Photos from Church Hill North Better Block

Can I be the contrarian on this?

My wife and I walked up to the event around Noon or so today. Wanted to go yesterday, but was stuck at work until 10PM. It was everything I feared it would be and nothing that I hoped it would be.

I didn’t see a lot of “possibilities” for the block shown. Instead, I saw a street festival/block party combined with some vendors. I did not notice many vacant storefronts in use—although a few were. I did see a cool use of space that was already being converted to a coffee shop (for which we saw no coffee available nor anyone to buy it from) and I saw some folks that might not otherwise come to that part of the City.

Worst of all, I thought it seemed sparsely attended when I was there. If you don’t read CHPN or attend meetings like Councilwoman Newbille’s district meetings, I am not sure how anyone heard about it. I didn’t read or hear about it anywhere else.

I am glad that some of the storefronts got some cosmetic touches and that a small number of businessowners may have seen some new customers. But overall this fell flat for me.

Let’s be honest. This isn’t going to bring any permanent change to this block. I didn’t see a lot of people coming up there looking to see what the investment opportunities were. I saw a lot of people coming to eat street food and wander around for a few minutes.

What will bring permanent change are things like Deanna Lewis’ investment to revitalize a block of O Street, Bon Secours’ grants to neighborhood small businesses and the like. That there was no presence I saw from the City or the Commonwealth to distribute information about how to build a small business there or economic development opportunities was a huge oversight if the purpose of the event was for people to see the potential of the block and to create interest in possibly investing there.

It was a nice event, but I just don’t see how it makes any lasting impact, the way so many other endeavors and initiatives like those I mentioned above will. To me, this was just some bread and circus to look like something meaningful was happening in an area that needs something meaningful to happen.

As one of the lead organizers of the Church Hill North Better Block project, I would like to take the opportunity to briefly respond to BAF’s criticisms of the event. I appreciate the comments, but I’d like to clear up some of the misconceptions expressed above.

First of all, the event did take on more of a festival feel than was intended, but sometimes live music and food trucks is what brings people out. Everyone enjoyed the music and with help from DaVita and Bon Secours, we were able to make sure all of the food trucks offered full meals more in line with the price-point of the neighborhood – $3 or less.

We also had more interest than we anticipated from local vendors and did not want to turn anyone away, so they took up shop on closed side streets. We had access to four of the half-dozen or so vacant storefronts in the two block area, which was all we could gain access to in a short amount of time. In those storefronts, several “pop-up” businesses had a very successful run at selling their wares, some of whom were trying this for the first time ever in an actual storefront. But the purpose was not just to showcase the businesses themselves, but also the properties in hopes of finding a new investor to rent or purchase the property. I thought that went off really well. Miracles Coffee Shop in particular was more focused on showcasing their amazing courtyard than selling coffee, which is just fine. People really enjoyed the space, including a bunch of local artists who were donating their work to help lively up the building.

As far as attendance goes, there was a steady stream of people across the two blocks for six hours, which is what we had hoped. We weren’t trying to attract every single person from surrounding neighborhoods, as this was not a street fair like the Bacon Festival. It was meant as a demonstration to show the opportunities of the corridor, particularly bike lanes, new crosswalks, economic development, streetscaping, public art and so on. All of the local businesses were well informed and we spent months reaching out to the surrounding community, especially neighborhood associations, businesses, and churches. Perhaps next time we will do a mailer to every residence as well.

Concerning what you saw while you were there, BAF, we are not responsible for what you did and didn’t see. But as someone who was there the whole time, and spent several weeks on site painting buildings, helping businesses repair broken windows, getting vacant building owners get their establishments up to code, cleaning up trash, pulling weeds out of the sidewalk, and distributing grant funding to business owners to help them get all of this great work done, I think you may have overlooked what actually happened and what was intended to happen. We did bring about permanent change. Capital One, Bon Secours, the Richmond Area REALTORS, DaVita, the Sports Backers, Councilmember Newbille, and many other people and organizations invested significant time and resources to make sure there were permanent changes made, not just duct tape bike lanes and crosswalks on the streets. We left the neighborhood better off than it was before we started this inclusive, community-oriented process. And what will happen because of this effort in the next few months does indeed remain to be seen. LISC was on site distributing SEED grant info to all of the pop-up shops and we will follow up with them to help them get funding. And there were several investors and property management firms there on Saturday, checking out the vacant buildings and speaking with the property owners about possibilities.

The change you want to see will not happen overnight, and if you are at all familiar with the Better Block model, you know that this whole project is designed to be temporary in nature. But projects like this have time and time again brought about additional permanent change in the months following the events, and there will be a recommendations report produced by Team Better Block that will outline what needs to come next. But for now, I think everyone who attended and read about it in the widespead media coverage will agree that the community did a great job highlighting the potential that N 25th Street has to offer. I’m sorry you didn’t see it that way.

Well said, Max. I’ll second Max’s comment that investors were there, were impressed, and that some great things are coming.

I really enjoyed Better Block and am hearing rumblings of real and permanent improvement to that area. I am more hopeful this Monday than last Monday for the neighborhood’s future.

I worked as a community volunteer during the “build days” for Better Block. Sports Backers staff really worked hard on site as did the employees of Capital One.

But, everything I read about this project kept coming back to how “the community builds the block”. Surprisingly, local volunteers/actual residents from from Church Hill/East End, were few and far between during the build days.

To be clear, the locals who did show up worked their butts off.

But, there were more folks from outside the East End doing the work that was supposed to be done by us. It seemed false to me, like WestEnd missionaries on paid leave from their desk jobs spending a few hours painting a run-down storefront.

BonSecours does a lot of good things for the East End. The Seed Grants are an example of that. That program works because local people use those grants to help build their business. And then, they continue to work their butts off in the community.

I forgive BonSecours for any errors in judgement on this effort. They are human. I think they simply misjudged the East End’s interest in this type of event–or–they flubbed up on the timing and how they presented this to the community.

Leading up to the BB weekend, I kept running in to Church Hill/EE folks (residents and leaders of existing groups and organizations,) who were perplexed by how this event came about.

It might have been more successful (in terms of community involvement,) had Bon Secours & Sports Backers come beforehand to the array of non-profits and civic groups already working in the community and asked them when/where/why in advance.

What I learned from all of this is that we’re all human, and sometimes, even big beneficent organizations make mistakes.

The best organizations choose to learn from their missteps and move on.

Residents Come Together to Create a Better Block in Richmond’s Church Hill
http://ideastations.org/radio/residents-come-together-create-better-block-richmonds-church-hill