2007 Renaissance Communities Economic Development Summit

Observations & Commentary By Eddie Griffin


Words of Thanks

Since the 2005 Economic Summit, the City of Fort Worth has come a long way towards revitalizing its core thanks to the diligent leadership of Congressman Michael C. Burgess, in collaboration with Mayor Mike Moncrief and the City Council, Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Brook, State Representative Marc Veasy, State Senator Kim Brimer, and a great supporting host of other elected and appointed officials and citizens. Working together as a community, this is “The Fort Worth Way” of doing business.

The 2007 Renaissance Communities Economic Development Summit was a 12-hour marathon of reviewing our progress and forecasting the challenges before us.

Continuum

Summit I and Summit II focused primarily upon East and Southeast Fort Worth, with demographics in zip code areas 76103, 76104, 76105, 76112, and 76119. This year, the geographic scope of development has expanded to encompass the 76140 communities of Forest Hill and Everman. Because of the widened scope, the urban villages are now referred to as the Renaissance Communities.

Brief Review

The City of Fort Worth has always had a master development plan, even prior to 1900. The urban sprawl of the 1970s led to a migration from the core inner city. This pattern, spurred by desegregated housing, resulted in an abandonment and neglect of the city epicenter. By 1980, downtown Fort Worth was literally a ghost town after business hours, which then became a magnet for homeless transients.

The first revitalization initiative began with the downtown demographic zip 76102, the 1993 Downtown Revitalization Plan. This master plan turned downtown Fort Worth around. The concept was to turn downtown into a mixed zone of commercial and residential urban village. As new downtown urban condos and apartments went up, business returned to the revitalized downtown area. The urban village also took on a vibrant casual nightlife.

The Urban Village concept is based upon condensed mixed-use close quarter living in pockets similar to an all-in-one village. The restoration plan has been so successful for the downtown area that master builders are now bringing in million-dollar condos, and rebuilding every square foot of the downtown area into a new cityscape.

The new downtown plan also includes a Trinity River Vision, which would transform the Trinity River corridor into riverfront commercial development and lakeshore subdivision of new businesses and housing, along with a new community college campus.

This is modern urban design at its finest.

Urban Village Clusters

In the coming new phases of development, we will hear more and more about Urban Village clusters, with strategies for redevelopment patterned after the successful downtown revitalization plan.

In expanding the scope to encompass more of congressional District 26, the Summit examined urban village clusters in demographic zip code areas of 76103, 76104, 76105, 76112, 76119, and now 76140, which includes the Everman-Forest Hill communities.

The I-35 corridor is now the main artery of a housing boom through areas that were once grazing pastor. The urbanization of the cities of Everman and Fort Hill has given these communities a new demographic identity, and a new need for mass transit.

I-35 is in need of widening and new avenues and highways are being designed to alleviate traffic congestion and mitigate regional air pollution. The I-20 corridor that runs through Forest Hill presents new commercial opportunities along its frontage properties.

The inner-city core communities have identifies a number of potential urban village sites, five of which are included in District 26 target zone. These urban villages are being zoned for mix-use, heavily concentrated around key arterial intersections, where townhouse and lofts will coexist with street level businesses.

Schools & Workforce Development

The 2007 Renaissance Communities Economic Development Summit was a quantum leap over the last two years economic summits, insofar as we began to look at the development of “human capital”. We looked at the high level of unemployment and underemployment in the area as a potential workforce, in need of marketable skills.

In order to build a viable people, they must have “livable” wages. Therefore, one of the objectives of last year’s Economic Summit was to increase minimum wage to a livable level. This year the US Congress passed the first minimum wage rate in 10 years, thereby directly impacting the homeless and day labor district. The first year’s raise was $0.70 an hour, and similar increases will be coming annual for the next two years.

This potential but latent workforce is part of the Workforce today and Workforce of the Future. To help residents in this area over the poverty hump, various agencies have begun collaborating in transitional welfare-to-work strategies, through self-sufficiency. This year’s summit included a job fair and faith-based grant funding seminars.

Finally, we looked at the workforce pipeline with the idea of channeling more people into higher skilled and high paying jobs. We began examining the role of schools in preparing the workforce of the future. Currently, the ISD educational objective is academic achievement and preparing students for post-secondary education. But not every child is college bound, as noted by Representative Marc Veasy.

