 Welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague Lillian Corral. How's it going Lillian? I'm good Lillie. How are you today? I'm doing well. So what's new in on your coast? Well not too much except for some personal news which we'll share which is I'm getting ready for the birth of my second child. So I will be starting my hiatus from coast to coast so likely that's the most exciting news we have on the west coast. That is that is super exciting. We are thrilled for you and and of course we're gonna miss you. It's hard to believe that that we've been doing this for almost three months and you know it will carry on with with talking about what's happening in communities but we'll certainly make you. Yeah we've had an exciting set of conversations over the last three months. I think I'm curious to see what happens over the next three months only because it just feels like you'll recall when we first started it almost was like the world was a complete unknown. We weren't sure what the summer would look like. And yet while I feel like we have some clarity and we're getting into a routine like we're still pretty much in a place where we're trying to figure out what's going to happen in our cities. So kind of you know sort of an interesting opportunity to talk even about today's episode around what's happening. It's certainly I mean so much has happened in three months and it's just it's such a dynamic time and I know it's just going to continue to evolve and and certainly we've seen this evolution of course in our downtowns and there's still a lot of questions about what's going to happen in our downtown. So the weather is not great here. So if I if I log out sorry about that I am plugged in on my phone. Can you still hear me okay Lillian? We can hear you okay Lillian. Okay okay perfect. So I'll go ahead and I'll carry on I'll introduce the topic and in our guest and hopefully we'll figure this out. So so anyways we will be exploring the questions that cities should ask as they work to rebuild their urban course in equitable inclusive ways. What should community leaders measure as they map out this past? What lessons are we seeing from other American cities and we'll also examine findings from two night reports on downtown revitalization. So I'm really excited about that and I think it should be an interesting conversation. Anything in particular from your and Lillian that you want to learn about as we talk about downtown? Yeah I mean there's tons I can't wait to hear Rick and Amy talk about this but and I think for me what I'm really curious about is you know how do we make sure we are transit like it's almost like how are we reacting to what's happening in our communities and respond appropriately and at the same time also like how do we start to invest and help small businesses think about the future because I suspect this isn't the first time and in some ways you know a lot of scientists and you know folks who know a lot about the world say we're gonna see more of this and so in some ways it's like how do we help people pivot but also how do we rescue our downtown. I'm really curious about that. Yeah I think we're actually I think we're gonna go there for sure and and we have two extraordinary guests that are gonna help us explore that with Amy Menzer who's a senior associate at the research firm Community Science and then Rick Thurman who is a senior vice president for community and economic development at the Charlotte Center City Partners a nonprofit that drives community development in Charlotte North Carolina and and I'm excited because we have a local practitioner Rick who's really actively thinking about you know the future of downtown and really thinking about you know the adaptation of businesses and then Amy you know who's an expert in research. Now I'm sorry guys I'm still trying to log into my Zoom so bear with me but as long as you can hear me we can continue with the interview and then you should see me very shortly okay. So give me one second. So Amy and Rick are you on the screen? Yes. Okay. Okay perfect. So we'll just go ahead and and dive right in. So Rick I would love to start with you and and if you can tell us if you can start with some context setting. So how has the pandemic impacted Charlotte City Center and what are you seeing and learning on the ground in real time? Yeah thanks and thanks for for having me on the show. It's an honor to be here and glad to be on with Amy as well. I hope your weather improves. It's difficult right. I mean every every city center in the in the country is struggling through this so I don't want to sugarcoat it. You know Charlotte we were relatively lucky that it was a we were thriving downtown so we we have a good base to build from but a couple observations that we have seen that we're diving into and one is the so we're so one thing I understand is that at Center City Partners we work both in our downtown which we call uptown and also south end which is an adjacent corridor just to the south and they're they're next to each other but they're pretty different. So uptown is it's very very difficult for the small businesses right now and the reason why is is we're understanding that so many of them are overly dependent on the daytime worker primarily and secondarily would be the evening events you know NBA NFL AAA baseball downtown convention center etc. So those businesses have been geared to support that population that population essentially disappeared overnight and it's been really really hard south end on the other hand is more diverse in terms of its makeup of entities so there's there's an employment base but there's also a strong residential base and it's connected to a couple of the strong residential neighborhoods and you can walk through south end today and you might not realize there's a pandemic going on. A lot of our retail we've had no closures most of the restaurants are operating at 80 plus percent capacity in terms of our sales it's not that it's been easy by any stretch it has been difficult depending