My Athens

Walkability Is Economic Development

What can we do here in Athens, Ga. to attract a bigger share of young educated professionals—the kind of people who are moving their energy, their talent and their earnings potentials to “cool” cities like Austin, Texas, Charlotte, N.C. and Portland, Ore.?

Today’s Athens Banner-Herald editorial asserts that Athens is “not ready to attract the kinds of industries that could provide jobs for those young professionals.” In support of this assertion, the editorial points to the failure to develop a high-tech industrial park near the intersection of U.S. Highway 78 and Georgia Highway 316, the failure to attract two pharmaceutical manufacturers to the area and the failure of the effort to land a new federal animal disease research laboratory.

If instead of failing, Athens had succeed at building that high-tech industrial park, and getting those pharmaceutical jobs and the federal laboratory, it’s possible Athens would now be securely on the path to becoming a “cool” city.  But I doubt it.

There’s always a little bit of the chicken or the egg conundrum to questions about local economic development strategy, but part of the reason Athens isn’t attracting the kind of high-tech firms and jobs we want is that Athens just isn’t a “cool” enough city yet.

Tax breaks and cheap land usually aren’t enough to attract high-tech firms—whose success is keyed to their ability to attract talented workers (that is, the kind of people who want to live in cool cities)—to specific communities. The firms want to locate in places their potential employees want to live.

And what kind of places are those? Well, as the editorial suggests, they are places that have “invested in the elements of cultural coolness: good coffee, good food and good music.” Athens certainly has a decent share of that kind of coolness, but I think there’s more to the story than that. There’s good reason to believe that many young educated professionals today also want to live in walkable neighborhoods where you can get groceries, go out to eat, play at a park, listen to music or go to a bar without always having to get in your car.

The talent of the local labor pool is certainly among the most important factors in determining where high tech firms will locate. The trouble is it’s really hard for local governments to do anything very direct about improving the talent pool of existing residents. But if they want to, local governments can make big improvements in local infrastructure, in making walkable neighborhoods, creating lively downtowns and fostering lively cultural scenes. And these amenities—which are quite tangible and easily perceptible—are proven talent attractors.

Of course, Athens should continue to court high-tech firms to move here. Of course, Athens should try to make it as easy as possible and prudent for employers to move here. Keep in mind, though, that because Athens is home to a large, well-regarded university and already has a solid reputation as a culturally lively spot, the city doesn’t have to beg for attention from employers. We’ll keep getting glances at least.

But if we want to start “winning” more in terms of getting employers to move here, then I think we need to change our economic development strategy.

Instead of scrambling to accommodate whatever random suitor-firms wink at us, let’s adopt an economic development strategy that prioritizes enhancing walkability and cultural vitality in central Athens. (Personally, I think Athens needs more work on the walkability front—that is, on increasing density, creating “complete” streets,” more mixed-use development—than it does on the cultural front.) This sort of strategy, I think, will likely be more effective in getting more employers to say “yes” to locating here. It also has the advantage of being something that local governments can actually do reasonably well.

“Cutting Back in Every Way Possible"

Pilgrim’s Pride is closing its Oneta St. chicken processing plant today, and about a hundreds Athens-area workers will be laid-off.

According to an Athens Banner-Herald report, a company spokesman said some of those workers will find jobs at the firm’s sister plant in town, and others may secure positions in plants in Commerce, Elberton and Gainesville.

But many are unlikely to find new work anytime soon, and can now be counted among the latest causalities of the current recession.

I recently talked briefly to two now laid-off Pilgrim’s Pride employees, Pauline Scott and Chakisha Gresham, both of Athens, Ga. I asked them about their plans going forward and about how they and their fellow former employees, their neighbors and families are coping with the recession.

Here’s what they said:

Pauline Scott: I’ve noticed that a lot of people have cut back a lot of activities from the things that they used to do. Now, you see more of the kids out at Burger King playing and stuff. It used to be not as many. But I guess due to the fact the way the economy is, people can’t afford to take their kids to movies and different things like that, so they’re finding other activities like hanging out at Burger King.

And, me personally, I have cut back on everything.

I don’t go out to eat that much. If I do I’m eating off the 99-cent menu. When I go out, like if I leave home to go get gas or whatever, I do all my errands while I’m out. I do not go back and forth. I just do everything once I’m out.

