In Its Quest to Decrease Water Use, Levi’s Is Open Sourcing Production Methods, FastCo.Exist
3,781: The number of liters of water required to produce a pair of jeans and grow the cotton they’re made with. To reduce its H2O usage, Levi’s developed a process that consumes 96 percent less water (think: transitioning from roomy boyfriend to super skinny cut). Even better? Instead of sequestering its eco-friendly methods in a top-secret lab, the producer of the classic 501 is sharing its techniques with industry competitors.
A Federal Judge’s New Model for Forgiveness, New York Times
Checking the conviction history question on a job application can make it next to impossible for the formerly incarcerated to gain employment. When issuing a 15-month-long prison sentence to a woman for faking an auto accident in order to collect insurance money, New York judge John Gleeson didn’t mean to issue the lifelong punishment of unemployment. Which is why, 13 years later, he handed her something unusual: a federal certificate for rehabilitation.
The Powerful, Young Gallery Owner Shaping L.A.’s Art Scene, OZY
The Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, which boasts the city’s second highest property crime rate, is also the unlikely home of Michelle Papillion’s art gallery. Showcasing the works of emerging African-American artists, Papillion is out to do more than just bring awareness to creatives that aren’t widely recognized and celebrated; she’s working to beautify the community around her.
MORE: To Reduce Drug Abuse, These Members of the Criminal Justice Community Advocate for Legalization, Not Criminalization
Tag: entrepreneurs
Meet The Educator Who Accurately Predicted Technology’s Potential to Transform Student-Driven Learning
Elisabeth Stock founded PowerMyLearning, a national nonprofit that leverages technology to transform teaching and learning in low-income communities, in 1999 — a time when the cloud was still in the sky, the search engine Google was only a year old and most still logged on via a dialup connection. Even then, Stock saw software’s potential to boost students’ learning, but she didn’t want to replace classroom teachers with lessons on a screen; instead, she wanted the technology to strengthen the learning relationships among students, teachers and families. Today, Stock points to growth in math proficiency (and great gains amongst children with learning disabilities) at PowerMyLearning partner schools across the country compared to similar schools.
NationSwell sat down with Stock at the organization’s offices in the Garment District of Midtown Manhattan and discussed her outlook on leadership, learning and racing a Chevy Impala with her dad.
What’s the best advice you’ve received on leadership?
There’s this expression of the mirror and the window. What really strong leaders do is this: when things go right, they look out the window to see who they can give credit to. And when things don’t go well, they look in the mirror, and say, “What did I do wrong?” Really lousy leaders do the reverse. When things go badly, they look through the window and ask, “Who can I blame?” And when things go really great, they say, “Oh, look at me! I’m so great!”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I’m very excited about how the technology is becoming much more user-friendly for teachers to do data-driven instruction and support student-driven learning. I also think we’re at a particularly exciting moment in time because the prevalence of cell phones and smartphones in the inner city has gotten really high, which provides the ability to combine texting with other things we’re doing to help parents stay in the game with their kids’ education.
What’s on your nightstand?
It’s depressing. You really want to hear it? I’m reading “When Breath Becomes Air,” which is a book about a young doctor [Paul Kalanithi] who gets diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and decides he’s going to write a book before he dies. And then the other one I always have is “Thinking Fast and Slow,” [by winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Daniel Kahneman].
What’s your biggest need right now?
PowerMyLearning is in the process of developing our national board. Finding people who want to get involved in our work and will bring their networks, hearts, heads and wallets — all those pieces that will help us get better — is probably our number one need.
What do you wish someone had told you when you first started this job?
The key thing is to surround yourself with good people and to surround yourself with people who really believe in what you’re doing. You may meet somebody who has the best skill set for what you’re looking for, but if that person is not super excited about what you’re doing, it’s not worth it to bring them on board. They don’t have to work the same hours as you, but they have to be as committed and passionate as you.
What inspires you?
The thing that inspires me is this really strong sense of unfairness that exists, that if you are born in a certain zip code, you have different outcomes than someone else. It just seems, to me, so wrong, and I’m very driven to change that.
What’s the accomplishment that you’re most proud of?
