Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, fond of greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to convening conversations of consequence that help democacy thrive.

It's Friday, August 23rd.

And I'm Kristen Baird.

Adam's immediate past president of the City Club Board of Directors.

On behalf of the City Club Staff and board, I'm pleased to introduce today's Speaker, Kate Borders, president of University Circle Inc, the organization responsible for developing, serving and advocating for University Circle on Cleveland's Eastside as, quote, a vibrant and complete neighborhood.

University Circle is, of course, best known for its incredible concentration of nationally and internationally renowned arts and cultural, medical and educational institutions.

With Kate and her team leading the charge to uphold the historic neighborhood as Cleveland's Center of Culture, healing and learning and a destination for all the neighborhood certainly has come a long way since its early days, when it was known as Doan's Corner's named after Nathaniel Doan, a member of the Connecticut Land Company, who who settled his family there.

More than 200 years ago.

But like many other urban neighborhoods across the country, University Circle has faced its share of challenges and today, just a little more than a year into her tenure as president of UCI, we'll hear a timely update from Kate on some of those challenges and the exciting opportunities ahead, including continued efforts to further strengthen connectivity with and access to from surrounding neighborhoods and, of course, drive critical economic impact.

Kate is a nationally recognized leader in urban development and place management.

With more than 20 years of experience, including leadership roles in Tempe, Fresno and Milwaukee.

Most recently, serving as president and CEO of the Tempe Authority of Downtown Tempe Authority.

Prior to joining UCI in 20 2023, if you have a question for our speaker, you may text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

In the city, club staff will do its best to work it into the second half of the program.

Members, friends and guests of the City Club of Cleveland.

Please join me in welcoming skateboarders.

Thank you, Kristen.

Thank you all for being here.

When I was a kid growing up, there was this poster on the refrigerator in our kitchen, and it was one of those posters where lots and lots of little words make up a big word, and the color contrast makes the word pop.

And I'm talking about and this poster spelled out woman really big.

And I would stand there as a kid, as all kids do.

Those of you have kids?

We stand eating when you're kids.

I don't know why that is.

I would stand in front of the refrigerator and I would read those words.

Things like my body, my choice, teacher, woman you teach your generation.

Women can do everything as well as a man, but better.

You could guess that my mother was a feminist.

My parents got divorced when I was just six years old, and I have two amazing sisters, but they're eight and nine years older than me.

So there was this chunk of time that it was me and my mom, just the two of us.

My mother was an artist by trade and she was a high school art teacher at the local school, and she made this home the most creative place I could imagine.

Growing up, I didn't know it at the time, but it was really special.

I would come home one day and the entire dining room table would be converted to a space to make paper.

There would be five gallon buckets of pulp that she had put together, racks where paper was drying leaves and crushed up, you know, things that would be pressed into the paper.

Later, there would be a series of silk screening.

Andy Warhol esque bright colors would be popping on these screens and images of the emerging squeegee ready, or she'd be studying the very kinds of African weaving and baskets would be in progress, and there'd be these straws and all kinds of fibers taking over our dining room table.

And because I was being raised in a relatively small community in Rock Hill, South Carolina, she knew everyone in the art world, and they were always in our house visiting artists, artists.

She was going to work with, artists she was trying to meet and get to know, learn from, learn their practices, study from them.

Art was in our home all the time, and these artists often didn't look anything like me.

They didn't dress like me.

They didn't wear jewelry that I had seen.

They didn't speak like me.

There were often these beautiful accents and these incredible skin tones that looks nothing like mine.

They were in our house all the time talking, and I got to overhear these conversations about art processes and the politics around art always.

My mother also did this thing that would likely be frowned upon today.

She had an open door policy for her students, high schoolers.

Kids would be in our house all the time, usually because it was something like they had a portfolio they were getting ready or they had a piece of work that they needed to make sure that they were preparing for some application or a summer program or whatever.

But they would be in our house and I'd be in the kitchen staring at woman, and I'd be overhearing these conversations that she would be having with these kids.

Black kids, white kids, rich kids, not so rich kids.

Sometimes they would be one or two of them at that dining room table.

Sometimes there'd be three or four of them at that dining room table.

And I realized that these kids were probably hearing stories from each other, conversations they might not have ever had otherwise.

And my mom would ask questions like, This is your self-portrait.

Tell me why this self-portrait disfigured?

