Three Priorities For 2014: 3 - Redeveloping Race Street

I am chair of The Save Race Street Committee, which residents of Race Street formed in November, 2008 under the leadership of Min. Terry D. Fluker, and which has worked since then to beautify our street, and to maintain and enhance its value.

The Committee's work has garnered considerable press coverage, in print, on television, and on radio.

Our biggest work may lie ahead of us - namely, the execution of a community plan for our street. The plan, titled "Race Street 20/20 Vision," is the product of a visioning session held in November 2011, as interpreted by staffers at Pittsburgh's Urban Redevelopment Authority.

There are two versions of RS2020. In November, 2012, at our annual meeting, the Committee adopted the shorter version of the document as our community plan.

The challenge now is to learn how to move forward with it. That involves forming a non-profit corporation, and educating ourselves about things like, the role of public art (and art generally) in redevelopment; the types, benefits and drawbacks of historical designations (The Young Preservationists Association named Race Street one of the "Top Ten Best Preservation Opportunities in Pittsburgh" in 2012); how development works generally; and public safety and crime reduction strategies.

I believe we are well-positioned. Rob Stephany, former head of the URA, has moved from there to The Heinz Endowments, but remains a friend to the Committee - in fact, he and I have met regularly for several months now, and he is connecting me with people who to help with some of the things just listed.

Pittsburgh's new mayor, Bill Peduto, has affirmed the Committee's work for years, and has a personal connection to the street.

He also seems to be making of point of mentioning Homewood when he talks about "building a New Pittsburgh," as in this Post-Gazette piece about his intent to attract 20,000 new residents to Pittsburgh over the next 10 years:

The mayor sees opportunities for more residential development on the South Side, particularly near SouthSide Works; the Strip District; and Homewood, a struggling neighborhood he is seeking to rebuild.

The Committee has also made friends with organizations like GTECH Strategies, Operation Better Block and Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh.

And I am trying to avoid mentioning myself specifically, but the reality is that I have a slew of personal relationships that could accrue to Race Street's benefit if I use them well. I should not be ashamed or shy about that. I should be grateful, and wise in tapping those relationships. God knows we need all the help we can get.

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Three Priorities: The Complete Series
Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond
Three Priorities For 2014: 1 - Encouraging The Body Of Christ
Three Priorities For 2014: 2- Growing Businesses.
Three Priorities For 2014: 2.5 - Why Build Businesses?
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Legal Shield
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Homewood Capital Partners
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Luminaria Productions
Three Priorities For 2014: 3 - Redeveloping Race Street
Three Priorities For 2014: Closing Thoughts

Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond

My mini-bio at the right ends with the slogan, "Christ, commerce, community." Those three words distill so much of my life and so much of what I want to do that my thinking about my priorities for 2014 has come down to three categories of action, related to those three words.

Given my beliefs, abilities, interests, position and location, it seems that as of now, the best uses of Elwin Green in Homewood will be:

• Encouraging fellow members of the Body of Christ,
• Growing businesses, and
• Redeveloping Race Street

Christ, commerce, community.

Theoretically, I could do an infinitude of other things - or at least, try to, venturing limitlessly into other areas. But those three are enough to occupy me, perhaps for the rest of my life (indeed, I intend to have the first two occupy me for the rest of my life, wherever I am. I expect some variation of the third to do so also, as I expect to remain on Race Street for the rest of my life; but that is less certain than the first two).

Christ, commerce, community.

Why write a blog post about this, rather than just noting it in my journal? Because all three of those priorities will require considerable involvement by other people, and because for all I know someone reading this may want to be involved.

Over the next week or so, I will outline specific projects and processes related to each category of action. So come back tomorrow if you'd like to learn how I plan to encourage the Body of Christ in Homewood in 2014.