I think it’s two things. We’re all about developing the capacity of people, so I’m very proud of helping teachers become better teachers and helping parents know how they can be more helpful for their kids at home, and then, seeing my staff do the same thing. We have people on staff who have been here for a long time and seeing them grow and develop is just so rewarding. If you can do that, you can do anything. All these other things we’re trying to make happen (like kids having better academic outcomes and socio-emotional learning), will happen if capacity is developed.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
Growing up, my father was a psychiatrist, so you’d assume that he’d be this kind of quiet, docile, glasses-wearing kind of guy. As my mom described it, she married Clark Kent but got Superman. The other side of my dad was that he was really into car racing. He could not wait until I turned 16, so I could start racing with him. He started me off taking the Chevy Impala out on weekends to race around cones in a parking lot, and eventually I graduated to a real track going 100 mile per hour on the straightaways. I think that my interests in how things work physically (I studied biomechanical engineering as an undergrad), a lot of it came from my dad.
What does your perfect day look like?
Every day is a perfect day. I don’t complain a lot. I mean a perfect day is when everyone is healthy and putting in their all, including my kids and my husband. You go home and everyone’s happy, and at work, you’re strengthening your own relationships. I’m not going to say it’s a day where you hear about some big grant or we get state test results back and our kids have done well, because those are just easy days. Those aren’t necessarily the best days. The best days are when you work hard, right?
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This article has been edited and condensed.
Tech Visionaries Look to Disrupt Traditional Education, The Move to Make Climate Change a Nonpartisan Issue and More
Learn Different, The New Yorker
Brooklyn’s AltSchool is just one of seven “educational ecosystems” (there’s six in the Bay Area as well) that uses technology to create a personalized learning experience for each individual student. The brainchild of Max Ventilla, an entrepreneur and former Google employee, AltSchool aims to turn education on its head: teaching skills that are applicable to the 21st century workplace instead of the memorization of facts — creating an educational model grounded in Silicon Valley values. But can be replicated in existing public schools nationwide?
Can a GOP Donor Get Conservatives to Fight Climate Change?, CityLab
What can get politicians to put partisan bickering aside? North Carolina businessman Jay Faison is bringing congressional candidates from both sides of the aisle together to support clean energy initiatives, arguing that these policies (which are notoriously used to drive a wedge between the left and the right) increase jobs and energy independence, while also reducing carbon pollution.
Government Goes Agile, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Bringing the federal government into the digital age doesn’t have to increase the deficit — or be as disastrous as the rollout of HealthCare.gov. Implementing the commonly-used tech practice of agile development, groups like the United States Digital Services and 18F are giving citizens frustration-free, web-based opportunities to interact with their government for a fraction of the cost.
This Woman Has Collected 40,000 Feminine Products to Boost the Self-Esteem of Homeless Women
Many homeless women can’t afford food and housing, let alone necessary feminine items like bras and menstrual hygiene products. Yet, these products are essential for any woman to feel good about herself, since they boost one’s dignity.
Dana Marlowe, a mother of two who runs a disability advocacy and consulting company, decided to do something about it. Since homeless shelters rarely receive donations of bras and feminine hygiene products, Marlowe started the organization Support the Girls. During her free time, Marlowe collects these important items, organizing house pick-ups and dropping everything at shelters in the Washington, D.C., area where she lives.
So far, she’s collected more than 8,000 bras and almost 30,000 feminine hygiene products. Learn more about what Marlowe does and how she got the idea by watching the video above.
WATCH: These Yoga Teachers Empower Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Victims to Reclaim Their Lives
A House That’s Actually Affordable to Those in Poverty, Stories of Innovation from Coast to Coast and More
This House Costs Just $20,000 — But It’s Nicer Than Yours, Fast Co.Exist
Is it possible to build a house that’s cost-effective to someone living below the poverty line? The answer is yes, according to students at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, who worked on the design and construction dilemma for more than 10 years. Last month, they revealed two tiny houses in a community outside of Atlanta that cost just $14,000 each.
How America Is Putting Itself Back Together Again, The Atlantic
As writer James Fallows says, “As a whole, the country may seem to be going to hell.” But as he’s discovered while visiting various towns across America in his single-engine prop plane, there’s actually a groundswell of renewal and innovation already happening — from impressive economic growth in an impoverished area of Mississippi known as the Golden Triangle, to an investment in the Michigan public education system and a creative movement in more than 10 cities where artistic ventures are being celebrated.
Here’s What Happened When This School Made SATs Optional on Applications, Mic
Along with prom and getting your driver’s license, taking the SAT or ACT is a teenage rite of passage. But that’s no longer the case for some college-bound students. In a bold move, George Washington University made standardized test results optional for undergraduate applicants. The positive outcome: A more diverse candidate pool, including a sharp uptick in applications from African-American, Latino and first-generation college students.