Why did you make that choice?

Talk to me about the white space over here or the looming figure in the background.

And these kids would talk about their stories in this very safe place because of the art.

The art brought them together.

My mother never liked to sit me down and talk about her emotions or her feelings.

She never sat me down and said, These are the life lessons I want you to carry with you when you leave and go out into the world.

That wasn't her style.

I mean, this is the woman that put a box of tampons in the bathroom at about the right time and neve she did not talk about her feelings, but I absolutely took lessons from that woman in the time that I was there.

One.

Everyone has a story, and if you think you know someone's story by looking at them, you got another thing coming to everyone that should be welcome at your table.

Because the absolute fastest and best way to stagnate is to surround yourself by people who look, sound, and think like you.

And the third thing she taught me was that art is powerful and it is empowering and it is healing and it connects us.

So while my mother gravitated towards the visual arts, I gravitated towards the performing arts, and she was incredibly supportive of that.

I took ballet lessons, piano lessons, viola lessons, voice lessons.

I sang in the choir.

I played in the orchestra.

It was incredible.

And I never really wondered, like, how does my mother, a single mother on a schoolteacher salary, afford all these things?

I thought it was just super cool that she volunteered to do the makeup for every single kid at every recital that I ever was in.

I thought it was really super cool that my private piano instructor wanted her artwork in her room, in her house.

And it wasn't until I grew up and I realized my mother was bartering her talent for mine.

What a gift.

Well, I went on and did my undergrad at the University of Arizona, got a degree in music, did my graduate studies at Columbia College in Chicago, got a degree in nonprofit arts management.

And I got my first job in the career as the executive director of the Peoria Art Guild.

I was 26 years old.

I say this all the time.

I have no idea why these people hired me.

I had never managed a project or a person ever in my life.

I'm guessing that no one else wanted the job, so.

But I got this incredible opportunity to learn leadership.

I stayed there for a few years.

I moved on and took the position of executive director in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of the Easttown Association, and that was a business association.

But that association used the tools of events to bring people to the area, to showcase the district, and to potentially hopefully support the merchants.

So I learned the event business very thoroughly.

I was there for many years and then I took a job starting a business improvement district from scratch in Fresno.

Downtown Fresno.

So there I was in downtown Fresn into what we call the bid world.

Everybody familiar with the bid world.

Okay.

This is what we call the Business Improvement District.

We're out here in Ohio.

They're called special improvement districts.

But essentially it is the model where property owners say to their municipality, we want services above and beyond what you can provide, what you are able to provide citywide.

And we know that we wanted this and that it's a special extra ask.

And so we're willing to put our money together to provide those services.

So this bid world, we also call it the place management industry is a really special industry and these exist all over the world.

Started in the United States, they're in Canada.

This is very common.

Probably every downtown that you go to on a regular basis has a business improvement district that's working on that downtown, and it's a really special field of work because you get to see everything from that.

Is the right tree great and that is the right garbage can to what kind of development do we want to?

We have a homeless challenge and how do we meet people and these needs that need to be addressed and everything that affects the downtown you get to look at holistically and be at the table to help solve.

And it was in Fresno when I also joined the board of IDEO, which is the International Downtown Association.

It's the overarching association of all the people that do this kind of place management bid work internationally.

And I have now served on that board for 12 years, and in just a few short weeks I will be passing the torch as the chair of the board.

So I've had the distinct privilege of being the chair for the last two years and an honor.

And in that role, you learn so much about the challenges that urban districts are facing globally.

And of course, there are some things that are unique to different places, but there are some things that are shared by all of us, the fascinating industry.

So I left Fresno and took a job in Tempe, Arizona, to run that downtown, the Tempe Downtown Authority, as Christine mentioned.

And it was there that I was sitting in my office one day enjoying our 72 degrees.

And January we had newly remodeled offices.

Everything was going very well.

And this woman, this recruiter called me and she said, What do you think about University Circle in Cleveland?

And I said, I've never heard of university school in Cleveland.

And I mean, I was very gracious and I'm like, thank you so much for calling me.

I will absolutely give this in consideration.

And I'll also think if I know of any other candidates that I can refer to you, I'll get back to you.

And I swear to you, I'm not exaggerating one bit.

For the next two weeks, literally every single person that I saw that walked in front of my path had on a brown shirt or a Cleveland shirt or Ohio shirt, or they were wearing some kind of rock hall paraphernalia.