HR panelists repeatedly identified deficiencies in today’s pool of future workers, which could or should be addressed at the middle and high school level. Missing are soft skills in communications, business etiquettes, and socialization. Missing are math and science skills to fill the void of retiring baby boom engineers and technicians. Missing are vocational skills in machine shop technology at a time when digital machining is reaching a new apex in close tolerances. There is a new for new precision machinists, quality control inspector, electrical technician, and other blue and white-collar skills for the local defense industry. There is a need for medical technicians and clerics for the ever-growing local medical industry.

Many of the high needs fields do not require a college degree. Vocational and technological skills, along with a degree or certification, can be achieved in two years or less of post-secondary education. And, many of the skill sets can be achieved through duel enrollment, tech prep, or contractual education.

During the 2006-2007 school year, the Workforce of the Future subcommittee helped to implement a professional development in tax preparation for high students that would result in certification as qualified tax preparers, immediately employable, with a potential future in the accounting field. A similar professional development program in the medical and nursing field has been ongoing at one of the high schools since the early 1990s. Other specialized skills development programs at the middle and high school level are on the drawing board.

P-16 Workforce Pipeline

Cynthia Fisher Miller, an official of the local chamber of commerce and a member of the Workforce of the Future subcommittee, presented the concept of the “P-16 Workforce Pipeline”, in recognition that early childhood development is the true starting point for developing a strong and educated workforce of the future. This covers a time-span from birth through college graduation- with an added footnote that education will become a lifelong learning experience. This is the vision of the workforce of tomorrow.

The Fort Worth ISD now proposes a $593.6 million bond package to expand and upgrade the school system. As FWISD Superintendent Dr. Melody Johnson describes it: “If everybody at a particular high school turned on their Windows 95 at the same time, the lights in the school would go out.” Therefore, there is a need for new technological infrastructure.

Another major challenge for Fort Worth ISD, beside academic achievement, is catching up with the application of technology in the classroom. Already, most students have outpaced teaching staff in learning and adapting to the use of new technology. And, many gifted students feel held back. Dr. Jeri Pfeifer describes the eagerness of her AP math students at Everman High School to “get on with it”.

Another part of the student achievement strategy is the FWISD Project Prevail dropout prevention or student retention plan. It is designed to get all stakeholders- which includes business, parents, students, higher education, schools, faith community, and social services- committed and involved in the education of our children. Each group of stakeholders is given specific identifiable contributions that they can make in the overall effort.

College Prep

GO Centers are now set up in every high school, in order to “close the gaps” in academic and career achievements. The GO Centers are designed to put college-bound high school students on track. In conjunction with local community colleges, students can gain early college credits while still in school through Tech Prep or dual enrollment programs.

Needs and Challenges

Students still fall far short of modern industry needs in a global economy. We need to reexamine our education resources and capital assets. We have not gotten the best delivery system to convey curricula content. We have underutilized free or inexpensive online or multimedia educational resources. This may be due to chasing the TAKS test. But now that the state legislature is phasing out teaching to the TAKS test, we should revisit more advanced cognitive teaching programs, beginning with early childhood development.

Multimedia delivery system relieves teachers of much of the stress generated through direct interaction with students. Instead, students interact with multimedia tools and seek guidance from the instructor. Interactive multimedia education tools have a longer retention rate than verbose instructions.

The 80th State Legislature enacted a Virtual School bill that would, at once, supplement classroom instructions and later lay the groundwork for the future of education. Scholars recognize that the student of today can receive a full P-16 education online. Many industries highly value some online skills courses and certification program, such as Microsoft Office Software (MOS). For less than $20 per person, students can receive industry-recognized certificates of completion in WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT, and ACCESS, from the beginner level to the most advance. These skills may allow high school students immediate access into the job market as clerics or certified administrative assistants.

Conclusion

The first summit in 2005 was devoted to developing the scope of the community’s needs and challenges and organizing task forces to conduct fact-findings and probably strategies and solutions.

The second summit in 2006 returned with its findings. Advisories committees reported their findings and set out priorities and action items to charter the course.

This year, the summit looked at the cluster of Urban Villages comprising the Renaissance Community, in relationship to the larger district scope in transportation, business, and workforce development needs.

How do we pull the diverse components of these Urban Villages renaissance strategies? Terri Wade-Ottley is designing a project management system that will identify the development projects we aim to accomplish and its quantifiable components, benchmarks, schedules, and completions.

On the other hand, the Summit convened the faith-base community to look at grant opportunities for collaborative work, now being carried out by individual and isolated organizations. A host of federal agencies from Region VI demonstrated target objectives by the government, as it related to communities, with demographics similar to the Renaissance communities.

It was an exciting marathon that energized some 200 representatives of the community. There is a greater sense of partnership between public, private, religious, and community-based organizations.