MORE: Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
This Is How You Reduce the Energy Consumption of Major American Cities
When it comes to housing, New Yorkers face one big, wasteful problem: That strange set of pipes sitting underneath a window emitting banging and gurgling noises. Each frigid winter, countless Big Apple residents deal with a radiator that either doesn’t work or heats the apartment to a temperature and humidity level that’s more appropriate to a Floridian beach.
Most Manhattanites aren’t able to regulate their heat with a thermostat. Instead, pre-war buildings (constructed between 1900 and 1940) are warmed by a system that boils water in the basement and sends hot steam, which rises and warms rooms through a network of pipes. At installation time, these systems worked astonishingly well, facilitating the construction of the city’s upward-piercing skyline. But the introduction of double-paned glass windows and other retrofits changed the temperature needs for various rooms. So today, a landlord has to turn on the boiler for long enough to heat the coldest room (it’s virtually impossible to redirect steam heat), prompting overheated tenants to open their windows to the icy air outside to regulate the temperature.
Radiator Labs, a startup in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y., introduced the Cozy to eliminate this waste. The device fully insulates a radiator and pushes out heat via a fan that is wirelessly controlled by a resident’s smartphone or computer app. When the fan is off, the radiator becomes hotter and hotter, and its excess heat eventually diffuses back through the building’s pipes — signaling to the basement’s thermostat that all the rooms have been adequately heated. If Cozy is used building-wide, Radiator Labs reports that it can save up to one third of the energy required for heating.
Marshall Cox, the device’s inventor, lived in a “horribly overheated apartment” while he studied for his doctorate in engineering at Columbia University. He didn’t mind the temperature himself, but his brother, a professional ballet dancer, stayed with him for six months during a Broadway run and complained nonstop. Cox invented the system, essentially, “to shut him up,” he says.
Radiator Labs has already convinced 10 buildings to install the Cozy in every flat. With help from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Cox has plans to expand to 40 buildings. Radiator Labs also sees vast growth potential in other urban cities that were built at the turn of the century, like Chicago or Philadelphia.
“If you want to put a dent in fuel consumption and pollution in big cities,” cutting out inefficiencies in heating — “the single largest energy expenditure” — is the way to go, Cox says. “For the first time in the history of the building,” he adds, “we’re making the tenant comfortable while reaping this benefit for the building owner.”
With the average American shelling out $3,052 on energy costs each year, the Cozy has the potential to provide huge monetary savings for apartment dwellers and immeasurable savings for the planet as well.
Homepage photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images
MORE: 10 Do’s and Don’ts: Easy Ways to Save Energy — and Money — at Home
This Resourceful Soldier Goes From Fighting on the Front Lines to Running a Fashion Line
Talking via Skype, Sword & Plough CEO Emily Núñez Cavness held what appeared to be a routine business meeting with her sister and Chief Operating Officer, Betsy Núñez. But when Núñez Cavness, who’d been working remotely for several months, turned to look behind her, the mood suddenly felt very chaotic. Barely out of college, Núñez Cavness said a quick goodbye and hung up. Off camera, she suited up, grabbed some equipment and rushed for cover. An Army officer, Núñez Cavness was stationed in Kandahar, the capital of the former Taliban government in Afghanistan. Her work call had been interrupted by mortar fire.
“It was not the usual start-up location,” Núñez Cavness says.
Most start-ups have stories about their origin that border on the mythic — tales of discontent, intrigue and ambition that are repeated to investors and customers alike. Sword & Plough, which repurposes surplus military gear into stylish bags, makes most Silicon Valley narratives pale in comparison. Yet Núñez Cavness understates the difficulties in her retelling. Listening to her quiet voice, she makes you believe that balancing active duty deployment and entrepreneurship isn’t a tough tightrope to walk and that small business ownership from a combat zone halfway around the globe is common.
Perhaps her nonchalance is because of the scale of the challenges Núñez Cavness wants her company to address. Sword & Plough isn’t just another fashion house, one more Balmain selling military jackets at H&M; instead, she sees the company becoming an “American heritage brand,” supporting 38 jobs for the nation’s 573,000 unemployed veterans, reducing 35,000 pounds from the military’s tons of waste and creating bonds between civilians and soldiers in the process. (It also donates 10 percent of its profits to veterans’ groups.) This mission is almost as ambitious as the Biblical verse her company’s name is derived from — “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” — promising a new era of peace and creation.
