reputation as a design practice that embraces issues of economic and social equity, is to help them to define MASS version 2.0.

With a career that has spanned both arts and design, Katie grew up in Washington, D.C. and Boston, and studied comparative literature at Berkeley. Then, for six years she immersed herself in the modern dance community in New York City. When she finally decided to attend graduate school, she chose architecture as her discipline.

After graduating from the University of Virginia, she received an Enterprise Rose Fellowship to help initiate the 10th and Page Street Neighborhood Revitalization Project, working with the local Piedmont Housing Alliance. And that’s when the magic started to happen.

“It allowed me to become a community-based architect,” she says, “one who brings big ideas to the local level and works with the city and community to make things happen.” She founded the Charlottesville Community Design Center soon afterwards, leading it for the next two years, during which time she co-authored Growing Urban Habitats: Seeking a New Housing Development Model, with William Morrish and Susanne Schindler.

In 2007, Katie was asked to head the Rose Fellowship program itself, and went on to spend over a decade at the parent organization, Enterprise Community Partners. She has taught at the Boston Architectural College and Parsons School of Design, and in 2018-19, she was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate Design School.

Listen to Katie talk about the importance of ‘community’ for impactful development.

Insights and Inspirations

  • Diversity is not an abstract word.
  • Katie’s mom was her architectural mentor.
  • Home can mean so many different things.

Information and Links

  • Katie stays tuned to designvanguard.org for the creative edge in design and technology in the social sector.
  • Katie loves listening to Eric Cesal’s social-design-insights conversations with social justice designers.
  • Mia Scharphie is one of the greatest champions of women in design and Katie loves following her buildyourselfworkshop.com and highly recommends taking a Build Yourself workshop.
Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:17] Hi there, thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing.

Eve: [00:00:24] My guest today is Katie Swenson. Katie joined MASS Design in 2020 as a senior principal after having worked for many years on affordable housing with enterprise community partners. There she was, a vice president of Design and Sustainability. Her role at MASS, a design practice that embraces issues of economic and social equity, is to help them to define Mass Version 2.0.

Eve: [00:01:06] Katie’s career has spanned both arts and design, from comparative literature to modern dance. When she finally decided to attend graduate school, she chose architecture as her discipline. And that’s when the magic really started to happen. “It allowed me to become a community-based architect,” she says, “one who brings ideas to the local level and works with the city and community to make things happen.”

Eve: [00:01:37] Be sure to go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co to find out more about Katie on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small change.

Eve: [00:02:00] So hello, Katie. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.

Katie Swenson: [00:02:04] So glad to be here. Thank you, Eve.

Eve: [00:02:07] I’m really fascinated. You’ve built a career around this question: How do we create an equitable, sustainable, affordable city? And I’m just wondering how you would answer that very big question.

Katie: [00:02:20] Yes. Thank you for that question. How do we create an equitable, affordable, sustainable city and communities, I would say, as well.

Eve: [00:02:30] Yes.

Katie: [00:02:30] You know, my work has taken me into communities mostly across the United States, both large cities and small cities, rural communities and tribal communities. And I think at the base of everything that we’ve been trying to do is to understand how people can create lives for themselves and their families that give them the opportunity to become and be the people that they want to be, to live lives with purpose and dignity and have the resources and abilities to contribute to the world at large and to their families. So I think that has to happen and in all kinds of environments, certainly so much of the focus of both the sort of economic engines as well as a lot of the environmental work has been around densifying cities and creating cities as urban centers where so much of our work and life can happen. But I think it’s also important to understand the broad spectrum of communities that we have throughout the United States and understand that we need to address critical issues around housing and jobs and health and education resources for everybody in the country.

Eve: [00:04:01] Basically, one one size does not fit all, right?

Katie: [00:04:04] You know, America is much more diverse, I think, than we necessarily give it credit. I’ve had the incredible opportunity over the last dozen years to really travel quite a lot throughout the United States. And last year, I partnered with a photographer named Harry Connolly and the two of us have been working on a book that we called ‘Design with Love at Home in America’. And we went and revisited 10 of the communities where we’ve been working in partnership for many years with local community development corporations. And the experience kind of re-revealed for me how diverse America really is, from border communities to very rural tribal communities. We worked in geographic diverse locations from the Mississippi Delta through Yakima, Washington, which is sort of the breadbasket of America for produce and fruit production, through inner cities in Baltimore and elsewhere. So, I think one size does not fit all in some ways and in other ways, of course, there are so many common themes that unite best efforts throughout the country.

Eve: [00:05:33] Yes, I think about one size does not fit all, I immediately think about, you know, the very typical residential project that developers will build, which really seems to be one size for all. And what you’re describing is something very much more diverse.

Katie: [00:05:53] Yeah, I think that communities need to grow to reflect themselves. That’s the essence of place-based attitude towards building MASS Design. We have talked too often about the provenence of a building. You think of, let’s say, wine that comes from a certain region and is grown from a certain type of soil. And buildings and communities also have the opportunity to be grown from their place and to be designed, really, in concert with the values and ambitions and aesthetics and goals of the people who both are responsible for creating them and then will live and grow their own communities. So, yes, I think it’s really important to understand that diversity is not an abstract goal, but is the result of, sort of, expression of an environment and that of people and community values that create something that’s unique and individual to a place.

Eve: [00:07:09] Yeah, I love that thought that a building has a provenance. I think that’s great. So, the question of the architect’s role within community has sort of continued to grow and change in recent years, but I don’t think it’s fully formed yet. And how would you like to see that role continue to evolve?