My biggest concern is—I’m 56 years old—I’m more concerned about my health care insurance. And a lot of people on the job are more concerned about their mortgages because they have 700-800 dollar mortgages, and they’re more concerned about those.

Me and Chakisha are blessed because we got in the program in with Habitat [Athens Area Habitat for Humanity], and our mortgage is more affordable. I’m not saying there’s no stress with the mortgage, but it’s more affordable. The people at Habitat agreed to try to work with us to keep it affordable—and that lifts a lot of pressure off.

Chakisha Gresham: After Friday, I’m going to try to look forward and find me a better job or even go back to school. What I’m going to do is basically try to find something. But it’s going to be kind of hard, because people aren’t hiring right now. I want to try to go and get a job at the university, but right now they have a freeze on hiring. So, I guess I don’t know what I’m going to do really. But I’m going to keep trying and trying because hopefully something will come up.

What’s hurting people the most is not knowing which way you’re going to go after you’re laid-off. You’re just worrying about how you’re going to pay your bills and stuff.

Pauline Scott: What’s hurting the people the most is…when you go to the grocery store everything is so expensive. When you’re not making much money the cost of living is really, really expensive. And, you know, like I said people are cutting back in every way possible to try to make ends meet.  Most of the people I’ve talked say, they say their concern was about paying their mortgage and losing their health care insurance—that’s the basic problem.

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This interview was conducted over the phone on Sunday, Oct. 4. The conversation has been condensed and lightly edited to improve readability.

How Are Local Mom and Pops Doing?

In the past few days, the Grady Journal, a Web site for UGA journalism students, has been publishing stories about local businesses and how they are faring during the current recession.

It looks like the stories are the result of an assignments for Jour5300, a course on public affairs reporting. I’ve tried to link to all of the stories, but I may have missed some.

The stories are good reads, and—if you read them all—give a nuanced feel for what local shop owners are going through.

Athens Five Points Yoga

Ben's Bike Shop

Cali ‘N Tito’s

Classic City Comics & Games

Daily Groceries Co-op

Dolphin Dive Center

Homeplace Gifts and Toys

Jot’Em Down Country Store and BBQ

Normal Hardware

Rattles & Rhymes

Remedy Herbal Pharmacy

Sudz Laundry

Suska

White Tiger

Photo montage composed of images from The Grady Journal.

Do Loyal, Passionate City Residents Spur Growth?

What qualities in a city inspire the loyalty and passion of residents?

According to a study conducted by Gallup and funded by the Knight Foundation, the top three factors that lead to strong attachment to a city are its physical beauty, the opportunities it offers for socializing and its openness to a variety of different kinds of people.

We should care about this because, according to the study—entitled The Soul of the Community—cities with the highest proportion of attached residents experienced stronger economic growth than cities where residents reported weaker attachment.

Now, the direction of this effect is hard to pin down. Is it attachment that’s contributing to the growth, or growth that’s making the attachment possible? Or both?

The study authors don’t make a strong claim one way or the other, though they clearly suspect that attachment does help push economic growth. To show the plausibility of this, they point out other studies that show that boosting the emotional connection of employees does in fact lead to improved financial performance of the companies where they work.

If the loyalty and passion of residents really does help spur a city’s economic growth, then advocates of local economic development might want to change their focus.

So, instead of asking existing residents to spend tax money to attract outsiders—say, with job or development tax credits or financing the expansion of conference centers—these growth advocates might want to start pushing for improvements that make existing residents happy.  Such improvements might include neighborhood pocket parks, more sidewalks, a permanent public farmer’s market, property tax relief for low-income folks, better designed streets, more public swimming pools. Things like that.

The suggestion isn’t that trying to attract outsiders is bad, but that rather that the best way to spur economic growth—including getting outsiders to open their wallets here or move jobs or businesses here—may be to make improvements that please the people who already live in town.

Maybe good places to live in grow because they invest in what makes them good places to live?

DIY Membership Club Concept Tested in Athens, Ga.

[Here’s a news story I’d like to read one day…]

By Dan Lorentz

ATHENS, GA.  (PDN*) — You’ve heard of fitness clubs. Well, soon there may be commercial do-it-yourself clubs, too. If the concept takes off here, DIY clubs—where you can buy a membership and get access to tools, workspace, even personalized training—might one day become as ubiquitous as fitness clubs.