Christ, commerce, community.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

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Three Priorities: The Complete Series
Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond
Three Priorities For 2014: 1 - Encouraging The Body Of Christ
Three Priorities For 2014: 2- Growing Businesses.
Three Priorities For 2014: 2.5 - Why Build Businesses?
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Legal Shield
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Homewood Capital Partners
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Luminaria Productions
Three Priorities For 2014: 3 - Redeveloping Race Street
Three Priorities For 2014: Closing Thoughts

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 14 - Notes in preparation for a really big day

This is my schedule for tomorrow:

1. 10 am - meeting with Joe Ciotti
2. noon - lunch with Joshua Devine
3. 1 pm - meeting with Ashton Armstrong
4. 2 pm - meeting Karen Abrams, et al,

This day, all by itself, could move my life forward to significant degree. More than that, it could affect Homewood.

Meeting #1 - Joe Ciotti is a management consultant with the Small Business Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. We will talk about Luminaria Productions. I hope that we will agree on a schedule for regular meetings for at least 3-4 months. I have found regularly-scheduled meetings to be a huge help in living my life, and I believe that having a schedule with Joe Ciotti will help me to achieve breakthrough on completing my business plan for Luminaria, and on enchancing my doing of what I'm already doing.

Come to think of it, I may benefit most from intensity of scheduling - not once a month for 3-4 months, but once a week or more for 4-6 weeks.

I have been stuck on writing a business plan for two years. Which obviously means that I don't want to do it, for whatever reason(s). But since it's part of their process, I need to get it done.

I think the key is to convince myself that a business plan can be gigantically valuable and fun. With that feeling, I could write it in a day.

And it can be. It can be gigantically valuable and fun. How? By making it include, not only every single thing I want to do with this business, but everything I believe about business, period.

When I let myself think about business - not just a business, but business itself, I uncover a depth of feeling that almost invariably surprises me. There's God, and there's everything else. But in that "everything else," business rises close to the top among things that are good and noble.

Yeah, that's what I said: good and noble. Read it again if you have to. I consider the creation and exchange of value to be inherently good, however often or to what degree it may be twisted into bad.

I won't finish the business plan tonight. But I do want to give Joe enough to seduce him, to make him consider it worthwhile to meet with me on an accelerated schedule over the next 4-6 weeks. Because in 4-6 weeks, Luminaria Productions could be operating on a whole 'nother level. More about that in #4

Meeting #2
Joshua Devine recently graduated from Penn State with a degree in Energy, Environment and Community - or some alternate arrangement of those three words. When he saw the segment about the Save Race Street Committee on Rick Sebak's program, "25 Things I Like About Pittsburgh," on WQED, he tweeted me to ask if one had to live on Race Street to join the Committee. He attended our January meeting, and I hope to explore with him how he can be part of our life and bring his knowledge, energy and connections to our work. He could help the Committee to move up to a higher level.

Meeting #3
Ashton Armstrong is a neighborhood service associate with the Mayor's office, part of the staff for the ServePGH Initiative created by Mr. Ravenstahl's administration. This meeting is to talk about how the Save Race Street Committee might take advantage of two programs to work with vacant lots on our street - the Love Your Block program, and the Edible Gardens program. We have missed deadlines, because I have missed deadlines. In this meeting, I need to submit information late, plead for more grace, and if possible chart a corrective course with Ashton.

The greater part of my work relating to this is not to be done with her, but with myself, my fellow Committee members and with our neighbors. I need to remind myself of the importance of delegating and supervising. The better I get at those things, the more useful I will be, because I will be in less of a position to screw up the details. I need to keep very alert to the question, "Is this a task that I should NOT do?"

Success with Ashton, and then with my fellow Committee members and with our neighbors, will mean a more beautiful and prosperous street.

Meeting #4
Karen Abrams is community affairs specialist with the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Tomorrow I meet with her, planning and design specialist Emily Mitchell, real estate manager Susan Malys, and Jerome Jackson, executive director of Operation Better Block, Inc.

