NEIGHBORHOOD REVITALIZATION PROGRESS REPORT
City of Jamestown, NY
how does aN ORGANIZATION know if its revitalization EFFORTS ARE MAKing A DIFFERENCE?
SUMMARY
Seven years after completing a neighborhood revitalization plan for this city of 30,000 in southwestern New York, czb was invited back by the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation (JRC) to measure the latest conditions and market trends, to assess the impacts of steps taken to date by community partners, and to recommend adjustments to ongoing implementation efforts.
A complete housing market analysis revealed that areas where interventions had been occurring performed better than similar blocks without interventions. To boost the pace and magnitude of impact, czb recommended that resources be concentrated as much as possible, resulting in the selection of the Allen Park neighborhood for a multi-year intervention that has assisted over 90 property owners with home and community improvement projects to build confidence and teamwork.
Focusing Scarce Resources for Impact
Initial efforts in Jamestown focused interventions on relatively stable blocks where groups of property owners had signaled a willingness to reinvest. While such areas were faring better than similar blocks where interventions were not occurring, resources had become ever more constrained—thus requiring a tighter level of focus to have any chance of a sustainable impact.
czb’s analysis and its facilitation of strategy selection gave the JRC the knowledge it needed to make informed trade-offs and to commit to a patient course of work—with an eye on specific outcomes—in its chosen neighborhood.
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