On the Park Bench - Bring Back Main Street with Small-Scale Manufacturing

hi i'm just going to give it a couple of seconds but wait until people join here and then we'll get started hi i'm margaret o'neill i'm the director of programs at cnu and i want to welcome you all to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations from thought leaders in urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time the webinar series is intended to be a weekly platform for cnu members to engage and debate and discuss and collaborate on pressing issues um that we're all facing right now if you'd like to hear us from something here from someone specific or talk about something in a future on the park bench please let me know we'll try to line it up today's conversation is bring back main street with small-scale manufacturing the who the why and the how we'd love that you could share your thoughts and on the page here there's a little bit of a feedback um survey available if you guys want to do that in the future um and then here i am to introduce today's speaker amana prus is um the founder and ceo of recast city and author of upcoming book recast your city publishing um in the next year or so she's also the co-author of discovering your maker economy and need in place small-scale manufacturing and neighborhood revitalization the recap city she partners with local leaders to bring back bring main streets back to life and bring businesses back to downtown and build an inclusive and resilient economy she's passionate about making great spaces um sees small-scale products and businesses are missing a missing piece in today's mixed-use development commercial property repositioning and local economic development strategy her passion for great places grew out of her experience working in big and small cities all over the country when she led the technical assistance program at the uscpa smart growth program and as well as her experience as the vice president and chief of staff at smartworth america i'm going to hand it off to alana and let her wow you with her presentation thank you so much and i'm really excited to be here today and to have so many great participants on the list a lot of great uh familiar names and friends and colleagues of your uh flying by so i'm really excited to join the conversation thank you to the congress for the new urbanism for for hosting me today i'm going to share my screen and then we can start this whole conversation and i do talk about it as a conversation because um it's the only way we make change in our community is by conversations with more people with people we haven't spoken to before um and and really having those and conversations in an open way is essential to that outcome so um we're going to talk about how do we bring main street back to life with small-scale manufacturing but this is obviously the new urbanist version um and what i want to leave you with today and is really five specific things that you can do that we can all do as new urbanists to really um take on a community in a new way and in a different way that's really essential at this point in our work so if i can move my slides and help so um first of all welcome thank you for being here today i'm really excited as i said to be on the park bench with you um and have a chance to chat with you i'm going to give a presentation for the first portion of this but then we're going to really open it up to a question so please remember that you can submit questions at any point along the way um under the q a button and um we'll take them all at the end and go through them as much as possible i know you guys know all about what it means to make great places and that's that is the basis of cnu and its members um but i i i always think about what it means to have the personality of places right we we know this inherently that that each place has a unique personality and that they thrive based on that unique personality um but also places have lost that um and lost that in the past and really struggled and that when we think about or when i think about new urbanism i think about both the existing places that we can bring back to life as well as the new places that we can create on top of that we've had this um reality this this emergency this this really this awful a series of events this year um the pandemic of cobia 19 and it's impacted people's lives um we've lost at this point almost 200 000 lives of people in our communities we've lost um thousands and thousands of businesses not only because we were closed for many days permanently or consistently in a bunch of spaces but also because of the partial openings and how difficult that's been so we're starting in a really tough place in terms of the economy and what i want to do first is talk a little bit about the economic side of all of this the economic reality that we're operating in to lay that out as a baseline of what we understand and then really position our work in terms of community development in light of that right so we know our reality of coven 19 is that most small businesses closed for a really long time many of them will not survive this some estimates are that 20 to 30 percent of small businesses are going to close permanently um through this pandemic we also know that millions and millions of people filed for unemployment and that many people are still not back to work even though those bet the federal benefits have expired many people are facing evictions many people only have part-time work where they had full-time work before um and so that that is a huge impact on people their livelihood their family and the economy overall as well before covet hit we were already in this really weird time in terms of our economy with some places working really well and some places really struggling um so we already had a before covid we had 80 percent of all counties already seeing a decline in working age adult population so we already had that brain drain that loss of of community leadership going on in a lot of places we also are witnessing the greatest income inequality that our country has ever seen since we started tracking it and that was before covid the greatest income inequality we've ever had and we put on top of that some of the things that we know i know you guys know this just sort of inherently right that vacant buildings on a block reduce the value of nearby properties by 20 or more so when we think about the loss of that adult population the loss of businesses that income inequality and vacancies on top of that we start creating this negative feedback loop right that really can pull down communities pull down job security and pull down the places that we know and love so i come at this really recommending that we need a different model we need a different model for how we invest in places how we invest on our economy and by pursuing a different model we can build strong inclusive main streets and really back um if you're in a hot market it's really about how are we claiming those places for the people who live there and addressing issues of displacement and if we're in cold markets it's really about how are we building up that economy in that place from scratch for those of you who don't know me um as the wonderful introduction said my name is ilana pruss and i've been in the smart growth world for a really long time