czb goes into winter in a month but not hibernation.
We start work in Norfolk, Virginia this coming January on a year long revitalization effort in the Park Place neighborhoods. Central to our effort in Norfolk will be our effort to upload the learnings from our 2007 and 2008 work with the Eagle Rock School from Estes Park, CO; in this effort we’ll be co-creating a revitalization strategy with residents, pushing participatory planning to the edge. Norfolk has worked for years with the super talented UDA folks, and so we at czb feel especially fortunate to be able to be part of the planning tradition they’ve led.
We continue our work in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. In partnership with Boulder-based Winston Associates, czb is helping frame the housing issues in Gonzales and Prairieville and Sorrento and Donaldsonville. This effort, part of a broader comprehensive planning process that’s married to the excellent work done by CPEX is informing a range of land use, transportation, and other decisions that are establishing the contours of what kind of a place South Louisiana will be in 30 years. Very exciting.
Near Lake Chautauqua, we are at the midway point of a citywide neighborhood revitalization effort in the exquisite small city of Jamestown. We follow wonderful urban design groundwork laid by Goody Clancy, and will be waist deep in Lake Effect snow pretty soon. Our chief partners in this effort – the Gebbie Foundation and the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation – have shown extraordinary leadership moving Jamestown forward from its soft market challenges.
In upstate NY in the Finger Lakes region, we’re working closely this winter with the City of Geneva, installing a Healthy Neighborhoods effort under the direction of the city’s new Office of Neighborhood Initiatives. This is a second phase of work following our analysis of the city and county housing markets and our proposed set of neighborhood revitalization strategies.
czb is putting the finishing touches on a revitalization strategy for the Pittsburgh community of SW Atlanta. SW Atlanta was in many ways ground zero of predatory lending practices. Where foreclosure rates are higher in California’s Central Valley and up into Stockton, and in Nevada, Arizona, and Florida, the predation in SW Atlanta has been staggering. czb is proud to be working for the Annie E. Casey Foundation on this worthy and complex undertaking.
