This one’s been in the can for a while. Please click thru an read the entire story. I think it’s worth it.
A couple of blocks from the Main Street in Oberlin is a lot that used to be a car dealer, a dry cleaner, and restaurant chain that all ended up being vacant. Acquired by Sustainable Community Associates, the abandoned brownfield will become a sustainably designed, mixed-use building containing 46 apartments for sale and 12,000 square feet of commercial space. The founders of Sustainable Community Associates are Ben Ezinga, Joshua Rosen and Naomi Sabel. Cool Cleveland’s CIO George Nemeth spent time with them recently discovering why their development is different and why the Civic Innovation Lab gave them a grant.
George Nemeth: If I say “what does Sustainable Community Associates mean to you…?” In fact, let’s go down the line and say, “Here’s how I would explain it to someone.”
Naomi Sabel: I think what we’re trying to do is projects that take on social issues…
GN: What would a social issue that you would want to take on be?
NS: If you look Oberlin, we were trying to deal with affordable housing, mixed-income housing and stepping away from the model of geographically isolating income drifts. We’re looking at a component for economic development and a support structure for community and vitalization that has a more active, vibrant downtown. I think that we want to work on projects that reflect the issues facing each community, and not do a boiler plate project for whatever we do next, but really have developments speak to the needs of the local community.
GN: Okay. Josh?
Joshua Rubin: I think Sustainable Community Associates is about taking on challenges that other people think either nothing could be done or that someone would be crazy to do, and you tackle those challenges, and I think that’s really what for me this Oberlin project has been about. People would tell us, “Well, downtown has stayed this way for 50 years, and the east side has never been developed,” and there was a lot of people talking about what isn’t possible, and I think we, at our core, are trying to figure out every day what is possible, and I think that’s sort of been our MO from the beginning.
NS: And pushing that “What is possible?” and answering that question and then moving it forward. Then “What’s next?” and what would we have considered before is now possible because we’re thinking in these terms. So it’s pushing out that definition.
Ben Ezinga: I think one of the things that we do well and that has gotten us as far as we’ve gotten is recognizing opportunities and seeing connections that might not be apparent to other people. For instance the land that we’ve got I think now is obviously an awesome site to develop and a lot of people can see that, but if you’d look at it ten years ago, the opportunity might not have been apparent. Green building is another interesting example where a lot of people say, “Green building is something for yuppies buying half million dollar lofts,” and we say, “No, green building is something for somebody who works as a secretary at the college and could really use it to save $60 a month on their heating bill.”It’s making it relevant to people who don’t pay attention to it because it’s not being directed towards them….
I’d also like to offically kick off a new category here @ bfd - the beta community. Back in Novembe Neil Takemoto of Cool Town Studios, asked me to begin a partnership with him to working on bringing investment dollars to Cleveland in the form of an beta community. I’ve been having preliminanry conversations with various people, and now’s the time to start drawing that circle wider.
Would love to have your comments on either the SCA piece or the CTS idea.
CoolCleveland.com - Biz Tech Profile Of Sustainable Community Associates