Fifty People Attend Kick off Meeting for Revitalization of Torresdale Ave in Phila
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Loading ...Over fifty Tacony residents, businesses, property owners and friends attended the kick-off meeting for the Historic Tacony Revitalization Project on October 172011 held in the basement meeting room of at the Tacony Branch of the Philadelphia Free Library.
Addressing a standing room only crowd, Pete Naccarato, Board president of the Tacony Community Development Corporation (TCDC) welcomed everyone and shared the history of the Tacony CDC. He highlighted many of the important projects the CDC had completed during the past ten years. Mr. Naccarato urged the audience to become an active part of the commercial corridor revitalization project to begin shortly for Torresdale and Longshore Avenues. He stated “The Historic Tacony Revitalization Project is a very important priority for the Tacony Community Development Corporation.”
After Mr. Naccarato made his remarks, he introduced Donna Ann Harris, of Heritage Consulting Inc., a consultant to the TCDC. Ms. Harris spoke about the Main Street Approach to commercial corridor revitalization and how it would be used in Tacony. Ms. Harris outlined the reasons commercial corridors had changed over the past 30 years, and how these changes had affected Torresdale Avenue. She then spoke about how residents, businesses and property owners can become actively involved in the revitalization of Torresdale Avenue by undertaking volunteer projects. Ms. Harris discussed the team structure of the Main Street Approach, which will be used to organize the project’s efforts. This comprehensive approach will focus on four areas:
- the design, safety and cleanliness of the corridor;
- the promotion of the district for shoppers;
- communication, fundraising and volunteer development, and
- expansion of existing businesses and recruitment of new businesses to the avenue.
At the heart of the effort, Ms. Harris noted, was the power of volunteers. As active partners, volunteers provide the energy for the revitalization effort. She invited attendees to join teams to create specific projects to help solve problems. She also introduced the job description and press release for the new corridor manager to be hired for the effort.
After her remarks, the audience broke into small groups and to identify top challenges and ideas for new opportunities on the Torresdale Avenue corridor. Each of the seven small groups identified their top three ideas and concerns, and shared them with the audience. After everyone had shared his or her ideas and concerns, Ms. Harris spoke about where each fit within the team structure of the Main Street Approach. There was consensus about forming volunteer run teams on the following topics: Economic development, clean and safe, and design/historic preservation.
After Ms. Harris concluded her remarks, the audience reassembled to three discussions based on the major topics identified to discuss possible first projects to undertake to improve the Torres dale Ave corridor. The group agreed to meet again to discuss next steps and form project teams on Monday October 24, 2011 at the Tacony Branch of the Free Library at Torresdale Avenue and Knorr Streets. Registration begins at 5:30PM; the meeting will be held from 6PM to 7:30PM.
More information and an agenda for the meeting is available from Donna Ann Harris at 267 251 5444 or historictaconyrevitalization@gmail.com
The mission of the Tacony Community Development Corporation is the revitalization and preservation of the neighborhood of Tacony.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...The Tacony Community Development Corporation (TCDC) announced today that it will hold a kick off meeting for its new effort to revitalize the Torresdale Avenue commercial corridor in the Tacony neighborhood on October 17, 2011. This meeting will begin with registration at 5:30 PM and the program begins at 6PM and runs until 8PM. The meeting will be held in the basement meeting room at the Tacony Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia at 6742 Torresdale Avenue (at Knorr Street) in Philadelphia PA 19135. All neighborhood residents, merchants and property owners are invited to attend.
The purpose of the meeting is to discuss why the Tacony Community Development Corporation is launching the Historic Tacony Revitalization Project now and what they hope to achieve in the next few years. Peter Naccarato, the Board President of the Tacony CDC will also discuss the role of the Retail Market Analysis study being conducted now, and the process the organization will undertake to hire a full time employee this fall to manage the commercial district revitalization work.
After Mr. Naccarato speaks, Donna Ann Harris, principal of Heritage Consulting Inc., a consultant to the Tacony Community Development Corporation will give a twenty minute presentation on “An Introduction to Commercial District Revitalization.” After the presentation, Ms. Harris will facilitate a series of small group discussions where neighbors can identify their major issues and concerns about the Torresdale Avenue commercial district that they wish to see changed. The small groups will present their ideas and Ms. Harris will describe how these concerns fit within the Main Street Four Point Approach™. Small group participants will be encouraged to identify projects to solve some of these problems that might interest them from these lists. The next meeting date will be determined to create committees to move the revitalization effort forward.