I'm like, What is happening right now?

You know how that happens.

So I get back to my computer.

I'm doing my research like university circles in Cleveland University Circle.

I'm looking at a map.

All right.

It's like five miles from downtown.

It's near the lake, lake effect snow.

What is that?

Put that aside.

And I started doing research about exactly what Kristen just brought up the history down corner.

And this area has this really, really unique story.

And forgive me if I'm telling you things that you all know, but I want you to see it from the lens of me who had never heard of University Circle.

And I'm sitting there doing this research.

I'm like, okay, late 1880s, 1880s, there's this large amount of land that's been donated by these wealthy families Rockefellers, Wade and Case and Western Reserve relocate into this area, this very large area of lots of land that's available, pristine land by 19 1213, that area you've got the Cleveland Museum of Art taking root there and the music settlement taking root there.

By 1930, 31, we see Cleveland Botanical Gardens, we see Severance Music Center and university hospitals.

So by 1930, from 1880s, late 1880s to 1930, that 50 year stretch, we have seven major institutions kind of cementing this area.

Right, as this this district of health wellness, culture, arts and education.

It's incredible.

And I'm sorry I'm reading this.

And fast forward to present day, I'm reading this and there's now 40 institutions, 40 nonprofit institutions in one square mile.

Where is that anywhere else?

Where is that?

You can't find it.

Trust me, I tried.

I've traveled a lot.

I've thought a lot.

I've been overseas and I'm like, there's nothing like this anywhere.

The power of that.

I start researching a little more.

I'm thinking and I'm digging and I'm reading.

What else happened between 19 between the 1880s and the 1930s in Cleveland, particularly, and, you know, in our country.

Well, we know what was happening during that period of time.

We were a world war happened.

Lots of white people.

White flight is happening.

We're hearing about that and reading about that all over.

The black migration is happening.

There are these jobs.

Late 1880s, there are 1000 black residents in the city of Cleveland.

By that period, 1930s.

And I'm talking about that stretch of 50 years there, 75,000 black residents in the city of Cleveland.

What happened in the 1930.

So the 1960s, right after that, redlining officially mid 1930s till 1968, unofficially debatable.

Still now.

But here's this neighborhood of all of this richness.

And when I say richness right now, I'm referring to the assets that are there, the wealth of knowledge, information, all of this richness and all of these neighborhoods surrounding this area.

If you look at redlining maps of Cleveland, every neighborhood, including University Circle, including Little Italy, all these and seize on those redlined maps, declining or dangerous, risky.

So reading all this and at the same time, I'm having these conversations with the search committee and we're talking about what the search committee wants to be taking place as the next era of U.S. AI.

And I'm really impressed by what I'm hearing assistant search committee members here right now.

This committee, by the way, was really thoughtful and very thorough.

They were warm.

They never made it feel like some sort of I don't know, just didn't feel gloomy or dark.

It just felt kind of uplifting.

I was really impressed by the process.

And I asked them through all of these conversations and it kind of became apparent to me that there were two themes that I was hearing repeatedly from the search committee.

One, this idea of properties to people kept coming up, properties to people.

You see, I was founded in 1957.

At the time there were many organizations, many nonprofits at that point in time, and they wanted one kind of overarching organization that would think holistically about the entire place and have the best interests of all the institutions, not just one.

And they also wanted to for this institution, UCI, to purchase land, buy land, preserve land.

So it was a land bank.

And the board on the search committee said to me, we're moving from properties to people and it's not that people had never mattered before.

There were many programs of the organization was doing.

It was just a way of kind of expressing this goal to make this a priority moving forward because of economic reasons, what was going on in the marketplace and the capacity of the team.

They felt like it was time to move away from that model of owning a lot of land, buying more land, etc.

That was one thing that I took from that search committee process.

And the second was there continues to be a disconnect between University Circle and the surrounding neighborhoods.

And they were very clear about this, that they wanted it to be a priority moving forward to pay attention to these neighborhoods and to make certain that they felt welcome in University Circle.

It's as if there's an invisible wall between University Circle and some of these surrounding neighborhoods, and they were very clear that they wanted it to be broken down.

That's what I learned from the search committee in that process.

So fast forward, I've now been here for 14 months.

I will say a little over a year, and I'll say that again.