Katie: [00:07:28] You know, through our work with the Enterprise Rose Fellowship program, we’ve learned a lot about a role that an architect can play in local communities. So, just to give a little bit of context, I worked for almost 15 years at Enterprise Community Partners. Back in 2001 to 2004 I participated in a program called the Enterprise Rose Fellowship Program and as an aspiring architect, I was partnered with a community-based development corporation. And the goal was to bring an architect or designer on to the development team of a community development group. The Community Development Group could use the resources of a dedicated designer, and the designer would be able to learn the ins and outs of not only affordable housing development, but also community engagement processes and the regulatory processes that contribute to the creation for affordable housing. So, over these past nearly 20 years, Enterprise has partnered 85 Rose Fellows with community-based groups, and it’s been an incredible privilege to be able to witness the growth that has happened through these partnerships. Each one has looked very different. In all cases, there are definitely some sort of underlying values. The architects who are attracted to this work and who succeed at it are generally very humble people who approach the work with the desire to uplift, first and foremost, the goals of the community, but also have to be able to be both brave enough and resourceful to bring the best resources from the architectural and design communities to sort of bear in the local work. So, it’s been wonderful to watch these relationships and partnerships grow over time, and each one has resulted in very different kinds of outcomes.

Eve: [00:09:49] Do you want to give me some examples? What should a community architect be thinking about that’s perhaps different than a rock star architect might be thinking about?

Katie: [00:09:58] Absolutely, I’d be happy to share a few examples. I think I would start back in the early days, maybe in 2001, when David Flores was partnered with a community group in San Ysidro, California, called Casa Familiar. A local non-profit that is now about 50 years old and has been working as a kind of community organizer in San Ysidro for many years, helping families navigate life on both sides of the border and provide affordable housing and other community development resources in San Ysidro. And David Flores was a member of my class of fellows, so we both started work in 2001. At the beginning, David started building what he called Casitas, small houses along some of the alleys in the historic part of San Ysidro. But I think he quickly started to realize what the larger challenges that families were facing at the border, including, of course, the border itself. And as the San Ysidro land port of entry has expanded and increased its, I guess, militarization of the border process for crossing, it also took up more space and land space in the community, more energy and also, because of the long wait times to cross the border, was creating environmental effects from stalled vehicles. So David, not only has been working as the design director at Casa Familiar, he was there for almost 20 years working to oversee the development of affordable housing in the neighborhood, but he also joined, for a time, he led the Planning Commission efforts and he got involved in the design and planning of the border control station so that it would be more receptive and welcoming to pedestrians and people crossing each way. And he got involved in environmental studies and testing air quality in the region.

Katie: [00:12:16] So I think that architects and designers like David show that an architect’s job is not only on distinct projects, that, absolutely he’s been involved in helping to realize some very beautiful pieces of architecture including a project which just opened recently that Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman designed for Casa Familiar, a longtime project in development. But that these building blocks of housing and libraries and parks also need to be knitted together into a larger point of view and larger ability to help a community, as a whole, feel supported and able to grow a family’s life and capabilities in some of the most stressful, you know, environments that we have here in the country.

Eve: [00:13:16] That’s a lovely story. So, I’d really love to hear about how you came to be such a powerful advocate for equitable cities and communities and where did that passion come from? I think you started life academically in a very different place by the sounds of it.

Katie: [00:13:32] Yes, I was asked recently who one of my architectural mentors was and, as a child, and I said my mom and the response was one of surprise, actually, and I thought it was so interesting because my mom was a professional, but she was also a home maker. And I’ve been thinking about these words, not homemaker, one word, but home maker, maybe two words. And I think in many ways, I grew up with a very strong attachment to home, the idea of home, the physical reality of home, how both the design and feeling of your home as well as the stability and platform that your home kind of provides you is just a critical piece of this formation of who you are. And I think in high school, while I had a very stable and wonderful home, I also had the chance to volunteer for what started as a month engagement and ended up being a little over a year and a half at a homeless shelter in Boston. And I think that in the mid-eighties, when homelessness was starting to, kind of, take hold of America and we had, kind of, a high point in the mid-80s, I realize now that actually has not dissipated much. So for me, as a high school student, sort of understanding this dichotomy, not just the power of my own home and what it meant for me, but what happens when you don’t have a home and how slippery a slope it becomes and how quickly life can fall apart without a stable home. So I think that this has guided so much of my passion for my work and while it hasn’t necessarily been a linear path in terms of my career, I studied comparative literature as an undergrad and I have spent time as a modern dancer and I’ve done a lot of different things throughout my life, but some core essence around the importance of home and making homes, making my own home and making homes for others has been something that has driven me as long as I can remember and to this day.

Eve: [00:16:12] You also sound like you’ve had a lot of fun. And, you know, I think people have this idea that your life should be linear. But I think, you know, all of those interesting things that you’ve done must surely feed into what you do now and the way you look at the world and I love that idea. I wanted to talk a little bit about the pandemic as well. It’s taken me a while to get my brain around it, but I’m starting to think about what does it mean? And what does our world look like when and if it comes to an end? And if it wasn’t already bad enough, the affordable housing crisis just got a lot worse with the onset of the pandemic and many people losing their jobs. And I don’t even know how to begin to think about how the U.S. can tackle this monster problem and I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that.

Katie: [00:17:04] Oh boy. Well, I wish I could say that I was able to get my mind around what this is going to mean for all of us. I think we’re still in this period of profound uncertainty. And I am really grateful for the wide-spread activism that I’ve seen from the housing community, first and foremost, on protecting renters and working to stop evictions and understand that that’s one critical base of all of this is, again, I guess, the importance of having a home right now. We talk about stay at home, right? Stay at home.

Eve: [00:17:43] If you don’t have a home, how do you stay at home, right? Yeah.