it really i would say started with um it's my mother's fault always is um the picture on the left you'll see is a it's amazing electric blue dress that my mother uh stitched for me she sewed for me for high school um and she always taught me that i could use the drill hang the blinds fix the thing and that tools were my friend and um on the right you can see a tedx talk i gave now a number of years ago called the economic power of great places so great places um has always been a part of my work and always been a part of what i believe in and that everybody deserves to have a great place and to live in a great place my other great project is these two crazy teens um who also know how to use drills and and and make things um but are always an entertaining part of my my project world um so um as the introduction said i you know i was at the smart growth office at epa and then at smart growth america and left the smart growth america six years ago to start recast city and with recast city i took everything that i learned from smart growth and all the amazing people in in the field in the broader field and really packed it into this question of how do we create places where businesses can thrive that include more people in wealth building opportunity and i found that small scale manufacturing a business that creates some kind of tangible good can fit into these storefronts into vacant storefronts um and really bring an inclusive community of business owners out to the forefront in our communities and that's what i've been doing for the last six years is working with local governments with real estate developers with non-profits improvement districts to really bring small-scale manufacturing businesses into the projects into the spaces and into our economic development strategy it usually has to do with sitting down with people around the table or on the park bench but obviously these days with covid it's all over zoom or other platforms but i do believe that all of the work really comes down to how are we bringing people together to create these great places so let me get back to the economic piece that we were talking about places i believe are stuck in a default economic model and what we're going to talk about is really how do we ditch that default model what is that default model how do we invest in a better way and then those five steps that i was talking about in the in the beginning because i do believe that cnu members and new urbanists can really lead the way in a lot of these solutions so i'm just going to go briefly over this default model there are a lot of places that we're dealing with where economic development the economic development model is really left over from the 80s or the 70s the people and places are getting left behind in a number of different ways and that real estate is being built as a as a very template model but not in a good way in a way that really doesn't represent what's unique or interesting about that place right we're doing a lot of cookie cutter even if we're doing it in urban areas so i'm going to just run through that really briefly our economic development strategy really is stuck in the 80s i love the 80s hair bands but it's not where i want my economic model to be we have a lot of local economic leaders really chasing this big business as this one solution for all the economic woes as opposed to looking at sort of different kinds of detailed solutions we also have a lot of communities that are trading away their future with recruitment dollars spending millions of dollars on recruiting big businesses instead of investing in the people or the place that's there now a lot of these incentives are only for high income jobs in other places they're actually spending a lot of money on low-income jobs where people still have to apply for food stamps even though it was a recruited job so the cost of the community is multiple times what the original investment might have been we know that people and places are being left behind right we saw this with the hollowing out of a lot of communities um in the 70s and 80s we had this because a lot of our production means production moved overseas but we haven't in a lot of places figured out how we're reinvesting in those places and in fact where investment is happening it's very concentrated most of the venture capital funding is still going to silicon valley um but it really focuses on five major areas um in terms of investment we also know that with opportunity zones the opportunity zones are all over the country but the vast majority of the money going into the the projects is still in the major cities it's not benefiting the cities the smaller cities and towns as much as the bigger cities um and it's certainly not helping address any issues of equity or inclusion in the projects in the vast majority of places so it's creating more of a separation as opposed to addressing it and then we have an enormous racial wealth gap in our country and i think it is important for us to acknowledge this and look at how we start solving each of these problems with every one of the solutions that we bring into a community um we know that the racial wealth gap in fact has barely narrowed in the last 50 years it's gone from seven to six and a half which is just not and not a solution and that it's not because just because of historic injustices it's because of unequal unequal incomes now and so creating space and opportunity for people to build family wealth and for to do that through business ownership becomes an essential part of the work that i believe we need to do within the communities and then we also have this crazy thing where a lot of people are building vanilla mixed use just like they built vanilla suburban sprawl we have the same chain stores we have the same crossfit and that's on top of the really expensive spread of the peanut butter i call them expensive peanut butter the retail that's been spread all over the country the malls that are hollowing out the requirement for mixed use to always have ground floor retail throughout all of downtown versus really thinking in detail about what should have retail ground floor what should be mixed use adjacent versus mixed-use vertical and then we have really unpredictable approval processes and a lot of community that makes the cost of construction go up that means that it takes longer to get things approved and obviously that is part of that cost of development so um having that unpredictable nature of the approval process really makes all of this harder as well so i believe we need to do better and i do believe that it will take every one of us to get there and i think that um there are a lot of things that we can do and and there's an amazing secret sauce that is obviously not a secret sauce to any cnu member because this is really the basis of what you think about already um but that place is key to economic strength investing in a place is key to creating that energy what is unique about that place is also key to its economic longevity how does it hold that value and then social connections how people connect and how business owners connect becomes key to economic resilience and there's actually a lot of research behind economic resilience and disaster recovery that shows that businesses that have strong connections personal connections to other business owners