“We are very excited about the launching of our revitalization effort for Torresdale Avenue in historic Tacony” said Mr. Naccarato, “we hope to see many community members at this meeting, and hear their views about the future of the Avenue.”
More information and an agenda for the meeting is available from Donna Ann Harris at 215 546 1988 or historictaconyrevitalization@gmail.com
The mission of the Tacony Community Development Corporation is the revitalization and preservation of the neighborhood of Tacony.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...We often do training for startup Main Street organizations who just cannot seem to grasp the importance and central role of work plans in Main Street revitalization. For a recent client, we developed this short piece that lists ten ways to use work plans.
- Use your work plan as a volunteer recruitment tool to show individuals as well as partnering groups exactly what you need them to do, since all the tasks are listed.
- To give confidence to a new program, your work plans can show funders and others that you can complete complex events with volunteers running the show, because all the tasks and money needed is written down.
- As a blue print for next year’s budget planning, your work plan can be used as a baseline document from which you can make improvements.
- The Board can use work plans to prevent taking on ill advised projects, or poorly performing projects hosted by others that they want to foist on your very successful organization
- Work plans approved by the board allow the Executive Director to say no to pet projects suggested by others. “I’m sorry our Promotion Committee just cannot take on another project because our Board has voted on our work plan for the year.”
- Use several years worth of work plans to help with forecasting budget increases, staffing and strategic planning.
- Use your work plans show local government how many groups with whom your program partners in a given year
- Work plans permits funders to understand how well you manage scores of volunteers with only one staff member and why they should invest in your well run organization.
- Use your work plan as a raw annual report showing what your program accomplished in the year.
- Use the work plan to celebrate all the fantastic achievements of the Board, Staff and volunteers when the fiscal year is done.
Have other ideas? We would love to hear them.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...On Wed. October 5, 2011 we are presenting a half day workshop for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission about a favorite topic Diversify Your Revenue: A workshop for Business Improvement Districts. This session is now filled to capacity.
The survey was sent to 85 business improvement districts, Main Street organizations and commercial corridor organizations in the Delaware Valley and other bordering counties. The survey was open for four weeks, and we got a 15% response rate. The survey results are available here. Survey Responses DVRPC BID-SID survey
We also prepared more detailed charts of the results of specific survey questions dealing with the variety of current revenue sources and the major concerns facing survey respondents. Find this chart here. BID SID Handout revenue concerns.
If you are interested in seeing a copy of the PowerPoint presentation please contact us for a complimentary copy.
Here is the promotional literature about the event
Diversify Your Revenue: A Workshop for SIDs and BIDs
This half-day workshop will assist existing Special Improvement Districts and Business Improvement Districts working in downtowns and commercial corridors in the region to diversify their revenue sources. SIDs/BIDs today are pressed, as never before, to offer their ongoing clean and safe efforts, retain existing businesses and grow others in their district and promote the downtown with ever dwindling resources. This workshop will focus on proven revenue generating strategies for small and midsized BIDs/SIDs in the region.
Before the workshop, the presenter will circulate a brief survey to all invitees to gather information about current revenue sources of SIDs/BIDs in the region and key issues about fundraising. We will use the survey results to hone the agenda.
During the workshop, we expect to speak about boosting sponsorship and special event income, expanding contributed revenue especially from fundraising events and discuss a wide variety of earned income opportunities. Our emphasis will be on intermediate level revenue opportunities that the organization controls rather than grants and government support. During our morning together, we will do one short group exercise, and end with Top Ten Tips. We’ll take questions throughout the program. After the workshop, we will have a Dutch treat lunch and take a behind the scenes tour of our host’s downtown district. Participants will receive a Resource Packet including a CD of templates, forms, articles and work plans to help you increase earned and contributed revenue when you return from the workshop.
Learning objectives
- Learn about typical revenue sources for SIDS/BIDs in the region from a pre- workshop survey by the presenter
- Understand why SIDs/BIDs should have diverse funding stream of both contributed and earned revenue, especially revenue the organization controls.
- Gain detailed knowledge about how to implement or expand existing sponsorship, special event and fundraising events geared to downtown organizations.