We are meeting to discuss my desire to acquire and redevelop this building, 1015 N. Homewood Avenue:

I moved to this house in July, 1986; 1015 N. Homewood was vacant then. I have long had a vague desire to do something with it. Over the past year, the desire has become more specific, but not specific enough to be a plan.

I want to make it the headquarters for Luminaria Productions.

About two weeks ago, I saw a gentleman from the City's Bureau of Building Inspection poking around it, and introduced myself to him as the chair of the Save Race Street Committee, and he told me, "We're tearing it down."

That surprised me, because over the past year, I have not only developed a more specific desire for the building, I have had conversations that I thought had positioned me to acquire the building from the URA (not that that was guaranteed, but that the conversations were making it possible). And the building - which has been condemned since 2005, and tax-delinquent perhaps as long - went through a Treasurer's sale in October, which I thought meant that the URA had taken title.

So I started talking to people, the last of them being Ms. Abrams. And she set up the meeting.

As of now, this is what I see at 1015 N. Homewood:

First floor: Luminaria Productions office, which includes a rentable meeting space. A bookstore, which includes a cafe.

Second, third floors: Apartments.

The entire building, including the decor in the halls of the second and third floors, has a movie theme. The bookstore's draw is that it has the most complete collection of film-related books in the city of Pittsburgh. Also movie memorabilia. And DVDs. And the cafe has a viewing area, and is home to meetings of the East End Film Nation (which doesn't exist yet, but you can guess what it is, right?).

That's what I have so far. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, offering discounted rents to film workers who live in the building.

And maybe making a documentary about the redevelopment of the building. Sponsored by Home Depot, and anybody else who might want consider it good PR to participate.

There's also a persistent notion of housing a video game academy: a place to teach young people how to create video games. That would require more program development than I have come close to imagining.

Anyway, tomorrow's meeting could end with everyone saying, "We don't think this is at all feasible. Good luck with doing whatever you want to do in some other building." Or it could end with, "We'll work with you, if you work with us." The latter would put Luminaria Productions, and ultimately Homewood, on a whole 'nother level. Especially in light of what's happening Wednesday and Thursday. 

But that is another blog post, because this one is too long already.

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 9 - Killing Emily Dickinson

In order to build a billion-dollar enterprise, I must kill my inner Emily Dickinson.

For all my life, a part of me has been content merely to create stuff and then stuff it in a drawer. I need to terminate that part of me, with extreme prejudice.

Poems? Stories? Get 'em out there for others to read. Songs? Get 'em out there for others to sing. Scripts? Get 'em out there for others to produce. Or produce 'em myself and get the shows and films out there for others to view.

I don't know that it is even correct to say that part of me has been content to create content without distributing it. I do know that part of has been afraid of putting stuff out there. Afraid that my stuff would not be good enough.

Which then raises the question, "Good enough for what?" Or better yet, "Good enough, compared to what?"  I could not possibly do worse than some of what people get paid to produce every day.

At the meta level, the work only has value when others value it. On the ground, that means that it's worth what others will pay for it; and that it's gotta be out there for them do that. The worst that can happen when I put my stuff out there is that people will refuse to pay; that out of the earth's six billion people, none at all will find any value in anything I produce.

But every week, SyFy movies offer hilarious evidence that somebody will pay for pretty much anything. There are markets that are ravenous for content. Somewhere out there are markets for my stuff.

Let this, then, be my mantra, to be recited internally, whether I ever say it out loud to anyone or not:

This is what I have. Take it or leave it. If you take it, drop some coins in the hat, and thank you very much.

* * * * *

Today, my primary tasks were preparing for, then leading, the monthly meeting of the Save Race Street Committee's executive committee, which consists of block captains for each of our five blocks, the chair, vice-chair, secretary and treasurer. Three block captains, the secretary and myself were present. Two block captains were absent, as was the vice-chair. We don't have a treasurer, the post having been recently vacated.