are twice as likely to recover from that disaster than people who do not have strong connections so um really baking these solutions into the way we create places and the way we invest in places becomes part of the essential piece and as i said new urbanism and and to me small-scale manufacturing which we're about to get to help us get to all these pieces but we need to do it with intention and purpose and i say this specifically because there are a lot of people being left out of these processes and left out of the decision-making process left out of the design process and i know that there's a lot of good will about creating outreach programs that are inclusive but i think that there is still a lot of people getting left out and that we have to connect to leaders in all different parts of our community very purposefully to make sure that we're bringing people in and do it sometimes in very different ways so the new path forward it's really a new path we have to forge to go forward means four different things to me and this is the basis of my work at recast city we need to invest in people who live there the people who are there now not just the people who we want to attract to a place we invested we need to invest in the place with those people what do they need in the place how do we support them in that place we need to create a new structure to support and scale and invest in that and that's both from a real estate side and real estate models as well as from an economic development side and we need to think long term but we can act now and there are a ton of short-term actions we can take to start showing people that the place is different that the actions are going to be different so how does small-scale manufacturing fit into all of this this is really a big part of what what i talk about it's this missing piece that is really a part of the solution in a lot of places small-scale manufacturing as i said is a business that creates some kind of tangible good that can be replicated or packaged my shorthand is hot sauce handbags and hardware so it's material agnostic um some of them are are part of a supply chain right they might be making a widget for somebody else but a lot of them are consumer facing so when we go to before govid when we went to vendors and and festivals we would see all of these vendors who made things in our community right and bringing these vendors together gave us a reason to gather and we know from studies from the urban land institute from the national association of realtors that people are craving those places to gather and they will be again safely after we come out of this crisis small-scale manufacturing businesses and building a community of them also gives us a new opportunity to build an inclusive business community we know that the representation the the diversity of the representation of business community leaders is in fact not that diverse in the vast majority of communities but if we start from scratch and say let's build a cohort of leaders in small-scale manufacturing then we can start from scratch there's nobody that has a vested interest in small-scale manufacturing in very few places is that the case and so we really purposely can build from the beginning a community of business owners that represents the demographic diversity of our community so we understand their needs and we can promote them and create space for them these businesses also are phenomenal at filling storefronts um this is a woman who as you can see makes soaps and just off to her left is this big cauldron that she uses to make her soaps pour them into a mold so she can do her production and her retail all in the same space that's efficient for her as a business owner because she's not paying for extra staff it's really cool as an experience to be able to see things happening in that space um and it's production and retail in this tour front so it's really energizing this this area with the the stores as well these businesses can help increase property value too we talked about the vacant properties before when they go into a block a main street uh you know an either an existing building or new construction these businesses are really interesting right they have energy something is being made they they do connect to that experiential retail that we talked about a lot before coven and that we will get back to so this is zeke's coffee it's a coffee shop but in the back is a a coffee roaster they do their regional production out the back of this shop so again it's production it's retail it's a third place within the community where people can collect but it also means that this business has multiple revenue sources out of one space to make the business more resilient as well and it helps increase the property value on the whole block because it creates energy in this one space and lo and behold within a year of this business coming onto this block a number of other spaces were filled the other thing to note is and this is sort of something that economic development talks about all over the place is how do we attract more businesses how do we attract more entrepreneurs and the truth is is that the more that we take care of our entrepreneurs and our business owners the more word gets out so when we take care of our small-scale manufacturing business owners and we really create programming around them and really support them the word gets out i'll give you knoxville as an example knoxville has done a ton of programming out of the knoxville entrepreneur center to support their makers which are maker businesses all sorts of different kinds of businesses that make a product those businesses talk to the people they know and knoxville is really known as a strong destination for people who might be interested in moving locations and it is attracting more business owners because of the support that they're providing so all of this really to me points to pieces of a thriving main street that energy that gathering the filling of the storefronts but i think it's important for you to understand who these businesses are in a really specific way so i'm going to run through a few examples of these kinds of businesses and the kinds of spaces that they use so that you can understand that for your own projects first we'll start with from the smallest to the largest artisan businesses make your businesses pick a name stick with it these are generally one-person businesses up to about five person businesses and this is katie stack she makes amazing handbags her business is called stitch and rivet definitely worth checking her out she also has beautiful material for masks um that she makes stitch and rivet is in an 800 square foot space they started in a 400 square foot space and katie stud katie started on her own and then added employees to her business as she grew this is an artisan business that needs a small amount of space but can do that production and retail in one space that we were talking about before we then have businesses that are scaling so they might be prototyping some kind of hardware they might be doing small batch production but they might need a few thousand square feet they're generally going to have um fewer than 20 employees um the top picture is shinola at the time i i pulled this they were a much smaller business they're obviously a lot bigger today um but there are