Residents need greater voice in redevelopment plan
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/25/07
BY TRINA SCORDO
Story Chat Post Comment
There has been a struggle to make Asbury Park's Springwood Avenue
redevelopment plan a transparent, resident-driven process. Let us
define these terms.
Transparent and resident-driven mean a completely open process of city
government in which every aspect of the plan is not only divulged to
residents, but residents are the decision-makers. It means that
decisions should not be made in back rooms and then presented to the
public. These discussions and decisions should be made with residents
as part of the process, not as an afterthought. Residents who live in
the redevelopment area should have the right to control how their
community is developed.
While the current draft of the Springwood Avenue Redevelopment Plan is
an improvement over the original plan presented two years ago, it is
not yet a community-building document. To make it such a document,
there would have to be measurable and identifiable community benefits
in the way of low-income housing, jobs for local residents and a plan
for a community center and recreation that is developed by local
residents. Many of these items are being left to the redeveloper
agreement, as opposed to working with Springwood Avenue area residents
to develop a community-benefit agreement.
A community-driven redevelopment plan is a partnership between
residents and the city in which residents are trained on aspects of
redevelopment through a series of workshops, much like the ones held
in Asbury Park by Monmouth County Leadership Dialogue last year. Some
resident inputs from these workshops include the development of a
community-benefit agreement, increased opportunities for ownership for
low-income residents, the development of a large-scale grocery store,
restoration and inclusion of the West Side Community Center and
opportunities for local contractors in construction.
We are aware that residents, through a series of community workshops
and city-sponsored meetings, have repeatedly made demands for a
definition of low-income and affordable housing. We urge the
Springwood Avenue Advisory Committee and City Council to define
low-income housing based on the median income of Asbury Park's working
poor, not the skewed median income of the entire city. Further, we
support an increase in the percentage of affordable and low-income
housing to 40 percent rather than the "at least 20 percent" in the
current plan. The redevelopment plan should be adopted by the mayor
and council only after a community-benefit agreement is developed and
agreed upon by residents.
We urge the city to look at Dudley Street in Roxbury, Mass., the
anti-poverty initiative in Savannah, Ga., and redevelopment in
Rochester, N.Y., and Baltimore. Each of these cities worked with the
residents who would be directly affected by redevelopment as
participants and decision-makers, not solely as recipients of
information who can voice an opinion.
Many of these cities also used community-benefit agreements to ensure
local sustainability. That means the money generated circulates within
the community. In this way, the focus is not solely on attracting new
people for their money; the focus is on developing the strengths and
abilities of those already living in the community.
We urge the leadership of Springwood Avenue Advisory Committee, City
Manager Terry Reidy and the City Council to represent the interests of
the city's majority: the poor and the working poor, mostly black,
families of Asbury Park. Redevelopment in Asbury Park has not
represented the realities of such families. Instead, redevelopment has
represented the interests of those who wish to create a resort town.
The city government should do more to support an open dialogue with
Asbury Park's poor and put a stronger effort into recruiting local
leadership that is representative of Asbury Park's working poor.
Redevelopment should address the problems of poverty and violence, not
only locally but globally. What we are witnessing in Asbury Park is a
microcosm of what is taking place in the nation and in the world: the
affluent controlling and taking over resources as the poor are pushed
out and forced to make due on subsistence wages, housing and resources.
We believe we can work together to make redevelopment in Asbury Park
more than a process of gentrification. We believe we can work with
residents, stakeholders and city government to create a sustainable
community that is just and equitable to all people in Asbury Park.
Trina Scordo is chairwoman of the Progressive Action Subcommittee on
Springwood Avenue.
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