It takes more than neighbors to revitalize a neighborhood.
"In fact, it's going to take an entire city," said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, Missouri.
Cleaver visited last week for a forum on West Louisville redevelopment hosted by the University of Louisville.
Cleaver helped spark a massive redevelopment effort of Kansas City's historic African-American jazz district during his tenure as mayor of that city. The effort has brought housing, retail and some $70 million to an area that went from boom to blight during the 20th century.
We asked him what Louisville could learn from Kansas City's success. He pointed to history.
"Louisville has a rich history and in the urban core, where the majority of the African-Americans live, they have the great benefit of having the name of a somewhat well-known person as a native son," he said, referring to Muhammad Ali.
Cleaver said the prominent figures of Kansas City's past — such as Satchel Paige, Charlie Parker and Count Basie — helped breathe new life into the city's then-struggling historic district.
Ali, he said, carries more appeal than all those legends combined.
"You need to exploit that name," he said.
Cleaver said revitalization efforts need to be built around something people can relate to, like Ali or the Kentucky Derby. And he said any effort to eradicate blight will cost money and energy.
The recent failure of a planned project in Russell is proof of how much it can cost to bring new use to derelict property.
The West Louisville FoodPort was a proposed $53 million project that looked to bring a fresh food hub to 30th and Market streets, which at present is a slab of twisted weeds and crumbling concrete. The project faltered after key investors backed out.
Cleaver said redevelopment isn't easy — and not just because it's expensive. Racism can stain projects, too.
"There are going to be people who will resent spending that kind of money in an area that many of them will declare they are afraid to walk through," he said.
But entire cities suffer when one area struggles, Cleaver said. And when problems are ignored, they don't go away — they materialize in other areas, too.
"There's no such thing that's exclusively in another part of the city," he said. "You've got to try to erase every little part of the city where there is darkness."
Cleaver's work in Kansas City came with help from various sources, including federal funding, which he considers necessary for large-scale revitalization efforts. That said, cities are beginning to understand that assistance from the federal government is not what it once was.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funding levels have remained stagnant in recent years. Without that, cities will need to think of other ways to attract investment. In Louisville, that means transformative projects such as Liberty Green and Park DuValle — both funded primarily by federal HOPE VI investments — will have to find more diverse funding sources in the future.
"You're going to have to get money from every source," he said. "You have to try your best to paint a vision that people can buy into and say, 'this is going to be good for all of us.'"
