Athens answers national gentrification crisis with opportunity

By Kelcey Caulder

Gentrification, the process of renovating and reviving deteriorated urban neighborhoods through the influx of affluent residents, has always been a hot-button topic in Athens, particularly in terms of urban planning. While it has its benefits — including rising property values, increased wealth and increased economic activity — gentrification in Athens is more commonly known for contributing to the city’s massive income inequality and the displacement of low-income residents from homes and businesses.

Commissioner Melissa Link says that this is common in college towns and that the Athens Clarke-County government is constantly trying to uncover new ways of combating these problems.

“This is very typical of college communities. It happens everywhere, especially in Georgia, because students have the HOPE scholarship that allows them to keep extra income,” Link said. “They use that to pay for sky-rise housing complexes, so, because there is a market, people build them. What people don’t know is how gentrification affects businesses here in Athens.”

According to Rob Trevena, the Director of Housing and Community Development in Athens, the influx of higher-income residents to a particular area often lead to changes in culture and demand that lead to the closure of previously existing businesses within the community.

Trevena, along with Link, believes that Athens has found a way to discourage this from happening and even bring prosperity to communities already affected by gentrification — state-mandated opportunity zones.

Because of these opportunity zones, new businesses developing in Athens will find more tax benefits when opening in low-income and historic areas than downtown. Outlined in the Athens-Clarke County Urban Redevelopment Plan (URP), these zones are meant to encourage development and revitalization in “areas that are historically underserved and low-income with little business and that have often been gentrified” through the use of job tax credits.

“Here at the Housing and Community Development Department we assist neighborhoods that are quickly gentrifying because of the rapid development of student housing in the community,” said Trevena.

“When you have this vibrant downtown and an average citizen age of 25, you have a very young community. That becomes a great opportunity to make money. There’s a lovely pool of educated people here that will work for minimum wage which makes it easier to hire. Now, that has a downside if you were born and raised here and managed to just barely make it out of high school. That’s what we are dealing with. So, we developed a small business program that provides tax incentives for businesses locating in certain areas within the community.”

These areas are Baxter Street, Chase Street/Newton Bridge Road, Hawthorne Avenue, Lexington Road, North Avenue, Oak Street and West Broad Street, locations that were selected as opportunity zones because of their high poverty and crime rates, as well as their levels of visible blight.

When business owners build in these locations and create two or more jobs, they are given a special job tax credit of $3,500 per job created. The new jobs must be full-time, permanent positions and must pay at minimum $22,620 per year. The credits can be claimed for up to five years, as long as the jobs are maintained.

“For example, on Hawthorne Avenue, you could create two jobs at a gas station and be eligible for those job tax credits, but in other areas, you may have to create ten new jobs, and they’d have to be manufacturing jobs,” said Amy Lopp, the Business Development Specialist for the Athens-Clarke County Economic Development Department.

Though these incentives sound beneficial for business owners developing in Athens, it can be difficult to see how these tax credits will extend that benefit to other members of the community outside of simply increasing shopping options and occupying vacant buildings. For Trevena, it is all about creating a better local economy and safer neighborhoods in which everyone will be happier to live.

“Generally, what we’ve seen is when a business relocates into one of these zones, they redevelop the building itself, so they remove the blight from that individual tax parcel. Whether we’re talking about single family houses or businesses, when one is beginning to be repaired, renovated or rehabbed, it typically generates neighbors to do something similar. We’ve seen that in our low to moderate income neighborhoods where, with some government assistance, people nearby begin to clean up. It’s kind of a synergistic approach that helps everyone,” Trevena said.

“In Athens, we have this endless supply of freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, Master’s level students, who will come in and work for nothing,” he continued. “That’s really hard on the families that were born and raised here and now have to compete with them. Having more businesses and more jobs helps with that too.”

According to the URP, opportunity zones seek to “support the growth that protects community resources and sustains the high quality of life we want in Athens-Clarke County” and that “encourages high paying business and industry that employ and train a skilled labor force.” In other words, improvements will include reduced crime, better services, more jobs and a more diverse array of businesses.

Businesses already existing in other Athens areas are eligible for other tax credits such as investment credits, and the local government offers business owners who do not wish to open within opportunity zones other means of assistance.

“I would say that, more than anything, we provide services to help. We either partner them with someone who could help them or bridge the gap between them and the university. We might help them with regulatory issues. We connect with them and keep them here,” said Amy Lopp. “We help those businesses find space and do target outreach to entrepreneurs, particularly those in life sciences. They need to know about real estate and incentives, particularly if they only have one or two employees.”

Who Makes Athens: Mentoring through community and consistency

By Kelcey Caulder

Just outside of the University of Georgia’s North Campus sits East Athens’ “Iron Triangle,” a cluster of dilapidated storefronts and run-down businesses. In the Triangle, high-rise student living complexes tower over cars on cinder blocks and poorly paved streets. Broderick Flanigan, who now owns Flanigan’s Portrait Studio on Vine Street, grew up in the area’s public housing and considers the corner near Nellie B. Avenue home.