Katie: [00:17:47] Oh, my goodness. I mean, that means very different things for different people. And the importance of home has maybe never been so, kind of, revealed, right? I heard Governor Cuomo talking about the subways in New York, ridership is down 92 percent and they were going to start to close the subways in the mid-morning hours because many people were in many ways taking up residence on the subways.

Eve: [00:18:16] Oh wow.

Katie: [00:18:16] So this kind of crisis around home, whether it’s becoming increasingly unaffordable because you’re out of work, whether it’s a place that is not safe, perhaps. I mean, not everybody is living at home in a safe environment or you have no home. So, we think this moment, certainly we all want to, kind of, understand what is the future of, you know, our public transit system, what is the future of our work spaces, what’s the future of the restaurant and food industry? There’s so many questions, but I think one of the most elemental questions is going to have to be what is the future of our housing policy and are we going to use this moment when it could not be more clear how important it is, both for each of us as individuals and for all of us as a society, to be able to safely house every member of our community?

Eve: [00:19:26] Yeah, and more, you know, you can’t really say that home is just a roof over your head because there’s so much inequity around who has a computer and who has broadband, and if you even have a place to work in your home. And I think all of that, surely, has to come into play as well. If we’re really looking at schools being closed, and I know my husband’s a teacher and his university is already talking about online classes only in the fall, all of that is going to really matter quickly. I mean, as an architect, I’m grappling with, you know, what does that mean in the way we even design homes and cities?

Katie: [00:20:07] You know, in some ways, you’re right in that this is sort of exciting time to think about home, right? I think everybody’s looking around and going like, oh, my goodness I have to sort of expect so much more of this space. And I hope that that notion of expecting more from our buildings and our spaces is one of the things that will come out of this time. You know, the idea that our buildings need to keep us healthy is an idea that really attracted me originally to MASS Design Group who started during a tuberculosis epidemic and designing hospitals with the goal of having the hospital itself, the building itself, participate in enhancing the health of the staff and patients and visitors who experienced it. That the buildings have such a role to play. Buildings shape us, they shape our experience. They shape our health outcomes. And so, I hope that this will be a moment where we are understanding that we need to ask more of our buildings and participate in a greater spatial awareness and spatial literacy to understand the profound effects that the built environment in general, and the buildings that we occupy in specific, have on our health outcomes and our quality of life and productivity outcomes and that we gain a sort of awareness and capabilities around our ambitions for the built environment.

Eve: [00:21:59] Yeah, and that, you know, the buildings shape cities. And I think cities, too, will need to be re-thought in terms of how do you make them safe places for larger groups of people? You know, some cities in other countries are starting to think about changes to their transportation patterns or, in Lithuania they’ve given over all public spaces to outdoor restaurants so restaurants can operate again. I mean, these are kind of baby steps but in amongst the misery of all of this, it’s interesting to watch how creative people can be. That’s encouraging, I think.

Katie: [00:22:37] It’s hard to talk about silver linings at this moment. I mean, I think people are going to be experiencing so much grief of all kinds from lost loved ones to lost, you know, hopes or experiences. So, there’s going to be just a wide swath of, kind of, having to recover from this moment but, as you say, there’s also a lot of opportunities that are being revealed. Like in New York City, where they’re coming up with strategies to re-occupy the city streets in a different way, I think that’s so exciting. And I think it’s really important, I mean, if home is important, though is. I guess, you know, the old words home and garden, right? Home is as equally reflected in the sort of outdoor space. and I think our ability to kind of get more creative about understanding how we can use our outdoor spaces more effectively is really important.

Katie: [00:23:39] I also think that different kinds of projects. We have just been involved in a project in a community in West Baltimore where neighborhood leaders started leading the charge to create a park where there had been three homes which, over time in a disinvested area of Baltimore, had been first made vacant and then started to deteriorate and eventually were taken down and the lots that were left had become a dumping grounds. And one of the local neighbors, so a block leader, a block captain on his block, his name is Donald Quarles, started working with one of our Rose Fellows and his neighborhood group and the Bon Secours Community Development Group to clean up first this lot and now turn it into what has become this incredibly beautiful small pocket park that they call Kirby Lane Park. And the process has taken about two years and we figure that in the end, it’s been mostly volunteer labor, but the hard costs have been less than one unit of housing costs to create in that community. And it’s provided this outdoor space, a kind of backyard or a front porch, whatever you want to call it, for this community at large. So I think from big ideas to how do we re-occupy city streets and city parks and beaches, to small ideas of how to prioritize and re-integrate smaller outdoor spaces into our day-to-day lives, there are lots of models and ideas that we need to be working on simultaneously at different scales.

Eve: [00:25:41] I think what excites me is the people I talk to who are incredibly creative and they’re all going to put the brainpower to this. I can’t wait to see how they make things better. It’s fascinating to me. But, in the meantime, I would just like to ask you one final question, and that is what’s next for you? You have a brand, new job with MASS Design Group and where’s that going to lead you?

Katie: [00:26:06] Oh yes, it is so exciting. I started at MASS Design on February 3rd. I’ve been a friend and sort of champion and cheerleader to the organization since 2010 when I first met them and then had joined their board. So, I came on full-time in February, thank goodness, really just in time to be able to participate in this moment with this incredible group.