on the type of business you are and what your space is like but we have one business owner that's at 80% and their south end location and 15 to 20% in the uptown location. The other thing I think is the importance of public space you know we all know this apparently a lot of us work in this in this space but we had the combination of nowhere indoors to go and a lots of people living in small spaces apartments that were just they needed somewhere to go and they were finding places that weren't that we didn't think of as public space became public space overnight because people needed an outlet they needed a place to just get outside and see somebody besides themselves in the mirror or their roommate. That's really interesting can you hear me okay? Yeah yeah okay perfect. Sorry audience members we've had a few brownouts from the weather so that's why I'm asking the question that's really interesting so just a couple of clarification points on what you said though so it seems like depending on which part of the city center so like south end where there were a lot of residents live there it's doing pretty well because there's bodies walking around but but in downtown which is more dependent on you know workers coming in and out and on like games is doing a lot worse. There are a lot of fair amount of residents in our downtown you know I would argue that we absolutely need more for it to support the urban economy that we have and maybe they're not as interconnected to the urban economy as the daytime workers are so you know the residents aren't right in the city center there may be three or four blocks out and that makes a big difference if you're a small business as to who's gonna walk you know an extra two blocks to go to your restaurant. Absolutely yeah no that makes a lot of sense then of course you made the point about public spaces being really important at during the time which we've we've continued to seem so Amy I'm gonna I'm gonna call on you and and I would love to hear a couple things from you so you you started a downtown revitalization research before the pandemic before the the world. We lost your audio. We can't hear you. No worries I'll step in okay Lily but so Lily was just gonna ask Amy about the research that you started and so maybe if you could just sort of tell us a bit about what you learned and what you think is most relevant for downtown practitioners at this moment I think giving given kind of the broader landscape that you get to look at through your research and Lily just let us know when you're back on and we'll hear back to you. Thanks Lily and definitely I second Rick's statement of being grateful to be here and to share this conversation with all of you it feels very very important and timely. So the work that we started I'll start with that the work we started for the Knight Foundation the task was to look at the existing research base so what has been learned in the past about what makes a downtown effective downtown revitalization itself effective and really trying to understand from a technical research perspective is there evidence that says this is the way to do it and then also how do you go about measuring it what tested tools what sort of specific measures might a community use just to really understand if it's working and so either the short answer to that when it relates to downtown revitalization is that there isn't much that's been proven statistically to revitalize but what is known is that a lot of lived experience you know there's a lot of commonality in literature across the board about key elements that must be in place for revitalization things like business improvement district or somebody that's in charge of sort of managing somebody like the organization that Rick works for using marketing using really attracting local businesses the importance of public spaces in what what I wanted to pick up on what Rick said though that I think is really important is within those within those umbrella areas one size does not fit all you know it's like you have to know how to customize those buckets to the scenario that you're facing in your community we also looked at public spaces and what can create engaging public spaces and there is more literature around measurement in public spaces there's more instruments that have been tested because they tend to be relational they tend to be focusing on does somebody feel attached to a downtown does somebody feel like a spaces quality and so those are easier to conduct scientifically versus trying to compare communities to try to understand if one thing affected a community differently so for downtown revitalization what we put in the report are the common measures that have been used in the field I do want to just let people know and encourage people that do time to revitalization that never feel like they're doing measurement right but it's just really hard to do and the fact that you struggle is just inherent in the process we spend a lot of time working with ourselves and our own knowledge of data as well as working with a consultant in the development field that understands real estate to look at what data sources are available and it's the complexity of the small sizes of downtown and neighborhoods that make it challenging to use existing ArcGIS census other existing data sets that you think you should be able to use but really have limitations and so knowing that you will need to collect data if you have a specific purpose that you want to collect it for but that doesn't have to be a barrier it just means you have to prioritize great in terms of you want to talk about now or do you want me to pause well I was just going to say and for folks who are listening in the chat box we just linked out to the downtown toolkit that was released by night and community science actually yesterday and it highlights some of these tools that you're talking about and some of the ways and approaches that you're you're describing and it might be helpful for for the audience to know that the toolkit is really focused for