Agenda
8:30 Coffee and pastries
9:00 Welcome and introductions around the room
9:10 Trends in budget cuts for downtown organizations nationwide; why diverse revenue sources for existing SIDs/BIDs make sense; results of SID/BID revenue survey; typical revenue sources of SIDs/BIDs today; ideal revenue mixes pie charts; where does contributed money come from today?
9:40 Why focus on revenue YOU control? Common earned income sources for SID/BIDs in the region.
9:55 Special Events; adding component parts to existing events to boost revenue
10:35 Sponsorship; review sponsorship benefits; creating a year-long sponsorship program
11:05 Signature Fundraising Events; deciding which ones makes sense; location; adding component parts to existing fundraising events to boost revenue
11:45 Review and Q & A
12:15 Adjourn for lunch at a local restaurant
1:30 Behind the scenes tour of host downtown
3:00 Depart for home
The DVRPC flyer and sign up information is here which has an agenda. We will have lunch and then a tour of downtown Collingswood NJ.
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AltaMira Press, the publisher of my 2007 book New Solutions for House Museums: Ensuring the Long Term Preservation for America’s Historic Homes, recently issued the book in a wide variety of formats for e-readers including the Kindle, Nook and other versions. Ordering the book is now very easy from the publisher’s web site.
The publisher has also provided a variety of quotes from recent reviews in professional journals. Take a look below.
“In this book, Donna Ann Harris, a preservation consultant with more than 20 years of experience, provides a critical resource for boards, staff, and volunteers at historic house museums, who need to consider whether creative alternatives to the house museum model may allow them to better realize their fundamental obligation—the preservation of the house.”—Michelle McClellan, University of Michigan, Winter 2009, The Journal of Heritage Stewardship
“Harris’s book is organized in a very clear fashion….At every step, the author displays an emphatic objectivity….Harris comes well positioned to write such a book….Donna Harris has done a great service for historic house museums and the people who are passionate about them.”—September 5, 2008, The Public Historian
“This publication brings together a number of workable solutions for a contemporary issue of concern….Timely, concise, practical, well researched….and written in everyday language, this is a handy management tool.”—November 2008, Museums Australia Magazine
“Harris’ message is prudent and pragmatic and the operating circumstances surrounding her case studies of house museums that have successfully made the transition to a new owner or a new use will be very familiar to many small museum operators…”—Journal of Museums AOTEAROA
“Donna Ann Harris brings unique insights to a critical problem facing advocates of historic preservation: the proliferation of house museums, too often under-funded and under-staffed. Through penetrating analysis of actual as well as hypothetical cases, she outlines how transitions to new uses and new owners can best achieve the desired result of saving the building itself. This book should be required reading for anyone even remotely connected with running a house museum.”—David G. DeLong, professor emeritus of architecture and former chair, graduate program in historic preservation, University of Pennsylvania
“Taking care of an old house isn’t easy, and being a responsible steward of a historic house museum is particularly challenging. In this thoughtful book, Donna Harris offers advice that can help boards and staff ask tough questions–and, if necessary, make tough decisions–to ensure a viable future for the historic resources they manage.”—Richard Moe, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation
“I would certainly recommend this book to my colleagues in the historic house museum community who may be facing house museum sustainability challenges, and who may be able to use the contents and insights offered in this book as a source of inspiration, and/or as a catalyst for moving their institution forward in pursuit of a successful alternative.”—Terry Dickinson, Newport Mansions
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This summer has meant unrelenting travel to Main Street towns all over the country, and we’ve loved every minute of it. In July, we spent two weeks in Texas working with the Texas Main Street program for reassessments of four towns that are designated as both Preserve America and Main Street towns. We were delighted to undertake this work again as we did last year with Debra Farst, Jill Robinson and the staff of architects and heritage tourism colleagues at Texas Main Street. July in Texas is hot, but somehow the dry heat—even at 106 degrees—was better than being in humid Philadelphia.
We took trips to four small towns in East Texas:
- Nacogdoches, which promotes itself as the oldest town in Texas and has a lovely piazza in the middle of downtown
- Marshall is the supposed birthplace of Boogie Woogie music, and is starting to become a vibrant live music destination
- Mt. Vernon, where the local museum exhibits hometown football star Don Meredith’s sports memorabilia along with a nationally significant butterfly collection donated by another collector. Mt. Vernon’s preservation ethic is superb, and
- Pittsburg which is restarting its Main Street effort after a hiatus, claims to have the only crooked Main Street in the state.