I've been here for a little over a year.

I've had all of this time to do so much incredible learning.

It's been wonderful.

And then I'll also say this.

I've only been here for a little over a year, okay?

I don't have a lot to learn.

There's a lot to learn in this community.

It's a very amazing community with lots of different players, so I got a lot to learn.

I've met many of you in the room, but I haven't met all of you and I'm looking forward to that.

So I got to the job and in the first ten months we took a great deal of time to listen and absorb.

And people often call this the listening tour of a CEO.

And I'll take that a step further and say We were doing a data gathering process.

So the entire team got involved.

We did focus groups, we held workshops, we did one on one interviews with a small group meetings, large group meetings, a digital component to the work.

And we gathered a lot of information.

And at the end of those ten months, we'd heard from roughly 1000 people and we had thousands of data points and a lot of it was really positive, really positive.

It's beautiful.

We love the institutions.

There's so much to do there.

We take our kids there.

Music settlement comes up all the time.

I'm telling you right now, music settlement people.

I think there's somebody here.

Unbelievable.

How do people say, well, my kids went there.

I went there.

People love it.

But then there were also these comments that weren't so positive.

And when you started filtering through all of these comments around what wasn't so positive, what wasn't working, what do they need to change?

How can we do better?

Because essentially those were the questions we were asking.

Right?

What's great and where can we improve?

How can we serve you better?

And we started kind of recognizing that all of the comments around what isn't working or about access, different forms of access for sure, but access.

So for some people that means I have difficulty accessing the place because the traffic patterns are really unusual and I get confused.

I don't go there often.

It's just kind of a mess.

I don't like it or I'm a pedestrian and sometimes I feel like that intersection is really dangerous and I don't want to cross that intersection.

Access And for some people it was access financially.

I can't afford to park there.

I can't afford the admissions, I can't afford the things that are happening, the cost of being there is making it so that I am not able to come.

But for some it was and I will say this as a direct quote that's not for me.

The access wasn't available to them because they didn't believe that was for them.

So we took all these data points and we put them into our plan of work for the next three years.

We're calling it an action plan because we really want it to be action oriented.

We have work to do, we know we have work to do.

We still have a lot of information together.

And just because we are drawing a line in the sand and doing this action plan at this moment in time does not mean that that listening and that absorbing and that data collection is ever going to end.

This is just a line in the sand.

And if you want the details of the action plan, that's why I gave you this little cards.

There's a QR code on there that you can scan and you can see the details of the action plan on these cards.

But I'm just going to go over it generally at a high level and then we can get to questions.

But essentially what we were taking in from everyone was that the work that we needed to do falls into three pillars.

People place and story.

And I will say I would be remiss if I did not add that all three of those pillars must stand on a foundation of financial responsibility, sound management, really caring for our team.

Our people need to be strong and healthy or they can't do this work and of course, accountability.

So without that, if our house is crumbling, we can't be helping the community.

That's clear.

Okay.

So the three pillars people place and story.

I'm going to start with place.

Place is about the physical place.

It's about the traffic patterns.

It's about the parking, it's about the shade structures.

It's about the park benches.

It's about the parks themselves.

It's about how you walk through it.

The pedestrian feel.

It's about the bicycle lanes.

It's about the public art.

Placemaking.

It's about all of the things that you feel and experience when you are in a place.

And we started quickly recognizing that there's a lot of work to be done.

It is a beautiful, wonderful place right now, but it can be much better.

And so we knew we needed to do a plan.

So a few months ago we sent out an RFP, we got 17 responses.

Our team did the really difficult work of sorting through all of those nearing it to five.

We brought a committee together.

Those that committee narrowed that five down to two.

And next month we'll be selecting our partner to help us create a public realm.

Masterplan This plan will guide for us the work that we need to do.

Probably over the next 20 years.

It's going to identify all of the components of the work that need to take place.

Regarding all the things I just mentioned right parking shade, placemaking, public art, all the things.

And why do we need a plan?

We need a plan to prioritize the work.

First of all, we need a plan to be able to go to donors and sponsors the state, the feds, and justify a vision of where we're going so that we can get support and advocacy.

And we need to build a plan that incorporates engagement at every single step so that the plan is built on what the community wants to have happen in the University Circle.

The second biggest component of place that I want to talk about today is safety.

