Revitalization begins when people move in

By JUDY STARK

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 5, 2000

NEW ORLEANS -- What does it take to revitalize a blighted city neighborhood?

Try that mantra of the digital generation: "24/7/365."

That's shorthand for people living in the neighborhood, around the clock, every day of the year.

"A really healthy town has to be lived in," says Camille J. Strachan, a New Orleans lawyer and board member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation who has been involved in inner-city revitalization since the early 1970s.

Strachan, 56, grew up on a ranch in eastern Polk County "10 miles east of Fort Meade," she says, "fourth generation, a real Cracker." She spoke recently at the annual convention of the National Association of Real Estate Editors in New Orleans.

The city has a new initiative, "New Orleans 24/7," designed to promote residence in city neighborhoods. (Visit its Web site at http://www.neworleans247.org.) As more residential development is planned for downtown St. Petersburg, as apartments rise in Tampa's Ybor City, and as Clearwater ponders what to do next after voters recently rejected an aggressive plan for downtown revitalization, Strachan's thoughts, at the convention and in a telephone interview, offer suggestions and cautions for residents of the Tampa Bay area.

She cited Little Rock, Ark., as a city that suffers from night flight. "Thirty thousand people work downtown but do not spend the night in town. They flee to the suburbs. If even half, or a quarter, lived downtown," she said, their presence would have these effects:

Crime reduction. "People presence is the greatest crime deterrent on the face of the earth."

Fewer auto accidents. "You won't have an accident if you're walking to the theater, and less auto traffic reduces pressure on the streets."

Less sprawl. "It reduces pressure on the farmland around the town."

Decreased road rage. "You don't get too much pedestrian rage," she said in a phone interview from her office in New Orleans. "Road rage seems to be engendered when you've got two anonymous boxes going down the road. They don't know each other. They don't make eye contact. They make gesture contact! If you know your neighborhood and you interact with people day in and day out," it promotes a live-and-let-live attitude. You quickly discover who's offbeat but harmless. "It's a humanizing thing."

Planners often lament that they can't attract families into city neighborhoods when the schools leave a lot to be desired. Strachan's response: Then focus on attracting residents who don't have children and therefore are less immediately concerned about the quality of the schools: retirees, empty-nesters, gays and lesbians, cybercommuters, people who have disposable income to spend in and on the neighborhood.

"Get people living here, people who will register to vote, people who will spend money on utilities and phones and cable TV," she said. That's the way to turn a neighborhood into a political and economic engine.

Strachan said she's often amazed that as soon as she starts to talk about revitalizing a blighted neighborhood, bureaucrats instantly think this means providing housing for those with limited incomes. "Urban blight is not the same as urban poor," she said. "Income restrictions won't cut it. You need people of all income levels. The city is for everybody. The shortest possible line is, it's impossible for the poor to take care of the poor. You've got to have economic integration."

To those who suggest that gentrification means the wired and wealthy driving out poor people, she said: "That may be a problem somewhere, but we haven't run across it. There are plenty of empty units in the places with problems we have here in New Orleans. You'd have to have a massive migration before you displace, suck up or absorb all the unused space."

There's no magic bullet to revitalization, Strachan said. "One of the fallacies is that it's somebody else's responsibility. Everybody thought: "Well, if they just did street improvement -- and that's the government's responsibility -- benches, trees, fix the sidewalk, that would solve the problem.' No one thing in a vacuum works.

"Then there's the thought, "We've got to sacrifice these older buildings to a new big-box development that's going to provide employment.' That's a fallacy. The net employment gain is minimal, and you've destroyed the houses of people who would ordinarily be able to shop there. So economic development in a vacuum doesn't work.

"By saving buildings, you enhance the opportunities for everybody," she said. "When people get displaced is when a big-box superstore comes in" and demolishes two square blocks of houses, "or when they build a church or an auditorium or a convention center, and the first thing they do is knock down everything around it to make way for parking. Talk about displacement!"

In New Rochelle, N.Y., she said, the city is using the power of eminent domain to take homes and tear them down to make way for a "gazillion-square-foot" Ikea furniture store, "all in the name of economic redevelopment."

The National Trust says the way a neighborhood can be rehabilitated is "to have people living in it," Strachan said, and to have businesses that attract both those residents and tourists. "Winter Park is a shining example," she said. Another example: the Hyde Park section of Tampa.

"I am absolutely not opposed to new construction," Strachan said. "I am heavily supportive of a 700-unit market-rate apartment development in New Orleans that is on vacant land. The important thing is getting people to live back in the city. I don't care whether they come as tenants, as homeowners, I don't care if you restore an old building or build new infill. But when you knock down buildings, you knock the heart out of an area."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.