DIY Factory, Inc., a locally based company, today announced plans to open a do-it-yourself club next summer in a warehouse space at 149 Oneta St.

Imagine: buzzing activity

“The place will be buzzing with activity when you come in,” says company president Tracy Rowe squinting and smiling as she imagines the future and steps onto the dirt that will eventually be covered with the concrete floor of the club’s main workshop area.

 “There’ll be someone over there using one of the table saws to cut boards for a dining table,” Rowe continues, excitedly. 

“In the kitchen area, a family will be busy canning a winter’s supply of summer vegetables. Over here, somebody will be learning how to ‘paint’ a picture using a computer. Another person will be stopping in to pick-up a rototiller. Members will be working at their reserved workbenches. Project assistants will be walking around, answering questions, helping out with this or that.”

Membership benefits

Rowe says DIY Factory, Inc. hopes to have 800 members—each paying somewhere around $40 a month—already signed-up for the club’s grand-opening, tentatively scheduled for early June 2010.

And what exactly will that membership fee buy? Rowe says as a club member you will be able to:

Borrow tools from the extensive tool library. Tools for electrical work. For plumbing, sewing, masonry, carpentry. For yard work and gardening. For soldering and welding Kitchen equipment. Ladders. Computers, software. And more.

Get your own workspace. This might be a workbench in the open work area. Or, if you pay a little extra, you can reserve a private workshop.

Find out where to find supplies. Need a bunch of old sci-fi paperbacks for a mosaic project? Lots of faded blue jeans for a quilt? Ask the club’s inventory scouts where to go to find what you need. They take note of what’s available at the region’s re-sale shops, antique stores, flea markets—including places like Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store—and keep tabs on what’s available at Lowes, Home Depot, Hobby Lobby and more.

Store your stuff.  Because some projects take longer than a day, you get storage space for the materials and tools you’re using.

Receive personalized assistance. Never used a drill press before? What’s the difference between a jpeg file and a tiff file? No worries! One of the club’s helpers will answer your question or show you how to do something. Just raise your hand or go to the big help desk in the middle of the club.

Enroll in skill and project workshops.  Want to learn a particular skill—maybe pottery or Adobe photoshop or quilting or building a root cellar? Enroll in one of dozens of hands-on classes taught by club helpers or other craftsmen and women from the community.

Reserve refrigeration, freezer and root cellar storage.  Lots of people want to ‘put up’—that is, can, dry, freeze or otherwise store—their own food, much of which comes from a garden or is bought in bulk at a farmer’s market. But not everybody can afford the cost of, or spare the room for, an extra frig or freezer. Solution? Use the club’s cold storage facilities. Or reserve some root cellar space.

Get help in fundraising.  Fundraising? Because sometimes people will have a big project—say, building a community garden with raised beds and a drip irrigation system—and need extra cash to finance the project. The club will help advertise your need with other club members, through neighborhood listserves, and with a project description and Paypal account on the club’s Web site

Community talent, community pay-back

“The community’s own talent pool will be key to the success of the club,” Rowe says. “DIY Factory will recruit the best local talent to help our membership.” According to preliminary plans, the company plans to hire about 25 handy people to work full-time as helpers or inventory scouts, and to contract with 75 more to work on a part-time or an as-needed basis.

Rowe also said the company will collaborate with local non-profit agencies and other donors to create scholarship programs to cover membership fees for low-income people. “We want to make sure everyone in Athens who can benefit from the club and who wants to join can afford to do so,” Rowe says.

Is there demand for this?

“Will people pay to join a DIY club? Rowe muses. “That’s a good question, and it’s why we’re testing this concept in an artsy, progressive, college town. If it won’t work here, it’s not likely to work in many other places.” But Rowe is optimistic both about the likelihood of success in Athens, and in the larger world.

“There are two converging trends now that make a DIY club a plausible business concept,” Rowe explains.

“For one, there’s this huge resurgent interest in crafting, in learning how to cook, how to grow your own food and in generally becoming more self-sufficient, more thrifty. And secondly, people are downsizing. Some are moving back to the city because they realize that the suburban sprawl lifestyle is unsustainable.”