Safety is an element that came up for virtually everyone that we talked to.

A thousand people, safety came up.

You likely all know that we have a police department.

Safety is critical for us and people of course, want to feel safe, that they are not going to experience any harm personally.

They won't experience any property damage, but they also want to feel safe, that they will not experience biased policing and they want to feel safe, that they will not be profiled.

Safety is a big deal.

And I wish our chief of police were here today so that you can meet him because he is a dynamic and amazing person.

He has been in this his role in the university circle as the head of the police department for the same amount of time that I've been here.

So it's been incredible to work with him and watch him shape this department.

It's a really amazing police department.

He has embedded into the police department a culture of a servant's heart.

Our officers go out into the field every day with that being their priority.

One of them is right here with us.

Our officers.

I didn't know why Gloria was standing, but our officers believe in that.

And it is part of the culture, so much so that he put it on a rock outside of the front door and it is there for them to see every day when they come in and go out.

He's also embedded into the culture, the spirit of community policing, proactive, getting to know the neighborhood.

So on a regular basis, our police officers are doing it, are doing things like holding coffee with a cop, hike with a cop, a neighborhood jam with cops, everything that you can imagine that we could be doing to be in community, going into the schools, reading to students.

We have a community policing dog that we take everywhere to let kids play with the dog.

We are doing everything in our power to break down those walls between police and citizens and be available to the community.

Community policing is so imperative and we don't incentivize things like citations.

We incentivize for our officers warnings because we know what citations can do to people.

We know the spiral that can create and we incentivize participation in community policing events.

And we incentivize foot patrols getting out of your car and being part of the community.

That's what we incentivize.

You have to meet Chief Wetzel.

He's incredible.

So that's place story.

I told you earlier that when that recruiter called me, I had never heard of University Circle, which would not be a big deal if I was an accountant living in Arizona.

But I was in the place management industry.

I was on the board of the International Downtown Association.

I've traveled around a lot and I love the arts deeply.

How and I never heard of University Circle.

I don't want that to be our story any more.

I want people near and far to know about University Circle.

I want people from far to come here and open their wallets.

I want those tourism dollars to be in our district.

But in the near area we have people that live in Cleveland that don't know about the richness of assets that are right here.

So we need to be telling that story.

So right now we're doing the work to build our personas, to really understand the different groups of people that are critical for our success, how they communicate, and how we can best communicate with them so that we can start to share that story and make sure they know to come to university Circle because stories matter.

It's also really important that we continue to tell the full story, which I think is the richer story of University Circle, which is, yes, all of these institutions, but also these legacy neighborhoods that are right there that we need to care for and making sure that that story becomes our holistic story.

And the third pillar is people, the most critical pillar really every day, all the work that we're doing, everything the North Star, the goal is improving people's lives.

People get education, they need health care.

They come to an exhibit.

They are part of something cultural because they're working to improve their lives, whether they know it or not.

That's the ultimate goal.

We all want to normalize our experiences and we all want access to those experiences and we all want to be in those spaces because it's important people matter too.

Right out of the gate, we created our first ever engagement and collaboration department.

University Circle had never had that department and that team.

That team is working really diligently to map how we can connect with people.

All the people, business owners, resident neighbors, people that work in the institutions so that we know what each one of those constituent groups needs to thrive, and then we can meet those needs.

We're also in the middle of an office renovation and the back house of our office is going to be dedicated as a community space.

We're very much looking forward to launching this, and probably by January one we'll be up and running with incredible programing that will be informed by community because we don't need to just do stuff that we think the community needs.

We need to be talking to them about what they need before we put together this programing schedule.

And there is a business case to all of this, right?

There's a human element and there is a business element, university circle, as a district is growing at a rate faster than the rest of the city.

So it is an economic driver.

It can be a critical part of how this city moves forward.

Our residential base grew about 24% in the last census cycle.

Unfortunate when the city of Cleveland saw a decline in our employment growth over the last 20 years has been about 64%.

Unfortunately, when the rest of the city saw a decline, do we need to do better at that?

Absolutely.

Do we need to connect people with jobs?

Absolutely.

But there's an opportunity there where that growth is taking place.

The business case is there.

Before we move to questions, I'd like to thank a few people that are here.

First of all, if you are one of our trustees, please raise your hand and everyone, please hold your applause, because I do want to get to questions.

If you're a trustee, raise your hand.

