Community Building

Cool Freaking Shoes, Publishing & Third Places

by Michele Reeves on May 18, 2019

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At a large common table at a fave coffee shop early last year, I spied a man alternating between working intensely on his computer, and furiously sketching on a pair of canvas Vans. (Okay, spied is a bit dramatic, he was sitting right across from me!) Honestly, I was mesmerized by his drawings… their color, abstraction and dimension. His focus. His switching between computer work and sketching. I was desperately trying to figure out how to surreptitiously take a photo of the whole thing… but I’m not so good at that. (I always forget the sound is on when I try to take a secret picture… busted!)

Finally, I gave up being sneaky and just asked if he would mind if I took a shot of the shoes he was working on, and he graciously obliged… which is the picture you see below right (pens visible inside the shoe). After my intrusive request, we started chatting as if we had known each other for ages (much to the laptop warriors’ irritation around us), and I learned he was making the shoes for his sister, hiding animals in the colorful dimensioned shapes. (You can see the rhino on the front left shoe… an easy one to spot!)

I was IN LOVE with those shoes. Next thing you know, I called my Mom and my daughters and asked them to name a few types of animals for me. Needless to say, they thought me a bit crazy (but no more so than usual). Humoring my request won them a reward: the honor of being shod with magical works of custom art by the fabulous Luis Gutierrez!

He is a dynamic young artist and designer who moved here from Arizona, and I am delighted that we have become friends. We would never have met, nor would we have gotten to know each other, without the intervention of Sisters Coffee Company, one of my favorite third places in Portland. (Honestly, I wish I could send Luis into some downtowns where I work to implement a midnight guerrilla paint scheme on a beige building — now that would be fun!)

Anyone who is interested in purchasing one-of-a-kind gifts of original artwork sketched on shoes or bags, Luis can hook you up when he’s not busy painting, baking artistic creations (literally), or arranging to show his original pieces! You can track him down on Instagram at XoloArt1.

Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third places” in his book The Great Good Place, first published in 1989. In this important piece of writing, social environments were divided into “first places” (home), “second places” (work), and “third places” (churches, cafes, clubs, libraries, parks, etc). Mr Oldenburg felt third places were critical for building and maintaining a functional community and also considered them a basic building block of placemaking.

As I think about third places, I realize that mine usually revolve around visits to parks and things to do with food… and if I’m being totally frank, my preferences trend heavily toward places with food! For awhile, Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland was a frequent meeting third place for me. One day, I was scheduled to connect with a construction manager friend who had invited a landscape architect she knew — women discussing the built environment with pastries, I mean, come on, does it get any better than that?

We proceeded to chow down and chat up a storm, probably too loudly. The latter became readily apparent when a woman sitting near us introduced herself: Lisa Stidd was an architect who had recently begun doing some writing for a new online publication focused on urban issues, Urb DeZine!

She asked if any of us would be interested in writing for the publication, and that’s how I not only came to post the occasional piece, but it was my introduction to its publisher: Bill Adams. He has been a consistent and delightful collaborator and supporter, and I am grateful for what he does to provoke thoughtful discourse on all things urban.

Would I have encountered this opportunity without a third place? Nope.

Both of these spots have a few things in common: easy to walk to, busy, amazing natural light, and great core food products — either baked goods or coffee. For me though, they are at their best as citizens of the street. In other words, they blur the line between interior and exterior. When sitting inside at Ken’s on a nice summer day, with the giant window open (shown to the left), it is truly an interior/exterior experience. You are a part of the street, and it is a part of you. At Sisters, I have sat in the window on many a winter day and witnessed reunions, dog walkers, breakups, kids playing in the snow, people sprinting from torrential downpours, first dates, and even a television show being filmed with fake rain! (I know, they couldn’t find a real rainy day in Portland?)

So consider this a love letter of sorts, a deeply appreciative Thank You to all of the amazing third places in every city and every town that give us a spot to see and be seen in our community. Americans are not really very good at hanging out without a defined context, and if we didn’t have these fabulous third places, our already damaged sense of community fabric would be irreparably frayed.

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Building District Brand, One Experience at a Time!

by Michele Reeves on January 31, 2018

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The Executive Director of the Historic Monterey Trail District, Nathan Ulsh, inspired me with a new tour he created for his South Sacramento corridor, so much so that I asked him if he wanted to guest post about it here! He does a great job bringing big picture resources to his district, and executing on the small things that foster connection and brand. Take it away Nathan…

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Posted by Nathan Ulsh
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How do you start to debunk the myth that your PBID’s commercial district is scary? This was the question I had when I observed that there were few white folks over the age of say, 40, meandering through our businesses on Franklin Blvd in South Sacramento.