Flanigan is an institution in the Triangle. He has dedicated his life to bettering the neighborhood and is a member of some of its most successful youth advocacy programs. Of these contributions, perhaps the most important is the time Flanigan has spent mentoring East Athens’ teens and children.

Every afternoon, Flanigan opens the doors of his studio to local youth, introducing them to famous works created by black artists and working with them to create public art and murals of their own. One of these murals, located on the wall of the Triangle Plaza, features images of civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Through these programs and the art they produce, Flanigan hopes the East Athens youth will develop a sense of self-worth and a pride in their black heritage and culture.

“I purposely put the studio in this location because I wanted to give back to this community,” Flanigan says. “I wasn’t sure what that would look like at first, but it has grown into a mentorship, art therapy type space where kids can come, be creative and express themselves.”

Flanigan says his studio is an open space where students can “unwind from the stress of home life or school, or whatever they may be going through.”

A consistent mentor

Flanigan says he devotes so much time to supporting Athens’ youth because he remembers growing up in East Athens and how important his own mentors were to his success.

“I met my first mentor when I was in the sixth grade, at about 12 years old,” Flanigan says. “He introduced me to jazz and prompted me to learn to play the trumpet.”

Flanigan says the conversations he had with his mentored pushed him to grow and experiment.

“He pushed me to try new and different things,” he says. “I’ve been very intentional in giving back in that same manner because I know it had a great impact on my life.”

Not only did Flanigan learn the value in trying new things from his mentor, he also learned the lesson of consistency.

“My mentor definitely was consistent. I think that’s one of the most important things you can be as a mentor,” Flanigan says. “You have to be there to try and offer sound advice. You won’t be able to reach every kid, but just be consistent.”

Having an adult in the community that checked in regularly with him about grades, passions and goals made growing up in what he calls a “tough situation” easier. It is his goal now to ease the burden of difficult living circumstances for kids who may need the presence of an adult that cares and pushes them to succeed.

According to Dr. Lee Cornelius, the director of the Center for Social Justice, Human and Civil Rights at UGA, Flanigan embodies consistency in every aspect of his outreach. The two men met in September 2015. Since then, Cornelius has seen the artist’s fingerprints on nearly every community project in East Athens.

“He does a great job of working behind the scenes quietly to do things within the community. It’s real for him. He re-invests his experiences by doing all that he can, by being present and by being an honest, real face for these kids and community members to see and hear,” Cornelius says. “When they look, they see him.”

It’s true. On any given day, Flanigan can be seen working for the betterment of his community. Whether its working with children at his studio, speaking with professors and students at UGA’s School of Social Work to formulate ideas for helping the community and maintaining its cultural integrity or acting as vice president of Chess and Community, a local nonprofit run by his close friend Lemuel “Life” LaRoche, Flanigan has dedicated his life to the East Athens youth.

A stepping stone

Chess & Community was Flanigan’s first foray into advocacy. He joined the team after meeting LaRoche in 2012. He says he was inspired by the organization’s mission — teaching children to apply the principles of chess to real life, encouraging them to “think ahead” and be present in every situation.

“I’ve always loved to play chess,” Flanigan says. “I just didn’t have a ton of people to play with. I played with my uncle a lot in high school, so when I found the Chess & Community organization, I was really inspired to get involved. It was a natural fit for me.”

He has remained involved with Chess & Community ever since, but that initial fit gave him a taste of what it would be like to change someone’s life.

Once he had a taste, Flanigan ran with it, starting up his own advocacy programs not long after. Today, seeing how his work helps young students, Flanigan says is the best part of his work.

“I remember once when I went to [a] career day at the local middle school, and a teacher came up to me and introduced herself. I told her who I was, and she said that she knew.”

The teacher told Flanigan one of her students who frequently visited his art studio had told her a lot about him. She told him ever since the student started visiting his studio, he had been performing better in class.

“He’d listened more, been more mindful of his presence in the classroom,” Flanigan says about the student. “She was thankful that he was coming in. He talked about it a lot, she said. Those are things you don’t always get to see or hear, so that meant a lot to me.”

For Flanigan, the hardest part of mentoring is his inability to fix every situation.

He recalls one family specifically, a mother and her children who were transitioning into a homeless shelter, and how frustrated he felt at not being able to do more for them.

“I don’t know why she was in that situation,” he says. “I didn’t pry into that, but it touched me. It let me know that there are so many services that are needed, specifically in terms of shelter. Without it, where would that family have gone?”

‘Pauldoe’ transformed into Columbia Brookside

By Kelcey Caulder

Rows of apartments, small and exactly alike, line Pauldoe Street in Athens, Georgia. White roof tops, brick bottoms, and narrow walks leading up to each door. Occasionally, a basketball might run across the street. A child runs after it, yelling over to his friends that he’ll be right back. A man comes home from work and makes his way up the narrow walk, exhausted after a long day at work. None seem to notice — or, if they do, it seems an unspoken rule that they don’t say it — that their neighborhood doesn’t look like the rest of Athens.