Katie: [00:26:34] So, the very first morning that we, sort of were all getting on our first Zoom call with one hundred and twenty five people from around the world at nine a.m. Eastern Time on Monday morning, one of our design directors, Chris Scovel, had gotten a call from one of our partners at Boston Health Care for the Homeless, saying that were going to be putting up some makeshift tents to be able to test and treat people without homes in Boston and would we look at the plans? And so, Chris and a team got on to making really makeshift design recommendations. We’re not calling them designs because it’s not about designing a tent or creating something ideal in any way, it’s about trying to apply our experience and design for infection control that we’ve learned over many years through, not only tuberculosis, but also Ebola and cholera, and to understand with our medical partners how Covid19 is manifesting itself and what can we do from a spatial guidance to help limit contagion and keep health care workers and patients healthier. So we started in on this immediately and realized that if one group needed it, as one partner needed it, probably so did others. So, we set off on this kind of larger understanding about, how can we use our spatial cues, spatial literacy, to help respond in this crisis? You know, I think that obviously architects are not on the frontlines of this crisis. Health care workers are on the frontlines of this crisis and make no mistake about it, but the rub is that our buildings are on the front lines. And so, we need to be there, showing up to understand how do we need to adapt? What are the retrofits that we need to do? How can we learn from this experience so that our buildings are able to support health care workers, to be able to support our communities, getting back into our lives in so many ways, but to do it safely?

Katie: [00:29:04] It’s been an incredible process and I feel very, very lucky to work not only with an incredible team at MASS, but also such a robust network of amazing partners both in the medical fields and in all of the sort of social service fields.

Eve: [00:29:22] Well, I really can’t wait to see what comes next. And thank you very much for spending this time with me today.

Katie: [00:29:30] Thank you. Really a pleasure to join you and we’ll look forward to having this conversation evolve and thanks for highlighting all the creative efforts. Appreciate it.

Eve: [00:29:41] Thank you.

Eve: [00:29:56] That was Katie Swenson. I loved that her early professional years meandered through the arts from comparative literature to dance before she landed on architecture. Her trajectory shows that climbing the ladder is not necessarily the path to success. Her career as a community architect started later than most but that didn’t stop her from becoming a star in the field. And she brought with her creativity and a human passion for making better places for everyone.

Eve: [00:30:27] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today’s episode at my web site, rethinkrealestateforgood.co. While you’re there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities.Eve: [00:30:44] Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and thank you, Katie, for sharing your thoughts. We’ll talk again soon but for now, this is EVe Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Katie Swenson

1,000 urban entrepreneurs.

Lyneir Richardson is a man with a mission. His goal is to help 1,000 urban entrepreneurs grow their businesses, through a nine-month program run by the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (CUEED) at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ. The program, where diversity abounds, has enrolled about 400 entrepreneurs so far.

As executive director of CUEED, Lyneir leads capacity-building programs, teaches an M.B.A. course in Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development and serves as faculty advisor to students consulting with small business owners. About 70 percent of the entrepreneurs within CUEED are African American and Latino, and 62 percent are women. Most have no connection to Rutgers. About 60 percent of the businesses employ fewer than five people but have potential to grow.

Lyneir is also co-founder and CEO of The Chicago TREND Corporation, a social enterprise initially funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Chicago Community Trust. It acts as a centralized resource for real estate developers, retailers and community development organizations wanting to invest in and understand Chicago’s neighborhoods, that can drive transformative change.

Lyneir was formerly the CEO of Brick City Development Corporation, where he had responsibility for real estate development, small business services and business attraction in Newark, N.J. He is an experienced commercial and residential real estate developer with over 17 years of experience in urban retail development.

Describing himself as an urban entrepreneur who is interested in strengthening economic conditions in underserved areas, Lyneir says he likes to work on bringing together private, public and philanthropic funds to support these kinds of projects. And he does that with incredible energy.

Information and Links

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:12] Hi there, thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing.

Eve: [00:00:18] My guest today is the energetic Lyneir Richardson. In all that he does, Lyneir is razor-focused on helping urban entrepreneurs. He straddles two roles in two cities, Newark and Chicago. At Rutgers University in Newark, he is the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. There he is intent on helping 1000 diverse urban entrepreneurs grow their companies. And he’s also an entrepreneur himself. He co-founded and is CEO of the Chicago Trend, a social enterprise providing resources to real estate developers and retailers to promote investment in Chicago neighborhoods.

Eve: [00:01:05] Be sure to go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co to find out more about Lyneir on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small change.

Eve: [00:01:38] Hello Lyneir, I’m really excited to have you here today.

Lyneir Richardson: [00:01:42] Thank you for inviting me. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Eve: [00:01:45] Yeah. So, you’re a man with a mission and I’d really love to talk about that today. And like, firstly, in your role as the director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers University, and that’s quite a mouthful, you’ve set a goal there of helping 1000 urban entrepreneurs grow their businesses. And I’d really like to hear more about that.

Lyneir: [00:02:09] Great. Well, I have been at Rutgers Business School for six years. In October of 2019 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Rutgers Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. During that 10-year period, we really focused on helping a diverse set of entrepreneurs get to, quote unquote, the next level, and that’s how we always talked about, and then made the connection between entrepreneurship and economic development. Let me tell you a little bit about what I mean. We can point to the fact that we directly assisted over 400, now probably almost 500 entrepreneurs, 70 percent are entrepreneurs of color, African American or Latino largely, over 62 percent are women. 40 percent are right in the city of Newark, New Jersey which is an urban city that’s been really revitalizing through local municipal leadership and corporate support. And of those firms we’ve taken now a little over 160 above a million dollars a year in revenue. So we’re really excited about.

Eve: [00:03:22] Fabulous, yeah.