Inspiration for tackling this problem came to me in the Spring of 2017: change minds one Spanish student at a time! I was perusing the Nextdoor app (social media platform similar to a virtual neighborhood watch) for Curtis Park, the neighborhood with a lot of disposable income directly adjacent to Franklin Blvd. They were recruiting students over 50 years of age for a level 102 Spanish class, and since it was drawing from Curtis Park and Hollywood Park, it meant this class was going to get good Anglo representation from consumers who might never otherwise go to South Sac.

Drawing on my experience conducting professional development tours for troubled youth to meet directly with business owners, I thought we could apply something similar for students in this Spanish class to foster more intimate conversations between Anglo customers and the amazing collection of multi-generational Latino-owned businesses that we have on Franklin Blvd. I reached out to the teacher, and offered a free business tour where her students could practice their Spanish, meet business owners, learn about Mexican culture, food, music and history, all while spending money in my district.

The teacher agreed and we were on. (Click on the image to the right to enlarge pix from our first tour!)

The best part of our Spanish meet and greet was the difference in attitudes before and after we set out. At the beginning of our outing, one of the attendees admitted that her friends had feared for her safety when she told them she was going on a business tour on Franklin Blvd. Thankfully she didn’t let it stop her!

We started with a brief history of our district, the vibrant culture represented here, and all of the projects we have in the works. Then we hit the road, on foot. Even though Franklin Blvd is an arterial, and consumers don’t think about walking, all of this was easily accessible as pedestrians.

Our first stop was Gala Formal Wear where my tour-goers learned about quinceñeras—the celebration, the attire, and the expense (these celebrations can easily top $10,000.) We asked everyone to come with an appetite, because the next port of call was a must-stop destination for the Mexican community: La Esperanza Bakery and Market. No one can resist their pan dulce (Mexican sweet bread), and our students chatted in Spanish about food and sweets, tasting a wide variety of specialties. The last stop of our two-hour tour was more food (it’s a good thing we were walking)! Los Inmortales provided a mouthwatering traditional Mexican dinner, and the owner conversed with our group in Spanish about his restaurant and the food that was served.

All in all, the business owners really enjoyed interacting with new customers, and the students ate it up (figuratively and literally).

At the end of our time on the street, the same woman whose friends had doubted her sanity for walking on Franklin Blvd said, “This was exciting! I am going to bring my girlfriends over to this area!” Everyone explained that they had not known about the history of the district, or the rich offerings of the businesses. It is, by far, the best collection of comments I have received about the district by outsiders. And now, they are going to tell every one of their friends.

And that’s how you change minds: one person at a time, having a great experience.

Needless to say, I am now offering quarterly Spanish-speaking business tours because it was so successful for everyone involved. (The folks cracking up above left are from our second tour.)

I love my job.

(Tour photos courtesy of Nathan Ulsh)

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Post image for On Nov 8th Morn…I Experienced Everything Great about America

My election day began with a meeting of a group I was recently asked to join, the NE STEM/STEAM coalition in Portland, Oregon. The group’s mission (I paraphrase) is to help students from communities of color gain access to careers and education in science, technology, and the arts.

It is an incredible collection of people and organizations, spearheaded by the indomitable New Market Tax Credit guru and all around community development expert Carl Talton. The members of this coalition include non-profits like Airway Science for Kids, Inc. (To put it in their words, they work with “Portland’s hard-to-reach youth” to build an actual airplane and sell it. Talk about inspirational.) And there is the retired school superintendent, Pixel Arts Education, a local college, the Rebuilding Center, educators… the list goes on and on. Amazing people doing amazing work to bring economic opportunity to all Americans.

business1

My next meeting of the day was to get together with a small, local property owner as a part of a public sector program that, in part, brings assistance to long-time resident owners so they can learn to leverage their properties as investments and stay in their neighborhoods as they change, instead of being displaced by gentrification. In this case, I had the absolute honor of meeting with an immigrant couple who moved to the US as adults, learned English, and over the years acquired buildings as they started businesses.

She is from Asia, quiet and whip smart. He is from South America, gregarious and very detail oriented. They were strong, open, caring people who have worked hard their whole lives, who take care of their parents and their extended families, and have contributed much to our economy.