tons of small batch producers you can think about businesses in food in wood in metal and in hardware as well anybody who's producing something that they're creating small batches of they're just starting to scale and need all sorts of different kinds of support and then we have production at scale in the neighborhood this might be a bigger business it might have 50 employees but it fits into an existing building in your neighborhood and so it's really becoming an asset at a different scale this is reingeist brewing in cincinnati they bought an old brewery building in the old brewery district and they left the vast majority of their building open because they wanted it to be a gathering place for the community obviously things are a little different right now but that need to gather and that ability to gather around a product business is going to come back and it becomes an essential part of our community and and scaling good paying jobs within our community then we have maker spaces maker spaces are a really specific kind of space that's open to the community these are spaces where anybody can come and take a class about how to make a specific thing or learn how to use a specific tool or can be a member and have access to a whole set of tools it is open both to tinkerer and hobbyists as well as to small businesses um some of the larger maker spaces have sort of co-work space alongside it so a business can work from there or leave their projects there but some of them just have the workspace and it really depends from community to community maker spaces sometimes are associated with a community college or the library system in the community and sometimes they're run as independent nonprofits very few of them are successful as for profit endeavors on their own and then we have shared spaces so the most well-known uh type of these are commercial shared kitchens um these are spaces where businesses can come and pay for a number of hours a week to create their food product or they might lease a specific bay within the commercial kitchen that has that health stamp of approval what it means is that when food product businesses are scaling is they don't have to figure out how to get the capital investment to build out their own commercial space and that becomes an essential part of the answer for them we also have different kinds of shared spaces shared wood shops different verticals shared textile spaces and so that's really specifically for small business owners it's not open to um the community members it's not for tinkerers and hobbyists it's for small businesses only so what does all of this mean for a place right and how does this connect back up to what we're trying to achieve i'm going to take you through one example so um recast city we actually had a great partnership with smart growth america a couple years ago um and we worked with the loop community improvement district um in columbia missouri this is what it looks like i know really it's an exciting place but they the property owners came together to say we want it to be more we don't just want to be a high traffic area with lots of empty parking lots we want to create a place that's an asset for the community so we worked with them not only having a big community meeting on that corridor but interviewing a ton of small-scale manufacturing business owners different connectors in the community like the the leaders of the latino chamber of commerce um a diversity of business owners who produce things in the community to find out what do they need in a space what do they need in business development support um we talk to property owners we talk to economic development staff and we talk to small business development center or small business support providers within the community as well and this is all part of the method that what we do and we go when we visit the small scale manufacturing businesses when it's not coved time to really understand how their business operates both from a quantitative as well as a qualitative understanding of that using user research techniques to to really get into the meat of what what's going on what works what doesn't work and what else do they need if we're really going to support this kind of business in the community and one of the things that was really exciting to me not only was working with with carrie who was an amazing person to work with um who led the loot leads the loop was that she recognized that there was this whole economic engine right under her nose as she said that she could really just tap into as a resource for the loop and for its growth and so one of the things that they're doing this got delayed a little bit the the opening is is about to happen in the next month or so but they created a commercial shared kitchen and we help them identify where to do that on the loop based on um all of the information that we collected from the small business owners but also how to compare it with the small business support that they need in the location that they need and really create it through a set of partnerships that we helped identify so how can newer business create these kinds of places that are strong and inclusive and i i am very specific about this because i believe that we each and every one of us has a responsibility in every piece of our work to figure out how to do this um that no matter if it's a project for ourselves it's a project for a client no matter who it is um that we need to figure out how to do this and so i have five steps um and um after that i'm going to open it up to questions so feel free to start putting questions into the question uh link um but but i want to go through these um really specifically so uh first step is to start with residents and business owners that are rarely at the table um in a lot of time a lot of communities this might be the black community other indigenous or people of color who live in that community who have not been included in an effective way in the past and they might have been in a superficial way in the past and so i think it's really important for us to go out and find connectors people who have the trust of those communities and really bring those connectors into the conversation it might be a faith leader a cultural leader a civic leader somebody um who can really help us bring people together um through my work with communities i work with connectors to identify small-scale manufacturing business owners who the community or leadership doesn't know automatically so that we can build that inclusive base of business owners that represent the demographic diversity of the community second we need to fix the codes um and we can form-based codes can be a part of the solution in places that don't have form-based codes it often means going in and adding an approved amending the code to add a land use a permitted land use artisan manufacturing is a land use definition that's been adopted in a lot of downtowns and on a lot of main streets to make sure that artisan businesses can be a part of main street where they're in many cases not allowed and so going in and amending the zoning in very simple ways to have a quick fix on that becomes essential and i think this is even more so right now where we do expect a lot of vacancies in commercial space so we want to create as much flexibility that does bring that vibrancy to the storefront