Lyneir: [00:03:23] That was really my, you know, first 10 years of work. And so the next, as we thought about it, all right, we’ve completed our 10 years, what do you want to do next? We really focused on this initiative we’re calling a thousand million. And as you mentioned, the focus is, can we help, you know, a thousand diverse entrepreneurs get to and exceed a million dollars a year of annual recurring revenue? The reason why that’s important for us is, you know, the million-dollar revenue mark is not the end all be all, but it’s an important threshold, it’s when an entrepreneur typically can start to think about either borrowing money or taking on investors. It’s at that point where they have some employees beyond themselves. It’s at that point where they hopefully will start to be able to consistently have some owner’s compensation or some profit to share. You know, they have customer validations and that type of stuff.

Eve: [00:04:21] They’re at the beginning of growth mode, right?

Lyneir: [00:04:24] The beginning of growth mode. And so, while we work with, you know, micro-entrepreneurs, you know, initially doing a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars of revenue, as long as they were in business for two years and we won’t, you know, discontinue working with them, we sort of turn to an intentional effort to take firms who are in the two to three, six hundred thousand dollar range and try to focus on getting them to the next level. That’s been fun.

Lyneir: [00:04:49] That’s our Rutgers Center for Urban…, and Rutgers has been a really supportive university environment because typically entrepreneurship centers at universities are, you know, internally focused. Helping students pursue entrepreneurial activity and helping alumni. Rutgers here, because we have this Chancellor, Nancy Cantor, who’s really made publicly engaged scholarship a strategic priority and a mission, she’s a national spokesperson for it, as well as the dean of our business school who made social impact, you know, one of her top initiatives and priorities we are able to open the doors of the business school to a community of entrepreneurs, many or most of which are not Rutgers students, and they’re not Rutgers alumni, you know. It’s just a community around us, the local coffee shop or the professional service provider in the area, in our state or region that we really are helping to accelerate and grow.

Eve: [00:05:53] Cool. How long is it going to get to a thousand of them?

Lyneir: [00:05:56] You know, it’s interesting. So, if you think about it, it took us 10 years to get 400 entrepreneurs in our program 160, I think by, you know, intentionally focusing, we’re hoping that over the next five years you will start to reach that goal. So we’re talking to a number of corporate partners, we’ve talked to some of the big philanthropy about both making, you know, our in-person courses, expanding them out some, but obviously not just because of the pandemic, but even in advance of it, using online tools so that we can expand our reach. So, yeah, we’re hoping that over the next five years, you know, we’ll start to see more, you know, more entrepreneurs across the threshold. We’re going to research it and track it and celebrate it as well.

Eve: [00:06:43] So what does an urban entrepreneur look like and where are they located? What sort of businesses are they?

Lyneir: [00:06:49] Yep. So it’s interesting. So, you know, urban entrepreneur is, it’s an interesting term. Urban is an interesting term, right? So, you know, what’s urban? Is it, in most instances place? Is it about density of place? I’ve been most passionate about urban with a racial lens. Racially diverse, economically, you know, challenged ethnic and underserved areas. So, in a lot of respects, my urban is really focused on here in the US, who have not been able to realize the full promise of our American dream, right? They have been subjected by, you know, systemic racism and that kind of stuff. So the question is, can I help them get resources and opportunity, you know to folks who have been overlooked and undervalued, right? So that’s really the focus of the urban we do. Distressed urban neighborhoods where we’ll create jobs and create wealth in communities. And then the economic development impact’s all-around quality of life, right? You know, will crime decrease? Will there be better educational outcomes, you know, more amenities and neighborhoods, you know, that type of work, right? And that’s the things that we measure, right? And so, our view is these urban entrepreneurs, as they become more successful, will be community anchors. They support the Little League team, you know, and civically active and employ locally and, you know, that’s the big dream and the vision for it all.

Eve: [00:08:20] Can you give us some examples of the sorts of businesses you’ve helped?

Lyneir: [00:08:24] So, a wide variety. I’ll talk about a few that we’re proud of.

Eve: [00:08:29] Surely, you’re proud of them all, right?

Lyneir: [00:08:33] Right, we’re proud of them all. I just did it off the top of my head, You’re right about that.

Eve: [00:08:35] It’s like your children.

Lyneir: [00:08:37] Well thank you for that, you’re right.

Lyneir: [00:08:38] We have four categories or signature program, sort of, lanes. One we call, which is our bedrock program, the Entrepreneurs Pioneers Initiative. It’s for first generation entrepreneurs. We have a program for media and art in entertainment industry entrepreneurs. We have a program that focuses on helping retail and restaurant entrepreneurs. And we have done a lot of work recently with people of color forming technology ventures and accelerating, you know, those ideas. And typically, after school and on the summer, we will do some youth entrepreneurship programs.

Lyneir: [00:09:17] You know, we have a really cool – I’ll just go walk back up the ladder – so we have a really cool technology firm called WearWorks that have started to raise capital into a number of strategic partnerships. This product is a haptics, sort of a navigation device for people with visual disabilities. Their recent accomplishment is using their product – a blind individual ran the New York Marathon for the first time without any type of seeing eye dog or, you know, used that tool to do it. We hope that they’re going to continue to grow and get resources and use their tools for training and for all types of health outcomes as well. We have put the local right down the street from our business school. We have a number of restaurants and coffee shops. Black Swan coffee, Green Chickpea is a restaurant. These are local businesses that we’ve either helped get contracts with the university, you know, one is soon to announce a second location. You know, the coffee shop I love because the donuts are so great, right? So, you know, I would I should be avoiding the donut shop, it’s really cool right down the street. A lot of professional services firms, PR firms, accounting firms.

Eve: [00:10:33] That’s a really wide variety.

Lyneir: [00:10:35] Yeah, very exciting.

Eve: [00:10:36] So, I wonder, how do you identify these entrepreneurs? What’s the bar they have to reach to be able to get into a program?