Every person I worked with on election day personified, in tangible and heroic ways, the ideals this country was founded upon, and it was a privilege to have been able to spend time with them and be reminded of all that America can be.

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When Improving Places, It Always Comes Down to People

by Michele Reeves on August 23, 2012

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What is one of the first things I consider when I’m working in a mixed-use district, whether I’m helping private sector developers strategize acquisitions, or diagnosing and suggesting improvements to an economically underperforming city?

RELATIONSHIPS!

In fact, I can often tell a lot about the connections between stakeholders in a small downtown or mixed-use district just by walking through it, because the nature of relationships, past and present, are always reflected in its buildings, streets, and businesses. If property owners don’t know one another, if the public sector does not have strong ties to the community, if there are not close associations between businesses, then I will not likely find an environment that includes sidewalk tables filled with residents chatting and little red wagons overflowing with bright fresh flowers when I visit your district.

It can’t be overstated: to catalyze change and bring revitalization to underperforming districts, relationships between businesses, property owners, residents, and the public sector must be established and strengthened. Below are a handful of ways to begin looking at district-wide relationships, some ideas for improving connections, and a few examples from various cities.

WHAT IS THE STATE OF RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTOR?

A mixed-use district typically has a patchwork of property owners that must work in concert toward shared goals in order to create success and vitality for everyone. Owners have to invest in their buildings and they have to tenant with active ground floor businesses, or revitalization will never get started. It is generally easiest to achieve this collaboration through public sector led activities, such as providing technical assistance, facade improvement matching grant dollars, and goal-setting exercises.

The bottom line: it’s harder to be the jerk with the really ugly building if you have cordial relationships with the property owners and businesses that are located next door.

Example: In Hillsboro, Oregon, Jon Gimre, of Gimre’s shoes was awarded one of their downtown urban renewal area’s first facade improvement grants. (He was not one of the aforementioned “jerks” with an ugly building, by the way!) To ensure that this initial project was successful, city staff worked closely with Mr. Gimre through every step of his building’s dynamic transformation. By providing the necessary technical assistance and support, Gimre’s was remade through the introduction of a warm three-color paint scheme; the addition of a bright sign from one of its 50’s era logos; the removal of a large, overpowering awning; and, the incorporation of exterior building lighting. Sales have risen for the shoe store, and a model for simple, yet effective, renovation has been created for others to emulate in the district. In fact, there are now multiple applicants for the next wave of facade improvement funds, all of whom wish to implement a similar quality of project in the downtown. And to think, it all began with a building and good relationships between its owner/user and city staff.

WHAT ARE A PLACE’S MOST BELOVED BUSINESSES AND EVENTS?

Upon commencing work in a district, I usually try to understand what people feel a sense of relationship to in a place. As one part of this, I seek to identify the most beloved businesses and events, because these are the very things that build district identity and value well into the future.

One of the benefits of quantifying an area’s beloved businesses is so that property owners truly understand the types of ground floor activators that create long-term value. Small, locally-owned restaurants, one-of-a-kind retailers, and funky coffee shops usually top these lists of favorites. These purveyors create identity because a majority of stakeholders in the community connect with them. Unfortunately, when a district has been in decline for some time, landlords forget the concept of highest and best use. It becomes tempting for owers to tenant with legal, medical, and professional service office users since these are stable businesses generating steady cash flow. But, these are not establishments that people engage with, and if you try to create a downtown that is comprised of inward facing office tenants at street level, you will have a very unsuccessful mixed-use district because it will be missing…well, a good mix!

No one says, “Hey, let’s go hang out and have lunch on that Main Street with all the dentists!”

The reality is that a spiraling decrease in property values and achievable rents will ensue if office use becomes the predominant ground floor presence in a district.

All landlords have to remember which tenants the community relates to best on the ground floor: outward facing and engaging businesses with personality at street level. Any business can build stronger bonds by offering excitement and exchange at the sidewalk. I have seen banks that proffer popcorn, public Internet access, and community events in their lobbies. Or a medical office with dramatic windows at the sidewalk through which pedestrians can see the waiting area and huge floor-to-ceiling murals depicting the history of the neighborhood. Or a used building supply store that built a new warehouse out of pieced-together windows and lumber taken from deconstructed buildings and houses, the very products they carry, creating a story on the exterior of their building for everyone to enjoy. Or a yoga studio with an eclectic retail shop offering new and gently-used lifestyle, homeware, and apparel products.