as much as possible wherever we go third we need to create spaces for locally owned businesses with living wage jobs i know that's a mouthful i want to take that apart a little bit when we create designs or plans with commercial space i don't know of many people that think about what kind of space a business with living wage jobs needs versus a retail or service job and what kind of structure of space that that's going to require i think we need to take that step back and figure out not only what kind of spaces they need but who they are and how do we bring those businesses into the conversation small-scale manufacturing businesses not only are an accessible accessible type of business owner a business to own no matter what your background is your education or where you come from we see it across the board in every part of our community but the jobs are paid better wages they pay 50 to 100 percent more than retailers service jobs on average and so that when we're looking at ways to help really close that wealth gap in our community this becomes an essential part of the solution but that means that we actually have to design spaces for these businesses that are affordable and fit their needs fourth we need to design inclusive public spaces for that community how are we creating the outdoor spaces that public realm that really brings people together that really makes everybody feel included we have a lot of successful main streets in our communities they in many cases do not represent the demographic diversity of that community and some people feel like they belong there and a lot of people don't feel like they belong there how do we create those spaces that make people feel included um what is the the code of the language of the colors of the design that really crosses the barriers with that might be within a community and then fifth how are we creating more opportunities for community wealth building within the fabric of a project are there ways for people to become owners in part of the building are there co-op models we want to pursue are there other ways that that businesses and residents can really build the community wealth as a part of that project because we know that um local ownership that sense of ownership of the space really becomes essential for its long-term success so i have lots more i can talk about on this um any day of the week um if you would like to to know more you're welcome to sign up for the recast city newsletter um you can come find me on linkedin that's where most of my conversations about this happen i'd love to connect with you there and you're welcome to message me on linkedin and ask me any follow-up questions there too you're always welcome to email me directly ilana at rate cass city i make myself super available you know i think that the thing to to remember in all of this is that we all are trying to create these spaces where people want to come together right the people are proud of um and where the people who own businesses are really proud of what they're creating in their business in their business and the jobs that they're creating and all of that comes together in the way we invest in places and the way we design places and and the leadership that it takes to create that is essential as well because we're all just trying to create these great places that people are proud to call home and i know that that's a common denominator across all of our work so with that i will say thank you very much for having me today and if you'd like to put questions into the q a box i'm happy to take whatever questions you have thank you so much yeah if anybody has anything they want to add to the q a um we have a couple of questions coming in but feel free to keep asking them um i loved to see pictures of some businesses very close to my home and i've been really inspired in covid times how it seems like um kind of the small producers can be more creative and more nimble sometimes in the way that they're able to continue to get their services to folks um i know we're going to have some questions kind of about how businesses and producers are kind of adapting to covid but i'm interested if you can talk a little bit about that kind of generally how you see the concept of kind of manufacturing production small scale being kind of more or less vulnerable when it comes to covid kind of restrictions um whether you've seen across the board some more kind of creative and nimble responses or whether you've seen a little bit more struggle yeah great question um so i believe that small scale manufacturers actually saved the day um the small-scale manufacturers across the country pivoted overnight to create the ppe's that we needed um for our hospitals for for us um and and for our emergency responders um the gowns the face shields the masks all these different pieces um producing with new materials and high-tech stuff um there were informal groups that organized to formal entities almost overnight and in all these different cities to be able to respond to this emergency need where we didn't have those essential needs of the ppe is um not only not available within our communities but we had no means of production because it was completely dependent on an import model for that so that part of our supply chain um as much as i don't talk about big supply chain stuff all the time that part of our supply chain um really saved us and so i think we have a an a responsibility to continue to invest in small-scale manufacturing businesses that might make all sorts of different things on a regular year but so that they can do that in times of emergency that they're a redundancy in the systems that we're creating but those businesses also can be more resilient within a pandemic within this disaster time that we're in because they have multiple sources of revenue they're not just dependent on storefront sales they can do so online sales they can do wholesale um i will say that the people who do production and textiles and clothing are probably suffering more than people who make um handbags the the different parts of the sectors are are being impacted in different ways so it's not uniform but that ability to have multiple sources of revenue coming in really make a big difference in terms of the resilience of that business that's great thank you um there's a couple of questions that have kind of come in about this concept of of the right mix and i know that you know at in urbanism we often are talking about retail mixes and kind of getting the right mix um and it seems like something sometimes with the kind of small um small-scale manufacturing um there's kind of an incremental approach to the way that a block will fill out as you mentioned with one of the coffee shops that you showed um is there a strategy for figuring out kind of the right retail mix for for a block or a street to make sure that we're kind of making the right opportunities or how do you approach that as a planner and not necessarily you know just kind of a retail person yes um it's um i don't think that there's a one-size-fits-all answer i think it has to be based on the community and the kinds of businesses that you're finding um the added challenge to that is that in many markets um small-scale manufacturers can't afford the retail lease rates right so that's layered on top of that it's it's not only the