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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In 2006, Kansas State held listening sessions across the state aimed at identifying challenges facing rural Kansas communities. During these sessions, the need to support rural grocery stores rose to the top.
Rural grocery stores contribute to a community by providing economic development through jobs and by contributing to the local tax base, acting as community hubs for community members to gather and connect, and serving as essential sources for healthy food options.
KSU founded the Rural Grocery Initiative (RGI) to provide resources to help sustain and enhance independently-owned rural grocery stores. RGI assists communities and citizens to strengthen rural grocery operations and improve access to healthy foods. RGI provides technical assistance to grocers and communities related to rural grocery stores and/or healthy food access, maintains a Rural Grocery Store Database, develops and maintains a collection of resources called the Rural Grocery Toolkit, hosts a National Rural Grocery Summit, conducts research on relevant rural grocery and food access issues, and partners with organizations and institutions that work to support rural grocery stores and communities.
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Between 1996 and 2003, the University of Pennsylvania tripled the dollar amount of goods and services purchased from West Philadelphia businesses through their Economic Inclusion Initiative. They continue to focus on local purchasing and aim to award 20 percent of all construction contracts to minority or women-owned businesses. The University has also made great investments in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods by adding 3,800 new street trees and 850 new pedestrian street lights to residential and commercial streets. Penn supports public education by contributing over $800,000 to the neighboring Sadie Alexander Mossell Elementary School and providing landscaping services and security & expertise from Penn’s Graduate School of Education. Penn supports a variety of programs towards preparing Philadelphia’s future workforce, including training minorities to apprentice with local building trade unions and investing in the West Philadelphia Skills Initiative to align unemployed West Philadelphians with opportunities in local anchor institutions. The University funds forgivable loans enabling 1,000 participants to homes in the neighborhood near the school. By investing $150 million in retail development, Penn attracted approximately $1 billion in private investment from the real estate sector. This investment has established vibrant, pedestrian-friendly retail corridors consisting of 450,000 square feet of large and small businesses and created connections between the campus and neighborhood.
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Marquette University is one of the 5 anchor institutions funding the Near West Side Partners nonprofit organization. The organization’s mission is to revitalize and sustain the Near West Side as a thriving business and residential corridor, through collaborative efforts to promote economic development, improved housing, unified neighborhood identity and branding, and greater safety for residents and businesses. Their first major program – the Promoting Assets & Reducing Crime (PARC) Initiative – was “a three-year, $1.5+ million initiative that leverages law enforcement resources to improve safety – largely by addressing negative impact properties, while working with business and other stakeholders to change the perception of this neighborhood and attract economic development opportunities.”
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RU-N has invested many resources to bettering Newark including:
- The Cornwall Center facilitating the Newark City of Learning Collaborative, a cross-sector partnership to significantly raise postsecondary educational attainment in Greater Newark.
- The creation, under the leadership of Chancellor Diner, of the Office of University Community Partnerships, embodies RU-N’s first institutionalized efforts to broker connections between the university and Greater Newark communities, addressing critical needs across the age spectrum from early literacy to teen parenting to healthy aging, among others.
- Faculty from supply chain management collaborating with local industries and agencies as well as the Brookings Institution to document the robustness and still untapped potential in Newark’s manufacturing sector.
- Criminal justice and policing experts working with law enforcement at all levels to improve safety and security in Newark.
- Law faculty and students advocating for local families struggling to assure that their children with disabilities have access to the supports needed for them to succeed in school.
- Faculty, staff, and students working on the Promise Neighborhood project with community-based organizations to build comprehensive support networks for families in Newark’s most challenged neighborhoods.
- Scholars of urban entrepreneurship advising local startups to launch, revitalizing downtown.
The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (CUEED) at RU-N is one of the first centers of its kind to integrate scholarly works with private capital, government, and non-profit sectors to develop citywide resources and bring renewed economic growth and vitality through urban entrepreneurship. The center promotes and fosters a new generation of urban entrepreneurs who actively seek a “socially conscious urban renaissance.” Their mission is to build a world-class research-driven, teaching and practitioner-oriented urban entrepreneurship and economic development program that will transform the economy of the City of Newark, New Jersey, and other urban centers; create wealth in urban communities; and be a model for all urban universities.