Leading that group, along with SRSC itself, and Block Watch Plus (which I chair), gives me huge opportunities for experiential learning in effective leadership (EL2). Lessons learned in those contexts could be useful in building a billion-dollar enterprise. At the same time, billion-dollar enterprises can provide lessons that prove useful in leading volunteer groups of citizens.

I got in around 8 pm, ate dinner, and basically passed out on the love seat in the living room. Woke up a little after 11:30. And reminded myself that I had not done anything today to build my billion-dollar enterprise, or to make any money at all. And lounged on the love seat a little longer before going to the refrigerator to grab the last slice of Edwards key lime pie (left over from New Year's Eve), and bringing it up to my office with a large mug of cold water so I could do some BBDE work.

I realized that the thing I said yesterday about having goals emerge from my masterplan could have been a dodge to put off actually producing "Quick Flicks." So I worked on "Quick Flicks." I did not do as much as I would have liked, and I'm not yet done for the night. But at least I am doing something, have done something, this day to make money. I have done something this day to build my billion-dollar enterprise.

Where am I? What am I doing?

I am strangely positioned these days. Or to put it more precisely, I am in a position which seems strange to me.

I am publisher of "Homewood Nation," which I have most commonly described as a community news website.

I am chair of the Save Race Street Committee, a block association for my street, composed of residents who are bound and determined to make our street better.

I am chair of Block Watch Plus, a monthly gathering of all of Homewood's block associations, as well as individuals who are not members of block associations but who simply want to do positive things on their street, or who already are.

I am on the board of Operation Better Block Inc., which is the non-profit agency that assists residents in forming block associations and stands behind Block Watch Plus (somewhere, Block Watch Plus is described as a program of Operation Better Block).

I am co-founder of Creative Local, which has an agreement with Operation Better Block for OBB to act as our fiscal agent in receiving funds for "Hidden Gems: The Architecture of Homewood."

The Save Race Street Committee, Operation Better Block and Creative Local are all in the news, and Block Watch Plus has the strong potential to be.

Holding these positions inevitability places me at the intersection of news and PR, and raises the question of which I am doing, when. When I participate in something that I believe to be newsworthy, and I write about it, is that news or PR?

When I reach out to the media for coverage, is that...ok, no need to ask...

But if they write about it, and then I write about the fact that they wrote about it, what is that?

Finally, do my memberships in all these groups compromise my ability to write about them?

I believe that it has, but not in the way that may seem most obvious. I already did a post on Homewood Nation about this; here, I am trying to think things through a little more.

The journalistic compromise that most people might expect is a refusal/failure to report news that reflects negatively on any of the groups with which I am involved.

What I have been more strongly aware of is the refusal/failure to report even news that reflects positively on said groups, because I am not comfortable writing about stuff that I am involved with. I would rather leave myself out, and I would definitely rather not be photographed.

But my rathers are rather irrelevant. More important is that people deserve to know about some of the stuff I am doing (none of it by myself, by the way, so it's not as though when I write about it, I am merely writing about myself).

In order to become a more thorough journalist, I need to become a better blogger. That is, I need to report more fully on my own life in order to report more thoroughly on OBB, SRSC, BWP and CL. For starters.

I think I reported more fully on my own life in the early days of "My Homewood." But the more that I moved  from the "pure observer" end of the participant-observer spectrum toward the "pure participant" end, the more uncomfortable I became with describing events that involved me.

Gotta get past that. I am doing things that are important to Homewood. People deserve to know.

Having said all that, not every story or post will involve a group that I am part of, but readers should be able to know about those affiliations every time they read. So I need to list them somewhere on "Homewood Nation," and probably make some basic statement of beliefs.

When one does not even feign objectivity, transparency goes a long away - especially when joined with thoroughness and accuracy (which, again, require that I write about myself sometimes. Oh, well.).

For any journalists or citizen journalists out there - or people just committing acts of journalism, without any particular title - do you ever find yourself "strangely positioned?" What ethical challenges do you face, and how do you navigate them?