question of what kind of mix would we want ideally here um it's what's affordable and what are the price points that are within that market area um and and just like to me just like affordable housing has government intervention i actually think affordable workspace for businesses to stay in a neighborhood and retain good-paying jobs in a neighborhood um is a public good as well yeah um so it depends right i mean we already know that people are looking at restaurants and bars and retail um in terms of that ground floor and all the different kinds of retail that can be there um there are some places that are that really have looked at all different kinds of small scale manufacturers as an essential part of the answer and really creating a diversity of consumer products along that stretch so that you can see all different kinds of things right a maker district that's not artists but but producers um who are doing the production in that space um it's it's not like i can say oh you need one wood you need one jewel jewelry one it's not going to work like that it's also going to need to be responsive to who you find in your community who really wants to be a part of main street and that's part of what we do when we reach out to the business owners directly to understand you know do they want to be a part of a community of businesses do they want to be a part of a community of producers as well yeah and i think that that's interesting too just broadening your kind of definition of what retail can be to really kind of incorporate new kind of uses and businesses um so along those lines you know in terms of affordability for example and um trying to make space you know how do you kind of coax landlords um into being more flexible or are there kind of you know model ordinances for kind of making it easier for maker spaces to be incorporated into what we would consider kind of a traditional retail corridor right so a lot of times it's going to take pretty forward thinking property owners or developers and that's when i work with a community that's really who i ask about first is who who owns property who's doing development that really believes in the community and is willing to look at something new um and and we know that that's not everybody and in some cases that might only be one or two of the property owners in the community or developers in the community but finding those people and really see if they're willing to try this it's not high risk it's just different than what they've done before and in most cases it's not going to be prime retail if it's a if it's a hot market there's no way it can be prime retail but it can be you know around the corner from the prime retail or it can be 20 of the store fronts instead of all of the storefronts so that it's or it can be part of the the developer's negotiation with the with the jurisdiction it can be part of what they proffer to the jurisdiction that they'll set aside x amount of square footage to be for locally owned product businesses um and so there's a lot of different ways of getting there but but having um that affordable space becomes an essential part of it so have you ever you find that then it's mostly driven by developers property owners it's a little bit of both right i mean the other way to get at that as a jurisdiction can say and and this has definitely happened both with improvement districts as well as um community development corporations and jurisdictions they say we're going to take a property we own and we're going to do this in the property that we own right so um community development corporations have some in some communities started to pivot from just doing housing to also creating space for businesses recognizing that they want to keep good paying jobs within their community and in a lot of different places i started looking at how do we create a shared building for a whole bunch of small-scale manufacturing businesses as a way to do that and that's a really a really great model to pursue um and then in many cases need some kind of subsidy right they use new market tax credits um or they go after a federal grant of some kind to help make that that pro forma work because it is a lower lease rate um but it's serving a public good it's achieving a specific goal for the community that's awesome thank you um there's a couple of questions about kind of um finding entrepreneurs or letting folks know that you have maker space available or interested in doing that do you have kind of best practices for those instances absolutely and i'm happy to share that if anybody wants to reach out to me directly i have a whole bunch of information on that um i think i have a whole blog on that somewhere on my website too um there's a bunch of things to look at i look at vendors uh for past public events um festivals and fairs and there are a lot of people who start there because it's a low risk way to test out not only your marketing but also what products really sell and a lot of those businesses a handful of them do end up becoming both full-time businesses and businesses that scale um the other thing to do is to look at to talk to your small business development center or your chamber ask them who do they know who has a product business is there an economic development authority in your area do they work with small businesses it's really what i call retail outreach not retail stores but like one by one by one outreach is how we work with communities to find them um and then to reach out to different kind of connectors that i talked about before faith leaders community leaders and ask them to help spread the word and help find people um the project that we did in columbia missouri the first thing they did was launch a new website called como makes and every time they talked about the work is they drove people to that website to say if you make anything you know sign up here we want to know who you are right people want to know that they're wanted and almost uniformly small-scale manufacturers do not know that anybody wants them to be there so the more that you tell people what it is you're looking for and and who you want the more you will find them yeah that's great thank you um there are some questions um i just was looking at one um about kind of uh resources for investment um so you're talking about kind of redirecting resources from the old model to the new model kind of obviously the large scale almost to the small scale what exactly are you talking about resource wise and where can kind of folks look for more resources for that in their communities absolutely so we impact the price of space and the and the invest the capital investment in businesses in a million different ways in in all in our economic development decision making and in our planning decision making um the systemic racism that is in our country is in fact baked into almost every one of those decisions um and really peeling it back and saying how are we redirecting how money gets spent out of our economic development authority does the economic development authority only invest in businesses that have 100 jobs or more is there a way to take a bunch of that money and say okay we're going to invest in small businesses um the local cdfi do you have a cdfi is there one in the region that you can bring in that can create that can provide loans to businesses that might