Thank you for your service and your time and your support over this last year has been incredibly meaningful.

Thank you so much.

If you're a staff member, please raise your hand.

This team around you is in the trenches.

My job is that I work for them.

I am here to support them and lift up their work because they're the ones out doing the work.

Thank you all for being in the trenches with me and for being here today.

If you're a donor or a supporter, if you've ever given money to University Circle, please raise your hand.

Thank you all for your support.

Of course, it means so much financially.

It allows us to do the programs that we're doing.

But it also is a validation when you give to us or to any institution wherever you're giving.

It means that you believe in the work they're doing and then those team members feel like we're on the right track.

So thank you so much for your support.

If you're an elected official, any elected officials in the audience doesn't look like it.

I think most of them are still in Chicago.

Oh, we do.

Okay.

Thank you for your service.

I think it's really important that people take on that role.

It's a very, very difficult job.

Thank you to the City Club for hosting us today.

It's really incredible to be here.

It's an honor.

This is a very, very important stage.

And if I could leave you with one call to action, it is this either get involved or stay involved with us.

We cannot do this work alone.

It is a long game.

We have a lot of work to do in all of those pillars and beyond.

But we need your support.

We need your agencies to come to the table.

We need to be collaborating with you.

We need you to be asking us the tough questions.

We need you to be engaging with us.

We can't do anything if we don't know what you need.

My ask of you is to stay with us, to care, and to be a part of the future of University Circle.

Because our table is open to everyone.

Thank you.

We're about to begin the audience Q&A.

For those on our livestream or joining us via our radio audience that have just joined the program, I'm Kristen Baird Adams, a member of the City Club Board of Directors.

Today we are joined by Kate Waters, president of University Circle, Inc, for an update on the work that she and her team are leading to shape the continued success of Cleveland's University Circle neighborhood.

We welcome questions from everyone's city club members and guests and those joining us via our live stream at City Club dot org or our radio broadcast at 89.7 ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question for our speaker, please text it to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And the City Club staff will do its best to work it into the program.

Maybe we have our first question, please.

Hi.

Our first question is a text question that came in.

What is UCI's relationship with East Cleveland like?

And what would you like to see for the future of East Cleveland?

Well, so at this point in time, we do co-own some property in East Cleveland, some affordable housing circle, East townhomes, and we are officially a secondary support for East Cleveland.

Some of our police officers go into the edges of East Cleveland from a patrol perspective.

I've met with some of the leaders of council members of East Cleveland, and we are definitely in conversation about how we could work together more in the future.

I think that there is an opportunity for us to be incredible partners with all of the surrounding neighborhoods, and so we absolutely welcome greater collaboration with these Cleveland.

Hi, Kate.

Thanks so much for such an inspirational speech.

It's really great to hear an outsider perspective of optimism and hope moving forward in the area.

I was curious about your role as a chairperson of did you say I IAC.

Idea.

Idea?

You mentioned that there were some common themes that you see throughout the nation with different communities and some very distinct differences.

And I'd love to hear a little more about that, especially in relation to your years of experience here in University Circle.

Absolutely.

I think the distinct differences in places are usually related to things that are very specific and unique to those places.

So cultural differences or the differences of the organizations and how those organizations are taking shape, different players, different structures, all of that.

So we'll get together and talk about funding mechanisms that are available in different places, which could sometimes be from a state level or a federal level.

So those are the differences that are kind of shaping the ability that different places have to do the work.

But what I found is really, really telling about the similarity of all of our districts is that place management organizations, when we were all first sort of forming, the idea was if you all are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the basic needs of safety, net safety and cleanliness are of course, really critical to all the downtowns.

And so in the beginning, all of those downtowns were focusing on that like clean and safe was the kind of the crux of all of the work that was happening, kind of from that broken windows theory.

But now, as these districts elevate over time, the self-actualization piece is one of the most important pieces that we're all struggling with.

Right.

As a nation.

And so downtown improvement districts are being asked to show up and social service areas to deal with humanitarian efforts.

And you're seeing that globally.

And I do find that to be really critical because as an we struggled with this deeply in Tempe.

Do we dove into homelessness, mental illness, kind of those those areas, or do we leave that work to a partner agency?

Are those partner agencies doing it as as well as we would want?

Usually, no.

Are those partner agencies even talking to each other?