Lyneir: [00:10:43] Our initial requirement was in business at least two years, and one hundred thousand dollars of revenue is the threshold for most of our programs. The technology ventures, you know, we knew they were start-ups and, you know, it was, do we believe they could have some type of traction? Either they’ve gotten some other investment or been admitted into some other accelerator programs or, you know, have some indication of probability of success. But the goal really is, is to take people on, you know, a rung of the ladder and help them get to the next rung of the ladder. You know, at the state university where we view ourselves as an anchor, that’s going to be here. And so, we provide resources over many years. The entrepreneurs is not just in a program. You know, we give people student consulting teams over multiple years. We invite them back to universities over multiple years. So, you know, we’re in it for the long haul with the entrepreneurs in our funds.

Eve: [00:11:40] That sounds fabulous. What’s your background and how did you get here?

Lyneir: [00:11:45] Well, I started as a lawyer. I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad owned a restaurant and bar. We owned popcorn stores., we owned five popcorn stores. So, you know, like, our dinnertime conversations were around, you know, we got a new location or lease, or a truck broke down, or someone didn’t show up. You know, what are you going to do? And I, growing up as a teen, I was a D.J., a clean-up person, a delivery person, so I had all of those roles and saw business firsthand. I went to law school and practiced law initially as a bank lawyer.

Eve: [00:12:19] I have to ask, a family that owns popcorn stores begets a lawyer? How did that happen?

Lyneir: [00:12:25] Well, you know what? Yeah, our parents believed in education, right? And they believed, you know, in the value of education to continue to advance the family. What was interesting in being a bank lawyer was to de-mystify banking. I remember as a child, we’d always talk about how difficult it was to get a bank loan or, you know, and the narrative is, I was probably drawn to be a bank lawyer, and 90 lawyers in the law department there. But I remember every afternoon around 2:00 p.m., I’d start to fall asleep on the bank loan documents. It wasn’t until I got an opportunity to do a community pro bono project of loaning, instead of loaning one hundred million dollars to an airlines or a public utility, I got a project to loan one hundred thousand dollars to a little entrepreneur, a local entrepreneur who was buying the building that I think he was operating his barbershop from. And it was the same documents, promissory note, loan agreement, guarantee, minus three zeros. Instead of one hundred million it was one hundred thousand.

Eve: [00:13:27] Right, I’m very familiar.

Lyneir: [00:13:29] But I loved it, right? It was, all of a sudden, I could see the connection to the work. And, you know, being on that court or in a struggling neighborhood not far from where we initially grew up. Then that community development work became my passion, right. Getting resources to those type of entrepreneurs into the communities, that became my passion.

[00:13:50] I worked as a bank lawyer. I became an entrepreneur myself in Chicago. I developed, built and sold well over 300 single family homes and town homes, mostly in underserved areas, was Young Entrepreneur of the Year in SBA many years ago, right 25, almost 30 years ago. But then I had all the highs and all the lows of entrepreneurship from, you know, the cover of the Crain’s Magazine and the awards to the doors of bankruptcy court. I ended up selling my company in a fire sale after a tough period. I lost, got fired on the job, we over-extended ourself on a contract, you know, I had, you know personal, you know, the mother died, you know, I had this period of just needing to restructure. But I was able to get a job doing the same work, heading a national initiative with a publicly traded company that was focused on doing retail development in urban neighborhoods.

Lyneir: [00:14:45] And so by now, I start to see this pattern. I was a bank lawyer and found passion and lending in urban neighborhoods. I then started as an entrepreneur building homes in urban neighborhoods. Then I found this big corporate position that had a national focus on getting retail to urban neighborhoods. And then, when the recession hit in 2007, I got this opportunity to work with Cory Booker and head the Economic Development Organization in Newark, New Jersey. Cory Booker, as you may know, very charismatic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, ultimately became Senator Booker. And because of his charisma, we had this opportunity to position Newark as a city that would be a national model of urban transformation and started to do projects. So, we did grocery stores and office buildings and new restaurants in the city – it became a lot of fun. And when he became Senator Booker is when I moved to Rutgers. So that’s the long sort of career journey.

Eve: [00:15:45] I mean, there seems to be a lot happening in Newark. I keep running into people doing…

Lyneir: [00:15:49] Very good. I mean, even now, phenomenal current leadership. Senator Booker is working more at the national level, but we have a phenomenal local mayor who’s galvanized both the business community, the residential community, and really done phenomenal work here. So, a lot’s going on. The last thing I just want to mention is, what initially started out as a research project in my first year at Rutgers has now morphed into a social enterprise that we’re. you know, really excited about. I’m also CEO of a social enterprise called Chicago Trend. It’s a real estate focused social enterprise that now has about 15 million dollars of capital investing in the same neighborhoods, trying to determine when commercial real estate development and retail amenities and services and performing arts, and we’ve been investing two hundred thousand, two million dollars into various projects with the mission of strengthening the commercial corridors that will ultimately strengthen the neighborhoods. And again, Rutgers has been very good in allowing this research work to be in synergy with the entrepreneurial activity in Chicago. So, for me, I am at a high point in my career, both sides of the brain. One side is teaching entrepreneurs and being a champion and cheerleader of entrepreneurs in Rutgers. The other side is, I actually get to put money into ventures and, and trying to make an investment return. So, it really is a fun time. A fun career.

Eve: [00:17:24] Exciting. It sounds like you’re very busy.

Lyneir: [00:17:27] Absolutely. But, when it’s passion work, even though it’s busy, you know, it doesn’t hurt.

Eve: [00:17:32] No, I totally agree with you. So then, what, you know, what does socially responsible real estate look like to you?