All were fascinating because they were real places, with passionate volunteers who loved their town and had taken remarkable steps towards changing the image and economics of their beloved commercial district. Texas Main Street assembled three person teams to provide observations and recommendations for these towns that had been in the Texas Main Street program in some cases more than twenty years to help them continue with the revitalization journey. We worked on Organization and Promotion points, and enjoyed working with Sarah, Bo, Chet and Teresa, all highly experienced Main Street managers in their respective towns.
Reaching Further: Cultivating African American, Latino and Youth Volunteers
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...For a recent assignment for Texas Main Street we did some additional research about how to do a better job recruiting African American, Latino, and youth volunteers to downtown organizations. Alexander Balloon conducted this research for us, and he created an excellent bibliography. We pass along some of the better tips he found in his research below.
Main Street organizations can do a better job recruiting from groups that have been historically overlooked as volunteers, and in fact, some have never even been asked. There are great opportunities for organizations to engage potential African American volunteers through the Martin Luther King Day of Service. This is a nationwide effort, held in mid January each year, and offers opportunities for any kind of volunteer group to support community projects.You can post projects on their web site. This is a great gateway opportunity to introduce your organization with a worthwhile volunteer activity downtown.
Our research has also found that community institutions are key in developing both African American and Latino volunteers. Approaching community leaders and institutions as partners is a great way to begin a broader engagement effort. Local churches, fraternal and professional organizations, community groups affiliated with these groups are excellent potential partners for both individual volunteer recruitment and group activities downtown.
College volunteers are also an excellent prospect for involving younger people in your downtown program. New trends among this demographic group reveal a group ethic, civic-mindedness, and technological proficiency. Given these skills, youth are a valuable resource for any organization in search of volunteers. Creating meaningful volunteer projects is crucial to recruiting this group, and getting involved with your local college offers great potential.
A final new prospective volunteer group is families. Creating age-appropriate volunteer opportunities that span an entire family offers new promise to reach this new group of volunteers. Special events can offer a wide spectrum of age-appropriate tasks to get the whole family involved. Creating opportunities outside of the traditional 9 to 5 timeframe, and offering flexibility is crucial to making your volunteer opportunities family-friendly. Developing volunteers at a young age pays off, as those that volunteer at an early age are more likely to volunteer as they get older.
In order to reach these groups effectively traditional volunteer recruitment tools have to be stretched, adapted, and reworked. With carefully crafted recruitment and retention efforts your organization can reach even further for new volunteers. We have created an excellent bibliography about engaging Latino, African American and Youth Volunteers. Please contact us for a complimentary copy.
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Donna's article Make More Money From Members from Main Street News was a handout at the event
Finally, the long delayed Fundraising Symposium for Iowa Main Street for February during the worst snow in decades, took place instead in the sweltering heat of Des Moines on August 2. This was a great workshop for Iowa Main Street communities because IMS invited four highly experienced fundraising consultants (I was pleased to be considered in this group!) to offer the same topic for their local managers. Managers were organized in groups based on their town size and tenure in the program. I worked with the midsized towns, with populations from 5,000 to 25,000. This was a mixed group. Some towns were new to the Main Street program, while one veteran manager had been working in her community for more than twenty years!
When the event was scheduled for February, I learned that most of these towns were dealing with what I call people problems—board members and others that were reluctant to raise money or did not know how. Given this complaint—it certainly is common!—I developed a series of training modules to deal with these issues in the morning of the daylong event. I am especially interested in making boards understand that interest and talent for making “the Ask” –an in person solicitation for money or support—is a learned skill. Some people are born fundraisers. Others learn it the hard way, like me. Regardless, Board members should be paired with fundraising tasks that they will actually want to undertake, and not everyone will gladly ask someone else for money.
Everyone benefits when downtown is thriving
We spent time talking about “friendraising” not fundraising as a background to the wide range of tasks used in Main Street organizations to raise money. I distributed a take home exercise meant to help board members understand the range of activities needed to raise funds, and to identify what they would feel most comfortable doing. Like trying to match a volunteer to a job, Board members must be given fundraising tasks they will actually complete rather than avoid in their fundraising role.