not be bankable that might be as low as five thousand 000 or even less to give businesses that opportunity to buy the supplies that they need to start selling a product which is often a really big hurdle for these businesses but also looking at investment in space in the space and in the real estate what are the incentives that the community gives to people doing development both rehab and new construction if rehab in many cases can be lower cost spaces in a lot of communities how do we create incentives that help people do more rehab versus the new construction so that we have affordable spaces um what are the what are the incentives that we give in the community are a huge uh investment um and then directly into the the small-scale manufacturing businesses themselves a lot of times the biggest barrier for them is affordable rehabbed workspace it's not necessarily the capital costs for a big machine eventually businesses get to that barrier and then something like a cdfi or a partnership with local banks can really make a big difference as well how do you feel about the concept of a business incubator when it comes to manufacturing i think there's incubators and they're accelerators so incubators are often the non-profit that's has some kind of investment from a foundation or the jurisdiction um and an accelerator takes investment in the business right i think they're both great models we have very few of them for small-scale manufacturing businesses in fact we have very few startup programs um specifically for product businesses or non-tech uh there are a bunch that are now starting to float around the country like co-starters um but there are very few programs that really help business people launch businesses that way and there are even fewer that help the established ones scale there are very few programs nationally that help you take an established small business that's been around for anywhere from a few years to decades but really figure out how to scale it unless it's already um big and part of a you know multi-million dollar program that they can be a part of so especially those businesses that are under a million dollars or even under 250 000 in revenue there's very little to support them so i think incubators as well as accelerators because really serve a very important part of that we have all of those things in fact on main street in a lot of communities but focused on tech and so the question is how can we redirect that to small-scale manufacturing there are small-scale manufacturing businesses that are also high growth just like tech businesses but they don't have the same ecosystem infrastructure that we have for tech so a lot of it is learning from tech and applying it to these other sectors as well and actually getting people to invest in those spaces so in some cases the large manufacturers that might be in a region might invest in something like that both for workforce development purposes as well as pipeline um people who can create some of their supply chain things yeah and that almost speaks to kind of the concept you were you were you were talking about earlier in terms of the intentionality of the investment and trying to really kind of direct the investment of growth towards outcomes that you want to see um i have a question about that in terms of kind of the roi of those types of investments are we seeing um well i'll rephrase it i know that in many of the kind of incremental development kind of small scale stuff we've talked about at the cnu kind of world we talk about how the roi locally is so much more because of the wealth building and you know the knowledge building right you have stats on kind of the roi of investing in manufacturing like does it even matter can we just say that you know it's the intentionality of the investment of the growth matters so much more do you have thoughts on that i don't have stats um on that off the top of my head but i there are a couple things to keep in mind one is that um ground floors of businesses or of buildings that have that are unique that really showcase what is unique about the community um that's something that the big developers spend a lot of money on doing and so when we can do that in our incremental projects then we have that ability to really make a property stand out and so a lot of times they may not make the roi on that ground floor they might make it because that ground floor has made the building so cool that it increases the revenue that they get upstairs and really thinking about that investment almost as an amenity for the project is what we see a lot of developers starting to do that's interesting um are there other things that you kind of wanted to get at um i know you have like 100 million angles you come at this from but i feel like i've asked you most of the questions that i kind of jotted it down um yeah absolutely i think that you know one of the things i know one of the questions that came in was specifically about model ordinances um if people are interested in the artist in manufacturing land use nashville has a really good example if you don't see it easily by doing a search just shoot me an email at ilana recastcity.com and i'm happy to pull the link for you nashville did it and then a whole bunch of communities have copied it um fairfax county virginia did it at a county level it's a slightly more complex land use definition just because of the process that they had to go through but each of these just made it really easy for businesses to start being able to be in really any kind of commercial space and have been copied a lot of times um in a lot of places um and i think that there there is a real struggle that's going on in a lot of communities that i think we're going to unfortunately see a lot more of that and that's property owners sitting on vacant property there is a lot of there are a lot of communities that i've spoken to where um parts of main street or parts of downtown are owned by investors from really far away and they're honestly taking the property as a loss very purposefully um so they've established a lease that they'll release it for that's actually pretty high and without anyone who can afford that they'd much rather just take it as a loss on their taxes and so there are a whole bunch of solutions around that um in terms of vacant property or ordinances um i think dc has one a couple of other communities have them so that there's actually a pretty hefty fee if you're leaving a storefront especially in the downtown um if you're leaving a storefront vacant and i think those are really important to think about because it is we know that it is essential to to fill those storefronts um so that we can create that energy and really not have a negative impact on the neighboring properties in the neighboring businesses as well um and so um i think it especially with these this potential closing of a lot of of restaurants and retail small-scale manufacturing businesses can really be a part of the solution even as an interim solution to say let's take five years and and lease it out to small-scale manufacturing to keep the spaces in use there was a really interesting um i'm trying to remember where it was los angeles one of the improvement districts in los angeles actually created a partnership with a whole bunch of of property owners in the improvement district who had