practitioners it's simplified focused on just like the nuts and bolts of what are what is the literature says and our experience say is good to measure and the other document is much more of a literature review so if you kind of nerd out on that stuff the literature reviews the way to go if you just want to get some advice I go toolkit and I just had a couple of tips for now that that I've been hearing as I've been talking to communities in our work I think it's not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good so you know really thinking about what are you trying to do focusing on learning and really picking a couple core things to measure and also really push yourselves not to avoid so that's so maybe a better way to say that is really take the challenge of figuring out who's going to be affected by your policies and how I mean that's how you get to equity and I know we'll talk about that more later but I think that's an a key part in where we are right now is trying to wrestle with that question great now Rick can you tell us a little bit about how your organization is responding in support and perhaps some of the programs that you've launched specifically yeah sure what Amy also mentioned also great congrats on the publishing of that report I know many people in our team are going to dive into that and so actually just segue into the answer so I would say there's three things but I'm going to start with a macro thing and that is that just before this we were about a third of the way into our our center city 2040 vision plan so this is something we do every 10 years and so so we had a choice right we could either sort of keep going with the consultant we had hired and the program we laid out all the work we put in a place to push through the end or we could say hang on a second what are we doing so we press the pause button and we hit reset and we went back out we're now going out and re-engaging the community around you know we have to look at things through that the actual the new economic lens through sort of pandemic thinking but also the social issues that that we knew were important and we're studying and incorporating but clearly the black lives matter movement and it's sort of increasing prominence thank goodness around the country has allowed us to put a new lens on that report so the measurements that Amy that the piece that she published that's the kind of thinking that we'll try to bake into to that work as well but then scaling down a little bit we are working like a lot of cities to expand you know to expand on street dining for restaurants just to help them get more capacity but also you know we're thinking now about how can you expand outdoor meeting space so we have all of these buildings that that are worked really sort of suck employees up into them and but but now the safe place to meet is outside we have the climate to support that we have these sort of private plazas that are not going to be food truck radios anytime soon so maybe there's ways we can adapt that to public to public meeting spaces as well and and not just be sort of single use in some of this new public space we're looking at but also recreation and the final thing is something that work we started literally the day we started working from home on March 14th we started talking about um what could be our role in response and recovery we understood that government has to play the role of relief because relief is is a huge number I mean that is a huge task to take on and that's not something organizations like ours have the capacities to do but what we can do is help businesses adapt we understood that businesses are some of the needed change already like retail is changing rapidly but others were going to need to adapt their business to to to match the the sort of COVID-19 economic reality but also sort of increasing competition from different you know mammoth retailers online so we put together the center city small business innovation fund to it's not a relief program you know that it is designed to complement the existing relief programs but help our spit help our small businesses adapt and innovate so that they can hopefully make it through this but also be positioned to to be even stronger on the back end great and we just linked up to the innovation fund program for folks that are listening in if you want to learn more about that um so I'm hearing a couple things I'm hearing that community engagement is critical I want to bring in the point that Amy brought that you know there's no one size fits all you really have to understand your community and design and adapt for that it sounds like you're really looking at adapting and and modifying your public spaces and thinking about how to take everything outdoors and then also the the point about you know how do we get creative about complementing government relief right like government sort of takes a lead role but there's organizations like yours that really do a lot of that complementary work Amy when you're hearing these kinds of examples are there things that you think and and especially when we think about experimenting in this time versus versus trying to kind of create some sort of permanency for the future what are some of the measurements what are some of the things that you think are really critical for us to track in this moment so there is one overarching measurement that is important for both entorvialization and public spaces which is movement of people and that already came up you know the bodies moving um it's just sort of one of those stalwart things that is important in in main streets it's it's just understanding are you getting people down because that translates into retail sales it translates into sort of positive energy people wanting to be in a place so I think that thinking about how you measure that including who so it's very important not just to count bodies but to think about what ages what racial demographics who's feeling welcome in your space I know that's something that you all are thinking about in Charlotte