Later on, we learned about aspects of developing a capital campaign or a major fundraising project in town, including an introduction to prospect research, donor cultivation and developing good prospect files to support fundraising over the long term. We did one fun role-play exercise where groups were divided into five teams, and asked to prepare a part of the five-part process for making “the Ask.” We had a lot of fun as people tried to convince Mrs. Teal (our prospect) to support a technology upgrade and history book project for a fictional Persimmon Main Street.
If you are interested in learning more about this fundraising workshop, or other workshops we already do, please click here to see all of the workshops we offer
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...This fall we wrap up an important audience research study for historic Whitesbog Village. Alexander Balloon a consultant working with us for the last three years was the manager on this project and he writes about this project below.
Located on nearly 3,000 acres in the heart of the New Jersey Pinelands, Whitesbog Village is a place described as by early visitors as desolate, barren, and unforgiving. Today, this state-owned historic site is managed by the Whitesbog Preservation Trust through a management agreement. Originally a family owned cranberry farm founded in 1857, the historic Whitesbog Village became world famous for its contributions to agriculture. In the early 1900’s Elizabeth White and her father cultivated the first wild blueberry for commercial production. With her success the farm at Whitesbog grew into a central production center for blueberries and cranberries complete with large-scale production facilities, worker’s cottages, company store, school house, and worker amenities.
Our audience research and evaluation study highlighted a number of interesting findings. Visitors to this historic site had a variety of interests including historic preservation, folklore and folklife of the Pinelands, and of course–blueberries. Incorporating some of the many themes of Whitesbog into programs for both structured and unstructured experiences presents tremendous opportunities for increased interpretation. Our on-line survey asked respondents why they visited historic sites and what their motivation was. Over 267 people responded to our survey and they listed their motivations for visiting an historic site, from most popular to least interesting below.
- Gaining information or knowledge
- Enriching my understanding
- Being moved by beauty
- Seeing rare/uncommon/valuable things
- Imagining other times or places
- Spending time with friends/family/other people
- Feeling a spiritual connection
- Seeing my children learning new things
- Recalling my travels/childhood experiences/other memories
- Feeling a sense of belonging
- Reflecting on the meaning of what I was looking at
- Thinking what it would be like to own special things
We are wrapping up our report and recommendations on the survey, which will assist Whitesbog in future program development, planning, and evaluation. Consider how these program elements and motivations are incorporated into programs at your historic site and let us know how we can help with your audience research project.
Handouts posted for AASLH session Beyond Colonial: Expanding Stories Promoting Revitalization
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Thomas Massey House Marple Township PA
We submitted our handouts in advance of our session on Thursday September 15 at 8: 30 am at the upcoming American Association for State and Local History annual conference to be held in Richmond VA next week. These handouts have just been uploaded on the AASLH web site. Check them out. There is a two page summary of the project, the executive summary of the entire report and the PowerPoint presentation in the bundled PDF file. We worked with all of the historic sites pictured here.
John Chadds House in Chadds Ford PA
Here is a short summary about the presentation.
Our session that was accepted for the upcoming AASLH conference is about our public history project for Delaware County PA. This session is called Beyond Colonial: Expanding Stories, Promoting Revitalization. We were so pleased to win the Grand Jury Prize from the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia for this project in May this year.
- Thornbury Train Station in Delaware County PA
The just-completed Delaware County (PA) Public History Study’s main goal was to identify needs of the 80 county history organizations, and encourage collaborative projects, including expanding the county’s interpreted history beyond the Colonial era. The study’s research identified that 77% of the organizations are still run solely by volunteers, so technical assistance and networking were tools used to encourage tourism product development (new tours and joint programming) as well as neighborhood revitalization. The project seeks to commemorate suburban Philadelphia locations associated with industrial heritage, civil rights and suburban development through theme tours, while not neglecting the county’s numerous Revolutionary War era sites. A volunteer developed list serve and website connects all organizations and promotes new programming. Volunteer teams are now working on cooperative projects that promote their communities and organizations.
The panel includes Heritage Consulting Inc.’s client for this project, Jill Hall, Senior Preservation Planner with the Delaware County (PA) Planning Department, A. Richard Paul, Chairman of the Delaware County Historical Commission, along with Alexander Balloon a consultant at Heritage Consulting and Donna Ann Harris. Our session begins at 1:30PM to 3:15PM, please stop by if you are in Richmond.
Contact us if you would like to learn more about this project.