Case Study
University Neighborhoods Development Corporation works to build and enrich campus and community environment by investing in surrounding neighborhoods. UNDC is a partnership between University of Memphis, University District Business Alliance, University District, Inc., Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, and Economic Development Growth Engine. Opportunity zones are one of their main initiatives. Their Work Local program is designed to improve the community through job access and blight reduction by providing job-seeking panhandlers with a day’s wages and a meal to clean-up sites, where they work to reduce urban blight.
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Case Study
The Warwick Hotel has been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina. The 154 room hotel, with its 1950s-era modernist architecture, opened in 1952. Tulane University signed a lease on Warwick and the structure will be completely renovated using opportunity zone money from the New Orleans Redevelopment Fund. The apartments, now called Thirteen15, will house graduate students, doctors, researchers, faculty who are tied into Tulane’s nearby Medical School.
Tulane also will be the anchor tenant of the refurbished Charity Hospital around the corner, another property that has been unoccupied since Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago and which is slated for a $300 million rehabilitation. Tulane will be leasing 350,000 square feet of space, 100,000 square feet of which will be converted into laboratory facilities, with the rest given over to teaching space, offices and study areas, to serve approximately 1,000 staff and students.
“The Warwick and Charity projects are prime opportunities to exponentially expand the university’s size and research mission, while also bolstering the creation of a robust research and commercialization ecosystem in the heart of the city,” Tulane President Mike Fitts said in a news release.
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Case Study
IUPUI hosts a class called “Planning for a Profitable Business” in a borrowed corner of a public housing complex for formerly homeless veterans on Indianapolis’ Near West Side. The students are current and aspiring entrepreneurs, many of them from this hard-luck neighborhood, which IUPUI is working to improve.” This movement is about more than sending students to fulfill community-service requirements by cleaning up litter or working in soup kitchens at the holidays. It’s about leveraging vast amounts of buying power, political clout and research capacity to do permanent good.” The university wants “a return to a time when higher education saw itself as contributing to the public interest rather than solely training students for careers.” IUPUI also operates a dental clinic for veterans and is helping address a flare-up in the number of cases of HIV in southern Indiana.