“It’s here—where the DIY mentality meets the advantages (the concentration of people and skills) and limitations (less space for private workshops) of city living—that we think we’ve found our niche.”
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* This post is a work of fiction. PDN is the acronym for Pipe Dream News, a fake news service that syndicates (actually, pretends to syndicate) fictional news accounts of people, places, things and happenings that do not exist but would be cool if they did.

Green Thrift Grocery to Open in Athens

By Dan Lorentz

[Here’s a news story I’d like to read one day…]

ATHENS, GA.  (PDN*) — Green Thrift Grocers, Inc., a national franchise specializing in neighborhood grocery stores featuring locally grown produce at discount prices, today announced plans to open a small-format store here.  Company officials said they had acquired a site for a 10,000 square foot store in Boulevard, a largely residential neighborhood just northwest of downtown.

Future site of Green Thrift Grocery

Boosting walkability is part of mission

Green Thrift started in Philadelphia, Pa. in 1999 as a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing fresh, affordable produce into low-income urban neighborhoods not being served by larger grocery stores.

Since then, the mission has broadened—and so has the customer-base.

“We quickly realized that grocery stores don’t just help people get access to food,” explained Darrell Evans, Green Thrift’s founder and chief executive officer. “They can also spark economic activity, perk up property values, and create a more walkable, healthier neighborhood.”

Green Thrift still serves low-income neighborhoods with limited access to fresh foods. But now the organization—which has become a very profitable, for-profit corporation—seeks out what it calls “tipping point” neighborhoods to locate in.

In Green Thrift’s corporate parlance, “tipping point” neighborhoods are compact, well populated mixed income neighborhoods with a strong identity. Typically, they are also already fairly walkable, but require a full-service grocery store to make it possible for residents to take care of most of their daily needs without a car or other transportation.

Once such a neighborhood is identified, Green Thrift works with neighborhood residents, local investors and local farmers to gauge the interest in and the financial feasibility of opening a grocery franchise there. If local interest from residents, investors and farmers is sufficient, Green Thrift will move forward with the project.

“Low-income folks love what our stores bring into the neighborhood, but so do plenty of middle and upper income folks,” Evans said. “And more and more of them are looking for walkable neighborhoods to live in. They also don’t mind the lower prices for locally grown food.”

Neither a Kroger’s nor a hippy co-op

Fresh, locally grown foods sold in season at low prices—that’s the message Green Thrift highlights in its advertising. But customers can also pick up a gallon of non-organic milk or bleach because the stores also offer much of what conventional grocery stores stock, including cheese and deli meats, dry groceries like pasta, spices, sugar bread and other baked goods, wine and beer, frozen foods, cleaning detergents and paper products.

To keep costs down, Green Thrift avoids fancy displays and like other grocery franchises, uses its buying power to leverage lower prices.

The store encourages walking by allowing customers to roll their grocery carts home and have them retrieved by the store. The carts have air-inflated tires and a simple suspension system so they are easy to push and steer in the store’s aisles and on sidewalks and streets.

On average, Green Thrift grocery stores are about 10,000 square feet. Many conventional supermarkets are at least 30,000 feet. More intimate feeling, the small-format Green Thrift stores often evokes memories among older customers of neighborhood groceries from the 1940s and 1950s.

Residents welcoming, says neighborhood leader

“For the most part, people living in the neighborhood are really excited about the Green Thrift store,” said Elliot Mattison, president of the Boulevard Neighborhood Coalition, a group representing more than 250 neighborhood residents.

Daily Groceries Co-op, located near the Boulevard neighborhood, already provides residents with access to fresh, local produce. But because the store is not a full-service grocery and is located just outside of the neighborhoods boundaries on the south side of the very busy multi-lane Prince Av., Mattison said the new Green Thrift store “will do more to really help make Boulevard a truly walkable neighborhood.”

According to Mattison, the location of the store, on the southeastern corner of the intersection of Dubose Av. and Chase St., has some residents concerned about increased traffic on the already busy Chase St. Green Thrift officials downplayed the concerns and pointed out that their stores boost foot-traffic much more than car-traffic. At present, the site is used as a parking lot for medical offices located across the street. A parking garage will be built nearby to accommodate for the lost parking spaces.
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* This post is a work of fiction. PDN is the acronym for Pipe Dream News, a fake news service that syndicates (actually, pretends to syndicate) fictional news accounts of people, places, things and happenings that do not exist but would be cool if they did.

The Food Trust’s Super Market campaign inspired parts of this post.