Figure out what people relate to in your district and give them more of it!

Another reason to take a gander at what people are relating to in a district, is to determine if they are leveraging these events and businesses for maximum economic impact. Sadly, it is often the case that they are not. It is not uncommon for a downtown to play host to an event and then garner almost no positive brand association from that event because they don’t participate in it in a meaningful or memorable way. This is one of the reasons I am not always a fan of gated outdoor programming; they typically do not create positive brand association for the area and eventgoers do not frequent area businesses.

Example: One of the leading complaints I hear in cities is, “On farmer’s market day, everyone comes downtown. But other than that, it’s empty…they won’t come back.” How do markets create all of this excitement with a few run down tents and battered banquet tables? With people. With sights. With smells. With lots of small, affordable purchasing options. With tastes. With close proximity. With atmosphere.

On a farmer’s market day, people want to experience street activity. Customers wish to rub shoulders with their neighbors and experience the fabric of their community. They do not want to go into stores. They do not want to dine in sit-down restaurants. So bring your store and your food businesses outside! Provide free samples. Put products on the sidewalk. Consider this quote from Richard Bloom, published in the Metro News Feed, about his small floral and homewares shop in downtown Lake Oswego:

Bloom moved his business in March to Lake Oswego’s main street, A Avenue, and incorporated several of Reeves’ suggestions at his new, highly visible storefront. “The change (in walk-in traffic) has been phenomenal,” says Bloom. “We were hidden off the main drag in a complex with low visibility and no storefront…By moving locations where our storefront is highly visible and adding sidewalk interest with an antique flower cart and spillover product, we’ve probably increased our walk-in business by 40 to 50 percent.”

On Saturdays, he converts several of the customer parking spots next to his building into an outdoor market to take advantage of Lake Oswego’s farmers market crowd. “Saturdays used to mean a skeleton crew and closing early,” says Bloom. “Now it’s one of our busiest days.”

DO THE BUSINESSES IN THE DISTRICT COLLABORATE?

Adjacencies are a key component to good merchandising when laying out products in a store. What are adjacencies? Inventory that sells well next to each another. In Main Street and downtown environments, you are looking for the same things: what are the physical and emotional adjacencies that can be wielded to build more economic success?

If businesses have strong relationships with each other, they can cooperate and discover where people eat after they get tutoring, or what shops they tend to frequent serially, and they can successfully cross promote offerings to those who live, work, and play nearby.

In economically underperforming areas, it is typical for individual stores and restaurants to feel like islands; isolated, trying to keep their borders above water. But this offers the antithesis of what a successful mixed-use district should: a place with community fabric. In a strip mall, no one expects the clerk from Ross Dress for Less to know, and interact with, a clerk from Best Buy. But, the opposite is true in a downtown or Main Street. People want shared passion and purpose. The community fabric people want to experience is woven primarily using a downtown’s ground floor stakeholders. So functioning business associations that receive technical assistance and monetary support from area institutions and the public sector are vitally important to create adjacencies and downtown fabric.

Example: In a matter of months, downtown Tigard, went from having a defunct business association and little interaction between stakeholders, to creating a district-wide annual event. How did this happen? The city of Tigard provided technical assistance to engaged stakeholders in the downtown. Staff brought in Business Association Management to lend a helping hand with creating a downtown email list, fostering regular communication, developing event posters, postcards, and flyers, and hosting networking meetings. Through this collaboration, events and identity are being created, including the first ever Downtown Tigard Street Fair, which was held August 11th, and included a car show, brew fest, live music, and offerings for the kiddos. Pretty darn impressive in less than a year.

WHAT ARE YOUR STORIES?

Every place is teeming with stories. The collective tales that reside in a district are what make it unique, and bring it to life. I was reminded of this recently when working in downtown Lake Oswego.

Robert Foster, an incredibly talented landscape architect, artist, and resident of Lake Oswego, came up to me after a presentation in their downtown and gave me a copy of his self published book called: Art in the Coffee Shop. It was the 13th edition and it contained sketches of, and poems about, people he observes in coffee shops throughout the region, and it is the source for the images in this post.

About the woman at the top of this blog entry Robert wrote:

A delightful smile, haven’t seen in a while.
I’ll put it in the book and keep it in my file.
She delighted her friends, she was very attentive,
She gave them pause she gave them incentive.
People like this keep the world going round,
How do we keep them from flying off the ground.