I mean, in the world of homelessness, usually there are a lot of agencies that are doing bits and pieces of that work and they're not necessarily communicating with one another.

And so these downtown districts are being asked to go from, you know, picking up litter to understanding the entire system of homelessness.

And we're seeing that globally.

And I see Michael Deemer nodding his head because we talk about this often.

Michael's on the board of IDEO with me and a great colleague and wonderful to be here with Michael.

So I think that's what I'm feeling from all of my colleagues, is this need for us to respond to these really, really difficult things that we're all facing and how do we do that?

Do we have the resources to do it?

Do we have the capacity and the knowledge to do it?

Thank you, Jacki.

Thank you, Kate.

This may follow from what you were just discussing.

In Cleveland, we are often able to move projects or initiatives forward through partnerships.

Can you speak a bit about partnerships in particular, some out of the box partnerships that UCI is undertaking?

Out of the box partnerships?

That's a great question.

I guess it would be how do I define out of the box?

I think at this point in my career, nothing seems like it's out of the box.

I mean, I look around the room and I see everyone here that, you know, is a potential partner.

I mean, Jeremy, sitting in the front row, like, how are we working with Assembly for the Arts?

I think there are some things that we should look at maybe from a different perspective.

Like, for example, I'm going to stick on this example of the arts for a minute.

Downtowns have always had partnerships with artists.

We've always valued their creatives being in that space, but we've used them for things like public art.

We've used them for things like placemaking.

I think we should flip the lens and ask artists to think about our traffic.

Kate mentioned that we've just set up a said and we're going to be receiving money from that said, which will be very, very important for our financial sustainability.

But you might mention to people sort of what that's going to cover, what it's not going to cover, because some times people think that, well, once you've got acid and everything's fine, you don't need any other money.

And frankly, the action plan and the vision that Kate has, there's other sources of support that we are still going to need.

Thank you, Bill.

We did not set this up.

I did not know he was going to ask that, but I appreciate the question.

Sid Special Improvement District, if you remember when I was speaking, is sort of a sister to that bid business improvement district.

The idea of funds being pooled from property owners for services.

And so in our case our special improvement, which will launch January one of 2025, has been in the works for many, many years.

So I did not start this.

I can't take the credit for it.

Gary Hansen, my predecessor, the interim between Chris, who was amazing and Gary who was amazing, they've all done incredible work.

Chris kind of took the reins on this.

So our special improvement district, as I mentioned, will start January one and it will essentially cover our police services and a little bit of transportation.

So everything that we do that is above police services and those transportation efforts will still be something we'll be fundraising for and seeking grants for and seeking support for.

So programing weight over Wednesdays, all the programing we're going to be doing in our community space, all of the engagement work that we're going to be doing in the community, all of the work that we're like, Yeah, Saturdays is coming up.

We're about to have a neighborhood jam that's free to the public to just come and sit at cause at Bates house and be in community together.

All of that work is outside of the Special Improvement District and that just requires us to continue fundraising.

So thank you for that question.

Yes, I think you have to go to a mike.

I don't know how this works here.

Sorry.

I'm not going to be in trouble at the City Club.

Kate, thank you.

I'm curious about how you're working with neighboring organizations like Community Development Corporations, Amicus Foundation and others, because the plan is exciting, but it's also a new role in some ways for UCI, and so new plans can also seem threatening other organizations.

And I'm curious to how you are reaching out and partnering with established organizations in the community.

Thank you.

That's a great question.

We so first off, to make us seem as here, I see a lot of amicus team members and I'm really grateful for that partnership.

We have every intention of always talking with all of those partners, and I think it has to be at the beginning.

It has to be in the middle, it has to be along the way, it has to continue.

And you can't just start with a conversation with a partner.

I mean, for example, we're starting this public round masterplan and we don't know what's going to come from this, but I have a feeling that some things may come from this that will impact some of our institutions so very diligently making the call to every single one of those institutions.

And we even called for mid-coast and said, hey, we're doing this plan.

Just let you know.

We don't know what they're going to say, but we want you to be aware that this is coming down the road so that when it happens, you are not surprised by the fact that we did this work.

We didn't seek to do it to ask for input around your land, but that might be you know, a part of it.

So, I mean, in this past year, I've met with 400 people, one on one.