vacancies um who's and they the property owners in general said well we just can't find anybody for our space and what the improvement district did is they created a partnership with all of those different a number of different property owners at a time and said let us pay you a flat fee oh something like seven hundred dollars there's no it was nothing of consequence right as as a as a use fee um and we'll do a six-month pop-up in it and what they found was that by using the space for a pop-up and the the improvement district vetted the the the businesses to go into the pop-up they had this big competition they really worked very purposefully to make sure it was a diverse community business owners that got access to the spaces they had some funding i think available for folks to really make the basic space vanilla um and to be able to operate it a warm vanilla box out of that space and but what they found um is that once the space was occupied all of a sudden the landlord would you know probably reach back out to them and say i don't know what's going on all of a sudden i'm getting inquiries on this property and it's because the space had been activated right it's sort of an obvious aha but i think it really does make sense to be able to say how do we start creating these longer term six months one year you know pop-up uses or temporary uses so that we can bring energy back to these these places yeah detroit did a similar kind of uh they called it motor city match but it was a use of cdbg block grants to um you know to do vacant spaces with potential entrepreneurs and connect those folks and i thought that was a really um unique program yeah i'd love that program and the other thing to think about in all of this is how many businesses might be moving home so we have this i think very bizarre bias against home-based businesses in a lot of communities when i work with economic development offices or authorities a lot of times they're not interested in home-based businesses even if they're full-time because they say if they're not in bricks and mortar then they're not going to be our priority yet those are the businesses that will come back into our bricks and mortar in the future and with most of the storefronts either needing to be closed down or only partial in their opening i know of a number of business owners that are saying it doesn't make sense for us to retain our bricks and mortar space we're going to move it all home even if it's being produced in a number of different homes and then we'll come back maybe into storefronts when it's in the future i think it's really important for jurisdictions to think about how not only are we allowing home-based businesses but how are we supporting them and that's not about you know i know a lot of places design live workspace very purposefully um but that sometimes gets really expensive um in designing that for spaces so how are we just sort of doing that home-based business opportunity just as a as an automatic opportunity as well um that's great thank you um there are some questions kind of specifically about zoning and and codes um and i know that we kind of have had a number of discussions about like nuisances about you know production and manufacturing um and i can imagine that if you took this to like your neighborhood group and you could hear some people fighting about it um what are are your kind of best practices around kind of defining artisan businesses in the zoning code and also kind of what are your how do you weaponize people who want to advocate for this that's a great question um i always give it a face right i mean as you guys saw in my presentation this is people and this is about people with businesses in our community um and so to me that that's always the basis of the discussion no matter what i'm talking about in terms of the really specific language within a zoning code i just look at i mean the national land use definition what they did is they just they amended the zoning code to add a land use definition and then they just checked it off into the different zones right so that they could just do it as simply as possible and in some of the artisan manufacturing definitions they have a maximum square footage and so that's how they're controlling for some of those issues in some of them they have a specific no noise or odor piece that says that it's not to exceed whatever the noisiest or smelliest thing that's already allowed in that code but a lot of times it's also just about being really purposeful about um the storefront and and you know if there's a business improvement district or main street coalition in that community really recruiting businesses that are consumer facing that want to be a part of the community that really want to have a a storefront even if it's only the first you know seven feet of the store there's still a place that people can come in they can interact with a person there is that energy or that they put a means of production in that front window i always talk about um i feel like this is in a lot of places right the the chocolate maker or the or the pizza shop where you can look through the window and see the people you know spinning the the crust the dough and and putting things on it people love seeing stuff made it's actually a huge attraction um and so how are we using the making of stuff as the thing to enliven that storefront window yeah that's really great thank you i've i live in a kind of art focused community and there's a art studio down the street that's in an old fire station and whenever the the doors are up and people just stop and stare oh yeah no it's amazing and it's and it's a it's a point of pride right you you see people in your community making things and it helps you believe in your community um and a lot of places honestly need help believing again and so i think we have a especially with incremental development um and any kind of community investment that we're pursuing i think we have a really a wonderful role that we can serve and helping to rebuild that that's really wonderful sentiment um thank you um so i'll ask you just kind of as a closing question um you know you're speaking to an audience of new urbanists of cnu folks what is kind of the one thing that you feel like new urbanists need to know or should be doing starting now um big small scale manufacturing businesses into your projects as a designer as an architect as a planner as a developer whatever role you're serving in new urbanism for your community go and talk to the businesses go track them down and ask them what kind of space do they need what are their barriers that they face and really figure out how to bring them into the projects and talk to people about it be excited about it to other people so that you can really share this idea with people that this is a great opportunity moving forward that's awesome well thank you so much thank you everybody who attended this has been a wonderful discussion the recording of this will be available on cnu's website within 24 hours um also my colleague claire has posted in the chat a link to a feedback form if you guys have any feedback about this session or any other session or ideas about future sessions we'd love to hear them and thank you guys so much for all your time and thank you alana for joining us thank you very much all right have a great day bye