It’s older. Window air-conditioning units hang from shuttered windows and the bricks are faded with age. This is the place the people who live there call home. It is what Rob Trevena at the Athens Housing and Community Development Department labels ‘concentrated poverty.’

That is why, in 2012, the Athens Housing Authority (AHA) petitioned to receive tax credits from the state to transform the neighborhood, formerly known as Jack R. Wells Homes into Columbia Brookside.

Initially, some of the neighborhood’s residents worried that the renovations would permanently alter the culture of the area. Others, according to Marilyn Appleby, the Communications Director at AHA, were eager for something new and were supportive of the decision to update the property.

“Residents were asked that if it were possible, would they be more interested in renovations or tearing down the buildings and starting again. The residents as well as Housing and Urban Development approved of the idea of us working with outside parties to create a very different neighborhood than what had been there in the past,” said Appleby. “They wanted something more modern, something better taken care of.”

So, with assistance from the community and from the Housing and Urban Development Department, the AHA partnered with Columbia Residential, a leading Atlanta-based developer and manager of affordable and mixed-income housing, to develop a multi-family community of which a third of the apartments are public housing, a third are subsidized through tax credits and a third are market-rate. Several units would also be designated as senior living spaces.

Columbia Brookside will be the first mixed-income community in Athens. Units throughout the neighborhood will be divided among residents who can market-rate prices, ranging anywhere from $790 for a one-bedroom unit to $1,275 for a four-bedroom unit, those who qualify for a “tax credit” rate based on income and those who qualify for public housing whose rent will be the equivalent to 30 percent of their income.

When asked for her opinion about the mixed-income model, Commissioner Melissa Link said that it is the best way to ensure communities succeed.

“When you fill a community with only low-income individuals and those who have been in poverty, then you only get more concentrated poverty and crime,” said Commissioner Melissa Link. “I think Athens overall has switched over to this mixed-income model, like what will exist at Columbia Brookside, because it really does offer people the best chance of having the communities we all strive for and desire.”

According to Link, this type of mixed-income housing has been widely popular and successful across the country since the early 1990s because of the likelihood of increased investment in neighborhoods, enhanced security and higher management expectations. Link also stated a decrease in crime and an increase in property value as benefits to the mixed-income model.

Trevena also approved of the model, stating that the mixed-income units would be more sustainable than low-income units. He believes that developing Columbia Brookside as mixed-income would be a way to fight future blight, acting “almost like preventive medicine.”

“What we often find in my department is that when we renovate an area, it encourages the people who live there to keep renovating and renewing the area,” Trevena said. “One of the ideas is that, with mixed-income, people living in the community will be able to keep it up. And, hopefully, that will encourage other people living there to keep it nice too. After building is completely finished, which will be, I think, next year, there will be 372 apartments there. We want to see those last as long as possible.”

The 372 apartment units will replace the 125 housing units that existed at Jack R. Wells before renovations, more than doubling the amount of housing available on the property. But, for many who previously resided in the Pauldoe community, the number of houses doesn’t matter. Instead, they hope that the community spirit that existed there continues to survive.

Quintavious McCreed, a former student at Clarke Central High School who was displaced when renovations began on the Columbia Brookside project, spoke about what it was like to live in the neighborhood in Clarke Central High School’s Odyssey Online newspaper in 2013.

“When I first came to Pauldoe I was very quiet and stayed to myself. I would only go outside when I was playing with my little brother. In less than a month, though, that all changed. I grew a strong bond with those people. Everyday we hung out with each other, played ball and lived life. It was more than a bond like friends .We were all like brothers,” McCreed wrote.

Later in the same article, he describes leaving Pauldoe behind. “The thought comes through my head mostly every day: that was a big experience to be living in Pauldoe and being around everybody. But I think I can always keep it in my mind, in my heart.”

Today, McCreed is a graduate of Clarke Central High School. His family still resides in River’s Edge in Athens, the place they had moved into after leaving Jack R. Wells. He still remembers Pauldoe and how important that time was for him, how impactful it was to mentor and tutor kids at the Community Center and hopes that Columbia Brookside brings the same experience to other children and teenagers that will live there.

“It was a place that I really won’t ever forget and I hope that other people get to feel that too. It was known for being a bad neighborhood, but it was our neighborhood and it was really cool to be a part of it,” he said.

When asked, Appleby said that the AHA hasn’t spent too much time discussing how the culture of the area might change following the completion of the remodel nor about how it has changed since the senior living units were opened.

“All I can say is that we believe the mixed-income model will benefit the community and that we know it has worked in other communities and been very successful. Personally, I think if that holds true, the culture of the community will be just fine,” Appleby said.

Module 10: Multimedia editing

Introduction: To be honest, this is mostly a workshop for multimedia projects.

Learning objectives:

Editing and production of multimedia projects.

Steps to completion:

Complete multimedia projects

Background:

Reflective:

Class Nov. 15 and Nov. 17 will be multimedia production workshops.

Exploratory

Final project due Nov. 18.