beyond that measurement though there's a reason why in our toolkits there's a just such a long list of measures and it's because it really depends on what you're trying to achieve and so the first thing we do as consultants when we come into a place is try to help the a community think about really what are you trying to achieve for who and how do you think it's going to happen and that helps to figure out which of the metrics you need to push on I think in this time of piloting what's important that I've seen is that you really want to focus on what are the low hanging fruit that you actually can get the data for quickly and you can't do a massive survey so that then you can do a post-survey in six months like it's just you're it's going to be too slow for your process and so what is data either you already have that you can look at change over time or what you know like in in in the example that rick talked about the small business innovation fund you know what's in the applications or what's one or two strategic questions you can put in your application that may help you understand who you're serving and then later on you can look at the effects of outcomes by that if you you know asking about race so that then you can see did we really touch the populations we were we were going for and this is the last thought on that it's just making sure you actually stop and look at it I think communities are very good at collecting data and they're never actually looking at it and thinking about what they learned and so not losing that in the process of the iteration that's great feedback so Lily has been back on and looking at the working questions in the Q&A which we have a time but perhaps to be transitioned we could talk a little bit about equity it's it's sort of come up in both of your comments in terms of who of who is in these spaces and how this is revitalized and for whom so as we think about the rebuild Rick how are you thinking about equity in terms of charlotte's city center and and how should cities be thinking about measuring at Amy just as a follow well I feel like this could be a several hour conversation and merits that for sure but I think three areas one was with the fund I mentioned we had a strong focus on on minority on businesses both inviting them to apply and then and then ensuring they were granted out and so we we had we granted our first round which we announced tomorrow 63 of the businesses that got grants are minority owned but two is that the mural and Lily's background is actually in charlotte so that is actually looking down from our building it's black lives matter it's you know the street other cities have done this but now let's measure that space that was just created and let's see who comes let's see how they feel let's see had they been uptown before and but three is with with that vision plan I mentioned we've been talking a lot about this and struggling a little bit so Amy thank you for making us feel better about it being hard is you know measure what matters so if you say equity matters then measure it perhaps easier said than done but some of the things that Amy mentioned I've been taking notes is ensuring that as we go through this that we are measuring things like feeling welcome inclusiveness equity but also more than the feelings the actual economic who owns the businesses you know who's in those spaces you know what is the the failure rate for minority owned businesses near uptown versus non-minority owned businesses I mean those are the things that we we would like to measure and it's started talking about how we do that as opposed to the typical ways that downtown's measure which is you know jobs relocations residences office space all those things are important too but let's go deeper so that's great I mean Rick you basically answered my question I just have a few thoughts to add if that's okay Lily should I go ahead yeah yeah go ahead add your thoughts and then then we'll we'll I'll elevate a few questions okay so I think in addition to the the ideas that Rick put forward for measurement one of the things that's really important to think about is and actually track is like our how do you know you're increasing opportunities or reducing barriers so like building that into your measurement plan like how are we making it easier for people to access the services and making sure that formerly disadvantaged or currently disadvantaged folks have not just not just that they can apply but that they're encouraged to apply that they're sort of that you're removing the barriers to applying but stepping above that for a minute it's really important to think about what does equity mean in your context who has been excluded intentionally or unintentionally who has been harmed by development in the past we all I mean in so many of our places urban renewal destroyed african-american thriving business communities how do we sort of think about those communities and then think about how that's the equity price right not just equal but like how do we create better opportunities so that they can actually sort of regain and advance I'll stop there because I know we want to ask questions now I think I think that's that's such a great point that barriers piece is a great point and if we could link to both reports please in the in the chat box because I because Amy you really go into that deep for how we can be measuring especially around the equity piece and I know many many practitioners are thinking actively about that I'm going to highlight two questions and then we'll we'll we'll call it a wrap but the first one is from our dear friend Lee Lee Kessler from Charlotte and and so as as you both are planning for development of center cities so so Amy this would be from you know a research perspective and Rick from a practitioner perspective what assumptions are you making about the future of automobiles driving into center business district so Rick I'll throw that to you first yeah that's a great question and you know sort of a two-part answer and one is you know