Yes, people like this…and their individual stories, are what make the world go ’round, and they are the ones who ultimately provide the spark needed to bring renewal to a neighborhood, a city, or a town. It always begins with people.

All images are published with the permission of Robert H Foster. Thank you for sharing your talent so generously Robert!

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On Emergence, Ants, and Bottom up Revitalization

by Michele Reeves on November 19, 2010

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I was thinking about commercial districts yesterday as I finished Emergence, by Steven Johnson. I was particularly taken with his descriptions of ants, and how they build colonies with no central vision or control. A fully functioning ant mound is created strictly through a series of small local interactions between ants, largely using pheromones. Though the amount of information exchanged in each is tiny, from these local interactions, a higher functioning order emerges.

This is exactly the sort of behavior cities should be encouraging between stakeholders to foster organic revitalization.

Instead, from a city’s perspective, from a planning department’s perspective, and from a development agency perspective, it is often easier to focus on that one big new “catalyst” project that will single-handedly improve an area, rather than encourage many small-scale projects, fostering a bottom up approach. Unfortunately, this desire to renew from above takes a tremendous amount of public capital and doesn’t always work.

Is it possible to consider rejuvenation of a commercial corridor or a downtown from a different, more cost-effective perspective?

Yes, provided that you have decent building stock (and by decent, I mean a continuous run of structures from almost any era) and a functioning grid. From those simple building blocks, you can directly improve what you have, rather than trying to indirectly help it by completing a single large new building. From the seeds of your downtown or your commercial corridor, you can grow a place, which will then require significantly less, or perhaps no, public money to encourage new construction.

In Emergence, Steven Johnson writes about the five fundamental principles that a system designed to learn from the ground level must exhibit, as an ant colony exhibits:

  1. More is different. The statistical nature of ant interaction demands that there be a critical mass of ants for the colony to make intelligent assessments of its global state.

  2. Ignorance is useful. It is better to build a dense interconnected system with simple elements and let sophisticated behavior trickle up.

  3. Encourage random encounters. Encounters with individual ants are arbitrary, but because so many of them are in the system, those encounters allow individuals to gauge and alter the macrostate of the system.

  4. Look for patterns in the signs. The knack for pattern detection allows meta-information to circulate through the colony mind. (Smelling the pheromones of fifty foragers in the space of an hour imparts information about the global state of the colony.)

  5. Pay attention to your neighbors. Local information can lead to global wisdom.

Paraphrase: Get all of your stakeholders talking and doing — the more people the merrier. The more projects the merrier. The more activity the merrier.

Or, to put it more formally, if we create opportunities for and catalyze a sizable number of small local interactions, these can bring about positive changes in cities and neighborhoods with minimal monetary investment. And, these interactions and projects will take your city in directions you never imagined, and I mean that as a good thing. “Let sophisticated behavior trickle up.”

Now, meaningfully engaging stakeholders is not easy. It’s much simpler, and more attractive, to focus on big flashy projects with a lot of quantified knowns on sites controlled by the city. But, it doesn’t help create sustainable renewal.

So, how do you stir up the pot? Who do you get interacting? What the heck is Michele Reeves talking about?

  • Business Owners. Are they talking to each other? Do they have a functioning business association or downtown association? If not, help them. Provide funding, expertise and assistance.

  • Property Owners. Nothing happens in a downtown or commercial corridor without the property owners. Do they know each other? How do their buildings look? How do they interact with the public sector? Usually, in historic districts that are languishing, there is a complete and total disconnect between some of the long-time property owners and the public sector. In other words, they hate the planning and permit department. Cities need to repair this vital connection between property owners and government before renewal can occur. Get property owners engaged!

  • Retail Sophistication. What is the level of retailing in the downtown or commercial corridor? Can business owners and property owners benefit from merchandising training? Do property owners and shop owners understand the tie between good design, attractive buildings, and retail performance?

  • Permits. Does your planning and permit department do everything it can to help small business owners and property owners? Often, the public sector tailors their process toward large development, which makes the path to acquiring a permit nearly incomprehensible to local entrepreneurs and small building owners. Start building connections to these groups and understanding their needs. Create streamlined “cheat sheets” for simple building improvement permit procedures, or step-by-step instructions for restaurant tenants and food cart vendors.

  • Brand. Is there a unified story or identity for your district? Create your story. Manage your story. Leverage your story. Makes sure everyone is telling your story, the way you want it told.

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