Lyneir: [00:17:39] So, again, my focus has been getting resources to people in places that other people overlook and undervalue. And for me, that is, every city has a part of town, again I headed economic development in Newark, so there was a part of town where crime is higher, where there’s more blight, where, you know, educational achievement is not as great, where there’s adverse health indicators. That’s the part of town that I believe, a focus on real estate development and a focus on commercial corridor, inclusive ownership of property, getting amenities, day-care, dry cleaner, urgent care center, grocery store is what people often talk about, sit down restaurant. Those type of investments can change and strengthen a neighborhood. And people also will change, I’m concerned about gentrification. It’s always not bringing Neiman Marcus in, it’s bringing the amenities and services that improve the quality of life for the residents who have decided this is where I want to live, but to also continue to add economic diversity to a neighborhood as well. Additional income so that middle income families and, you know, people with additional educational achievements can say: I grew up here, I have some connection to this neighborhood and I can make this a place where I choose to live because of its conveniences and its history  and, you know, be a part of its continued progression.

Eve: [00:19:22] Yeah, I mean, I think the gentrification line is very difficult because we can’t leave places like that without investment. So, you have to find a way to invest respectfully, I suppose it’s the way.

Lyneir: [00:19:35] Exactly right. And doing it inclusively. So this is, you know, the capital we’ve invested. It’s with people of color who have some connection to that neighborhood. It’s helping residents open a national franchise in a neighborhood. Again, it’s getting capital to help residents and local entrepreneurs own and drive the revitalization, own and drive the economic growth. That’s what’s fun for me.

Eve: [00:20:05] So the fund, the fifteen-million-dollar fund that you’re using, how did you raise that?

Lyneir: [00:20:11] It initially philanthropically motivated impact investors. It is, the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago provided the initial five million dollars of what they call the program related investment, a very flexible, patient capital which allows us to invest it into projects in a patient and flexible way as well. We’ve had a second investor, five million dollars of venture called Benefit Chicago, which was, includes the Coward Foundation. And then most recently we announced a five-million-dollar investment from Fifth Third Bank, you know, again a flexible capital. And we have, some of the religious organizations have also made some. The American Baptist Home Mission Society has provided some equity capital that we’re using also, so really excited about it.

Eve: [00:21:04] So, you know, my next comment is going to be, you know, what about crowdfunding? Letting everyday people invest?

Lyneir: [00:21:11] Again, when I read about your work, it’s something that I would love to figure out how to do. We haven’t and it’s certainly, we want crowdfunding to be a part of our menu. And again, now that we have made investments, have a track record, you know, this thought of can I create vehicles that will allow more local ownership alongside of our investment would be phenomenal. So,

Eve: [00:21:37] Well, we should talk ’cause you don’t need to figure it out ’cause I have.

Lyneir: [00:21:40] Great. We should do something together. I love it.

Eve: [00:21:43] Yeah, it really is an impact fund with impact investors who care about what you’re doing. It’s pretty great stuff. Yeah. So, I have to ask, we’re in the middle of a pandemic and we’re both at home doing this interview, how are you supporting your entrepreneurs through this pandemic?

Lyneir: [00:22:05] Phenomenal question. You know, we have done a few webinars initially asking people, how is the pandemic affecting you? How are you thinking about your business model? How can we be supportive? So, you know, first thing was, instead of just responding, we started to talk to the entrepreneurs and try to understand from our customers how we could best support them. We’ve done a number of webinars and servers around applying for the available resources, as well as thinking about how to innovate business model to a more aligned and my favorite was, one of the entrepreneurs in our program operates a dance studio. But, you know, they’re doing their jazz dance programs via Zoom now. And the one question she wanted us to help her figure out was, you know, do I have legal liability? And, you know, how do I, you know, either get some consents because they’re not in my spaces, if someone gets hurt? So, you know, that those type of strategic questions, right?

Eve: [00:23:05] That’s interesting, yeah.

Lyneir: [00:23:06] That’s really been the nature of the work. Where I am spending a lot of time is on a program that goes deep, right? So, I think right now, everybody is having, rightfully so and thankfully so, there’s a lot of announcements about new programs and small grants, local, municipal, federal, corporate, even philanthropic, to help entrepreneurs sort of survive. I really am spending a lot of time thinking about, and we’ve designed a sort of, I call it entrepreneurial management consulting to help entrepreneurs really think beyond the first three months of opening. But to think about, you know, the economic reality over the next year and two, you know. How do you change your model? How do you create new revenue streams? Is this the time to reposition? Can you raise new capital in addition to, you know, accessing all of the survival and recovery capital and strategies that are out there? How do you really think about this as a moment to become stronger?

Eve: [00:24:16] Yes. The interesting thing is, like, entrepreneurs are wired that way, right? They’re people who think things up and work through challenges and are flexible and figure out how to get through unexpected challenges and it could be a really good opportunity to make a business stronger or different or add some programming to it or whatever. And I have noticed amongst people in general, there seems to be a clear divide between people who say, well, we’re just gonna get back to normal and others who say, well, what’s normal going to be? It’s going to be different. It’s very interesting to me. And you’re clearly one of the people thinking about a different normal, right?

Lyneir: [00:24:58] Absolutely. And again, I think entrepreneurs are thinking about that as well. I guess there’s two categories. There are some folks who say this is the time for me to reposition or to do entrepreneurship, either in a different way or to think about that this is not fun, right. And then again, there’s a lot of parts of entrepreneurship that are not fun. And, you know there’s late nights and there’s accounts payable and, you know, and chasing, you know, opportunity. And so, I think there’ll be some folks who will say, this may be my time to exit or to leave, right? But there’s another subset of entrepreneurs that I believe are, even right now, thinking where’s the new opportunity? How do I get new capital to pursue that opportunity? They’re sitting back at home and thinking about what do I need to do to create a stronger business, additional wealth, you know, when we all are back outside again in the new norm?