Núñez Cavness was born at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., where her father taught political science and international relations. Growing up on a base, she remembers hearing that military surplus was burned or buried — a problem she pondered for two decades, until she was a senior at Middlebury College in Vermont.
Inspired by her father, she signed up for the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) at another school, an hour’s drive away in Burlington. Leaving at 6:30 a.m. for weekend training exercises while her classmates slept off hangovers, Núñez Cavness was the only cadet on her liberal arts campus. She often detected hesitation students who didn’t know how to ask her about military service. (An art student, leaving the studio after an all-nighter, once asked her what play she was acting in.) “I would get confused looks walking around campus,” Núñez Cavness recalls. “People didn’t know that I was in R.O.T.C., but I just saw it as an opportunity to strengthen the understanding between the civilian and veteran community.”
While listening to a talk by Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of Acumen (a nonprofit venture capital firm that funds solutions to global poverty) at Middlebury’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Núñez Cavness heard about a company that used recycling in its business model. In that instant, all of her history — the knowledge about what happens to military surplus, any alienation she felt at college and worries about future employment that other soldiers expressed — coalesced.
“What, in my life, I saw wasted on a daily basis could be harnessed and turned into something beautiful. As I looked around, I knew that every student in there had a bag of some form propped up next to them. Why not make durable bags that would be appealing to my classmates, really anyone?” Núñez Cavness remembers. “I was so excited that it was difficult to stay focused on the speech, because all these ideas were running through my mind.”
Núñez Cavness learned what a business plan was (it hadn’t come up in her international studies or French classes) and put one together with her sister. The siblings worked on the business through Núñez Cavness’s senior year, reaching out to contractors who make tents, sleeping bag covers, aircraft insulation, even parachutes. They set up a Kickstarter in April 2013 and asked their friends to buy a bag. Within two hours, they reached their $20,000 goal. By the end of the first day, they tripled that amount and eventually raised $312,000. Clearly, the demand for their product was there, but soon, Sword & Plough’s co-founder wasn’t (Núñez Cavness deployed shortly after graduation) — all while the company suddenly had 1,500 orders to fill.
Núñez Cavness rarely discusses specifics of deployed life with her garment employees, but she warns them when missions will put her out of contact for a few days. For the most part, they know she’s safe, but the occasional loss of internet can lead to anxiety and uncertainty, “this fear of what could have happened or might happen,” says Haik Kavookjian, a college friend who assembled Sword & Plough’s first bags on his mom’s old tabletop sewing machine and now serves as the company’s creative director. Still, her service and her work ethic are inspiring.
“Her ability to multitask and to manage the team while still working for the military, I can only assume comes from her strictly regimented training with the Army,” Kavookjian says. “Especially in the startup space, a lot of times what you find you need is that drive to continue at midnight, finishing work that needs to be done. Her ability to push on and keep going is something that the military has prepared her for.”
There is “a ton of overlap” between roles, Núñez Cavness says. In effect, she serves as CEO of both her domestic business and her military company. She began conducting business meetings based on the same tactics used in military trainings, and she stresses long-term planning, an important aspect of military strategy.
Núñez Cavness’s success could just have easily gone awry. Balancing responsibilities at home with active deployment could help strengthen a soldier’s resilience, but for another service member in the same circumstances, the stress of two jobs could be overwhelming. Founding a business from a military base is a case that’s “unusual though not unheard of,” says Charles Engel, a retired Army colonel who served as a psychiatrist for 31 years and is now a senior health scientist at RAND, a global policy think tank. Many doctors stationed abroad often “moonlighted” on nights and weekends to earn a little extra cash, he says. As long as Núñez Cavness’s superiors checked off on the business, Engel doesn’t see any problems.
“Some people will have the capacity to juggle different things and will even find it stimulating to be challenged in that way. Another person will be rapidly overwhelmed in that kind of circumstance,” Engel says. “What the leadership worries about in the military is that you would have obligations that would come into conflict with jobs in the military, obligations that might prevent you from deploying or otherwise distract you form your work overseas. Your primary job — being a soldier or sailor or airman — that’s the one that takes priority.”
Duty comes first and foremost, Núñez Cavness agrees, but her work with Sword & Plough sometimes helps her remind why she enlisted. One month after she arrived in Afghanistan, she received a big package, sent from a name she didn’t recognize. Inside was a handwritten note from a Vietnam vet, mentioning how impressed he was by Sword & Plough’s commitment to helping veterans. He included black-and-white photos of himself in uniform, on top of some cookies, candy and playing cards. “It was incredibly special and surreal to think — to know — that even there, in the desert in Afghanistan, thousands of miles away, somebody was moved by what we were doing,” Núñez Cavness says.