the future that many of us would like to see and then the current reality and and you know as much as we talk about designing streets for people which is a key element of our center city 2040 vision plan it's not going to happen overnight so so how do you get there and not introduce so much pain into the process that you break your center city in that process and that is the balancing act I think cities like Charlotte are are trying to figure out because I mean we are we are a booming sort of some belt city that was built on sprawl and we're now trying to kind of put the genie back in the bottle probably more compact than some southern downtowns but I think the assumption is that fewer people will be driving in the future but then the challenge is there'll be more people so how does that number balance out in the end Amy did you have any comments on this I think that the thing that comes to mind and not knowing Charlotte's public transportation infrastructure at all other than assuming it's probably not super robust thinking learning from places that have tried to make adaptations within their existing structures like bus rapid transit like where are there strategic cost effective investments because as a planner you know that if you if you don't change your ordinances if you don't change your structure you're going to keep getting what you've always gotten and so figuring out like as you're saying rick you know as a downtown revitalization person I understand the complexity but you're never going to get there if you don't start making those sort of innovations and investments and pilots and testing absolutely last question I want to dive a bit into public spaces and so I'll start with you rick anything that that just really surprised you around the usage of public spaces and and Charlotte and the city center yeah maybe a couple things one is the especially early on the number of sort of outdoor restaurant spaces that just became co-opted by people you know when restaurants were closed how residents just spilled into them and sort of used them as their own kind of private patio space which tells me there's not enough public space provided that if people are forced to use sort of private space then that's something we have to look at and the second is what's right behind you so there's a lot of things we could say about it it's been a fascinating thing as it unfolded it sort of happened literally overnight and then now we're sort of learning in retrospect but one comment really stuck with me it was in our staff meeting after this as we were talking about it as a afro-american gentleman who said you know this is a black space uptown and prior to this I'm not sure I could think of a really prominent black space uptown so the idea of black spaces I think is a powerful one and it was sort of gave rise to a really robust conversation as to what that means what it looks like and how do you achieve them and then how do you measure them to understand them. That's really powerful and I think the arts piece is just Rick so this background that I've that I've had ever since we chatted it has been most commented on out of any background that I've used it's just really extraordinary this mural. Amy I would love to have your response on this because practitioners are actively thinking about you know how could we potentially make these you know this flexibility in public space permanent right and but data is really important for telling that story so could you could you tell us a bit about how practitioners should be thinking about that. Yeah so some of the the most common data collection methods that can be used are intercept surveys so actually having people in the places and asking about like zip code where they come from because I think Rick that helps to think about like that's an a specific indicator of welcomeness to some degree the asking about the frequency of using space what else they were doing because that helps you understand the multiplier effects when you're trying to quantify that movement. There are and I also want to just point the listeners to the existing questions that are in the toolkit in the appendices because there are some robust questions that get at quality of the public space the how safe people feel which is really critical how well could they feel and I think the safety one is one that's really probably changing within COVID because of course there's not questions about how safe people feel from the virus but there are questions that probably can be adapted and that's a big determinant of whether people will use the space which is like like perception is that aiming yeah yeah the perception of safety and really the literature says you have to find a balance you can over you can over control of space especially right now as they think about systemic racism that's a really important consideration but then you also there are other indicators there are other ways that you can manage a space to help people to actually feel space and there's some of that information documented in the literature review about what literature is found. Got it got it well we'll end on that check out the toolkit Lillian come on back in and and thanks for for being a amazing teammate Lillian we will miss you sorry about all the technical issues Rick and Amy and Lillian thanks for taking over the interview but I really enjoyed talking to both of you about downtime revitalization and how you know cities really can be thinking about about continuing to measure this work and new innovative ideas so really really appreciate it and and so next week on coast to coast we will be talking about equity and and the 10-minute walk rule and how cities really can be thinking about how to you know reallocate funds in their budget more equitably and communities that don't have access to green spaces so so it should be an interesting conversation um and um and Lillian um we're not sure if you'll be there but but um you know uh we'll we'll see you then yes with chubby yes exactly bye take care stay well bye thank you