Eve: [00:26:03] Yeah, interesting. So, a final question is, what do you think that the Center will look like in a year? Have you thought about that?

Lyneir: [00:26:14] Yeah, so I mean, again, we have already pivoted to all of our capacity building programs now are virtual. And the thought of being able to have a broader reach. You know, we won three of four awards for the effectiveness of our programs. And to be able to have a broader reach because of technology, and it being accepted, that’s the cool thing about using all of the Zoom and WebEx and other tools is before, it always was sort of, well it was a second option, the technology was always sort of clunky. You would never make that even part of the first consideration. I think now our Center’s going to have a whole lot more reach and impact by using, and leaning into, and the acceptance of the virtual tools. And we’re also, you know, embarking on a campaign to endow our Center which will allow us to be, you know, not raising money program by program, to name the Center and to be able to continue to impact entrepreneurs along the scale. From youth to technology to the coffee shop down the street.

Eve: [00:27:30] Well, I really can’t wait to hear, see what happens next and you and I are going to have some coffee on Zoom sometime very soon. Thank you very much.

Lyneir: [00:27:42] What a phenomenal opportunity and thank you.

Eve: [00:27:46] OK, bye.

Eve: [00:28:02] That was Lyneir Richardson, while Lyneir’s work straddles two cities the goal is the same in both places. He’s searching for ways to level the playing field for entrepreneurs and real estate developers in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. In Newark he’s helped 400 diverse entrepreneurs, growing to a thousand, grow their businesses. And in Chicago he provides resources to real estate developers and retailers to promote investment in disadvantaged Chicago neighborhoods.

Eve: [00:28:35] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today’s episode at my web site, rethinkrealestateforgood.co. While you’re there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate while building better cities.

[00:28:52] Thank you so much for spending your time with me today and thank you Lyneir for sharing your thoughts with me. We’ll talk again soon but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Lyneir Richardson

Small versus big.

There’s a history to small-scale development. It’s what we did for centuries until industrial modernism brought large-scale development to our cities.

Large-scale development

The scale and cost of large developments falls into the realm of large-scale developers, and not always good ones. They have been the protagonists in the rapid transformation of our urban environment. Large-scale developments have often had disastrous impacts on local communities and small businesses and have led to the decline of diversity and vitality in many neighborhoods.

Some solutions

There have been many studies into how to tackle the problems that large-scale developments have caused. One important step is to involve the locals. Engaging the community plays a fundamental role in identifying negative impacts and understanding how a development will impact its surroundings.

Most important is the relationship between social activities and the urban space. Solutions might include a mix of old and new buildings to keep some of a neighborhood’s character, small blocks where neighbors might get to know each other, a mix of residential and small business to bring people out into the streets and public space to create a local focus and help promote vitality.

Back to small-scale

Large-scale developers have many resources to tackle zoning codes, financial institutions and all the other complications of development. But small-scale development, buildings with less than 20 units, has become a lost art. How do you build a small building in the place you love? Jim Kumon co-founded the Incremental Development Alliance with the goal of “resurrecting the small developer.” The Alliance provides training and technical assistance to anyone interested in tackling those small-scale projects that make your neighborhood great.

To learn more listen to my full interview with Jim Kumon

Image by Peyton Chung / CC BY-2.0

Catalytic in Appalachia.

Generational poverty is a complex problem with no single, easy-to-apply solution. Unlike circumstantial poverty, resulting from a specific event, like an illness or temporary loss of a job, generational poverty involves multiple generations of family and community lacking either the accumulated assets, education or resources on which to build. And in Appalachia, this condition pervades a region long-dominated by the mono-economy of coal extraction, an industry which has been shrinking dramatically for decades.

Brandon Dennison, the founder of Coalfield Development, grew up in southern West Virginia, and saw firsthand many of the issues that both his local community and the larger region faced. Always drawn to service and the idea of social entrepreneurship, Brandon saw that there were many people who wanted to work, but who simply couldn’t find jobs. And outside solutions, such as retraining people in technology skills like coding, were a long shot at best and certainly did not guarantee employment. To create lasting change in communities hit hard by poverty and unemployment, Brandon believed that change can be most effective when it is driven and fostered by the impacted community itself.

The vision

Coalfield Development was built upon three interlinked goals: job training, education and personal development – all geared to breaking that generational cycle and helping to rebuild local communities. Called the 33-6-3 model, it guarantees 33 hours a week of on-the-job training in construction, six hours of community college a week towards a technical associates degree, and three hours a week focused on personal development.

Coalfield started small, using locally hired construction crews to demo or renovate older buildings that were vacant or rundown, often in smaller towns and communities, and often overlooked. Blight was cleared away, and employees were given both job training and free educational opportunities. Next, they became developers, renovating a couple of large structures and seeding those with small, entrepreneurial businesses, which led to some small economic growth and a few more jobs. In addition to the development and construction company, they experimented with a family of social enterprises – selling local produce grown on former mining lands, exploring forestry as a way to reclaim abandoned coal tailing dumps, and starting two wood shops to create artisan furniture and local products. They even helped start the area’s first solar installation company.

In addition to the community-based real estate projects they have worked on, Coalfield Development works with entrepreneurs to innovate and create local jobs. Brandon hopes this will lead to a more sustainable economy for West Virginia. So far, they have helped start 11 businesses from scratch and invested through seed-funding in more than 50 different entrepreneurial projects. The result has been the creation of over 250 jobs and the training of over 1,000 people.

Listen to my interview with Brandon Dennison to learn more.

Image by Tom Fisk from Pexels