As Sword & Plough continues to bridge the military civilian divide, it’s likely that this isn’t the only care package Núñez Cavness will receive.
MORE: One Man, His T-Shirts and an Honorable Mission to House Homeless Veterans
10 Outstanding Solutions of 2015
In a year when policing controversies, mass shootings and debates over immigration have dominated the headlines and discourse, there’s a group of inspirational pioneers at work. Not all of these individuals, policy makers and entrepreneurs are household names, but they all are improving this country by developing new ways to solve America’s biggest challenges. Here, NationSwell’s favorite solutions of the year.
THE GUTSY DAD THAT STARTED A BUSINESS TO HELP HIS SON FIND PURPOSE
Eighty percent of the workers at Rising Tide Car Wash, located in Parkland, Fla., are on the autism spectrum. Started by the father-and-son team of John and Tom D’Eri, Rising Tide gives their son and brother, Andrew, who was identified as an autistic individual at the age of three, and its other employees the chance to lead a fulfilling life. John and Tom determined that the car wash industry is a good match for those with autism since they’re more likely to be engaged by detailed, repetitive processes than those not on the spectrum. [ph]
THE ALLSTARS THAT ARE TACKLING SOME OF AMERICA’S GREATEST CHALLENGES
The six NationSwell AllStars — Karen Washington, Eli Williamson, Rinku Sen, Seth Flaxman, DeVone Boggan and Amy Kaherl — are encouraging advancements in education and environmental sustainability, making government work better for its citizens, engaging people in national service, advancing the American dream and supporting our veterans. Click here to read and see how their individual projects are moving America forward. [ph]
THE INDIANA COUNTY THAT HAS DONE THE MOST TO REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY IN AMERICA
The Midwest exurb of Boone County, Ind., has reduced the ratio of the top 20th percentile’s earnings compared to the bottom 80th percentile by 23 percent — the largest decline for any American county with more than 50,000 residents and an achievement stumped county officials. NationSwell pieced together the story of how a land battle and a statewide tax revolt altered the course of Boone County. Find out exactly how it happened here. [ph]
THE TESLA CO-FOUNDER THAT’S ELECTRIFYING GARBAGE TRUCKS
Ian Wright’s new venture, Wrightspeed, is far less glamorous than his previous venture creating luxury electric sedans. But Wrightspeed, which is installing range-extended electric powertrains (the generators that electric vehicles run on) in medium- and heavy-duty trucks for companies like the Ratto Group, Sonoma and Marin counties’ waste hauler, and shipping giant FedEx, could have a greater impact on the environment than electrifying personal vehicles. Click here to learn how. [ph]
THE ORGANIZATION THAT IS TURNING A NOTORIOUS PROJECT INTO AN URBAN VILLAGE
Los Angeles’s large, 700-unit public housing development Jordan Downs consists of 103 identical buildings. Entryways to the two-story beige structures are darkened with black soot and grime, and the doors and windows are crossed with bars. Soon, the dilapidated complex will be revitalized by Joseph Paul, Jr., and his outreach team from SHIELDS for Families, which provides counseling, education and vocational training services. Read more about the plan, which calls for recreational parks and retail on site and would double the amount of available housing with 700 more units tiered at affordable and market rates. [ph]
THE HARDWORKING GROUP THAT’S RESTORING THE SHORELINE OF AMERICA’S LAST FRONTIER
Chris Pallister and his small, devoted crew are leading the largest ongoing marine cleanup effort on the planet. Since 2002, Pallister’s organization, Gulf of Alaska Keeper, has been actively cleaning beaches in Prince William Sound and the Northern Gulf Coast. The nonprofit’s five boats, seasonal crew of 12 and dozens of regular volunteers has removed an estimated 2.5 million pounds of marine debris (mostly plastic items washed ashore from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) from more than 1,500 miles of coastline. [ph]
THE STATE THAT’S ENDING HOMELESSNESS WITH ONE SIMPLE IDEA
Utah set the ambitious goal to end homelessness in 2015. As the state’s decade-long “Housing First” program, an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, wraps up this year, it’s already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by early next year. Read more about the initiative here. [ph]
THE RESIDENT THAT’S REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS’S MOST DEVASTATED WARD
New Orleans native Burnell Cotlon wants to feed his 3,000 neighbors. So he’s turned a two-story building that was destroyed by catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (along with most of the Lower 9th Ward community) into a shopping plaza. Already, he’s opened a barbershop, a convenience store, and a full-service grocery store in a neighborhood that has been identified as a food desert. [ph]
THE MAN THAT’S GIVING CAREERS TO UNEMPLOYED MILITARY VETERANS
“They had our backs, let’s keep the shirts on theirs” is more than just a motto for Mark Doyle. It’s the business model on which he built Rags of Honor, his silk-screen printing company based in Chicago that provides employment and other services to veterans. In the three years since its inception, Rags of Honor has grown from four employees to 22, all but one of whom are veterans at high risk of homelessness. [ph]
THE PRESIDENT THAT’S PRESERVING OUR ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
After promising to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal our planet during his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama has faltered on environmental legislation during his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But the 44th president’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions. Here’s why. [ph]
The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2015
In the waning years of the first African-American president’s time in office, a young black male can be gunned down by police with impunity and a young Hispanic girl can grow up in a neighborhood with limited educational horizons. As the wars in the Middle East draw to a close for American troops, veterans struggle to find work and housing and gun violence follows them back to their communities. In 2015, it often felt like progress was tempered by setbacks, so it’s important to look to journalists to provide the nuanced understanding of events, to historians to give them historical weight and to novelists and poets to distill their meaning. Our essential reading from this year:
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MORE: The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014
These Beautiful Art Projects Saved One Rust Belt Community from Economic Ruin
Construction projects wreak havoc on everyone’s lives. Residents become sleep deprived when the jackhammers wake them each morning, and commuters stress about detours adding minutes to their daily travel. But local business owners may suffer the most harm, as merchants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side near the Second Avenue subway construction and West Los Angeles storeowners coping with the new light-rail extension cutting through town can attest. Noise and dust drives away customers and businesses lose millions as a result.
When a year-long, $5.5 million repaving project threatened Cleveland’s now-thriving Collinwood neighborhood near Lake Erie, one civic group came up with a solution. Northeast Shores, a community development corporation, asked 225 artists to beautify the half-mile under construction with 52 community art projects. Funded by a relatively modest $118,000 grant, the initiative helped keep all 33 participating merchants in business.
“It’s pretty typical in Cleveland that a streetscape project results in business loss,” Brian Friedman, executive director at Northeast Shores, tells the blog Springboard Exchange. “People decide not to come thanks to the orange barrels.”
Ravaged by the decline of the city’s manufacturing industry and the onset of another recession, vacancies used to dominate Cleveland’s central thoroughfare, Waterloo Road, and more stores were boarded up than occupied. By 2013, however, a new generation of small businesses was reviving the neighborhood, but infrastructure improvements needed to catch up.
To create a distraction amidst the chaos, Northeast Shores drew inspiration from a similar arts project in Saint Paul, Minn. The development agency offered small monthly grants, made available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Storeowners instantly crowded outside their offices, clamoring to get in.
“We were a little distressed by the number of merchants who were literally waiting for us to open so they could shove paper at us seconds apart from each other, to make sure they could be included,” Friedman recalls. “We didn’t think it was a good community-building moment for us to have merchants sitting in front of our office at 5 o’clock in the morning, arguing with each other about who got there first.”
With a streamlined application process, projects soon got underway. Mac’s Lock Shop, for instance, helped sculptor Ali Lukacsy put up luggage locks stamped with individual messages (Locks of Love) on fences. Storefronts and open spaces filled with crafts.
Not only were beautiful surprises scattered throughout 10 city blocks, but the venture also helped to solidify lasting partnerships and sparked community involvement from artists who could’ve hunkered down in their studios until the streets were clean. Creative businesses — art galleries, performance spaces, fabric stores and design agencies — proliferated, and now, Waterloo Road is considered the city’s hotbed of arts and entertainment.
That strong civic fabric will be vital as Cleveland shifts its image from Rust Belt holdover (derided as “The Mistake on the Lake”) to an attractive destination for Millennials (with a new nickname of “The Comeback City”). “I want Waterloo to be a mini Austin or Nashville,” Cindy Barber, co-owner of Beachland Ballroom, a longstanding live music venue on Waterloo Road, tells the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. “We have to dream big to expand what we’ve been doing here to get people to Waterloo.”
The artwork gets visitors to stop and look. From there, closing the deal should be the easy part.