And I mean, that's just going to continue and have a great relationship for us is kind of our closest midtown actually, you know, Joy meeting with all of these people on a regular basis to make sure that that communication stays really top of mind.

I mean, we're also a part of C and P really honored to be a part of that organization that gives us those ties to some of those groups.

I certainly have not been meeting with them enough.

I think that that needs to increase.

And our team also.

I can't do it all alone, of course, nor should I.

And they're doing all the real work.

So a team is out meeting with all of those people as well.

So it's about relationships.

So many people have told me and Cleveland, they've said to me, this is a relationship town.

And I want to say, where is it not a relationship town?

But I hear that a lot.

And I believe and I believe that's true everywhere.

And so it's it's incumbent upon us to share information before, during and after.

So I Kate, you mentioned that, you know, as a leader in your industry, you hadn't heard of a university survey.

It wasn't on the radar.

And I was just wondering, why do you think that is?

And, you know, what are the types of things we need to do going forward to change that perspective?

I think every era of leadership has its priorities, and every era of leadership is dealing with the challenges that are in front of them.

And so maybe that had not become a priority for the previous people that were in charge.

I'm not really certain.

I think that there was a lot of work that was happening that was incredible that got us to where we are now.

And I think that often, you know, it could easily be said and I found this to be true in other organizations I've gone to to other specifically business improvement districts, place management organizations.

When you get there, marketing is slashed.

When times get tightest, the first thing that goes right, because it's you have to keep doing the work.

You have to make sure the streets are clean.

You have to make sure you're serving the community.

Marketing is sometimes a benefit or a bonus, right?

But that's the short game, you know.

And then the long game as people then don't know about what you're doing.

And so we all suffer because people aren't coming and people aren't aware of the strengths and we can't tell the story.

So I think it's strategic marketing which we are doing and I think it's consistent.

The message has to be consistent and we have to know who we're speaking to and we have to not give up on that.

It's all of the work that we're doing.

It's a long game.

But I also think that in this particular business improvement district, it be really easy to say each one of these institutions is doing such a phenomenal job of marketing.

You guys are doing a phenomenal job of marketing, right?

But then that doesn't tell the collective story.

Thank you.

So this presentation was absolutely amazing works in conjunction what we're trying to do in Fairfax in terms of people development.

And one of the things that we've been trying to do is knowing the history and stories that are within these neighborhoods many times of being forgotten about and how can we use these stories to bring reconnection?

And so I'm curious, have you guys thought about how the reuse of historic spaces to tell stories can connect families, kind of like what the ACA Gates is doing in Chicago?

So we're working with a homeowner of the Jesse Owens house.

And how can turn that into a museum that then brings those particular connections that where there's been a disconnect with between institution and people.

So thank you for that question.

Have we been thinking about that?

Have we been thinking about that?

Yes, we are thinking about that a lot.

And it's sort of when I said we don't want to tell just the shiny story.

We want to tell the complete story because that's where the real beauty is.

I'm personally really, really struck by Winston Willis and how we tell that story.

And I've actually been having a few meetings with John from from he goes about how we could collectively work with Fumiko.

So tell that story because I think it's really critical that we recognize some of the pains and the traumas that have happened in these communities.

What is your plan for economic activity in the nation?

Aaron President So the great questions they stole both of my questions over, so I had to come up with something else.

But the as far as the greatest opportunity that you see for you talked about these borders, what are the greatest opportunities that you see from a physical or a people standpoint of breaking down those borders?

I think the greatest opportunities for already starting to embrace, that's where I think, you know, when our police officers are in schools on a regular basis.

I have so many pictures of Gloria in the schools with kids.

Our cup, our come cop scouts program, all of that work.

I think that really starts to break down barriers.

I think the work that Safiya and her team is doing where she's been asking community members on a regular basis, what do you want to see in our community space?

What type of programing do you want us to be doing moving forward?

How do we take what we have this like lightning in a bottle at way level Wednesdays?

And how do we make that something that's happening more throughout the year, more frequently, more often?

I think that we've got these opportunities right here.

We just have to hold on to them and we have to grow them.

I think we know what to do.

It just takes time.

Like we've been talking about.

How do we get youth involved with University Circle?

How do we get high school kids from Glenville to know about these job opportunities?

You know what it could look like to work in any of these institutions?

How do we create a cohort of interns that are working throughout the summer in each one of these institutions and with the University Circle to start to build over five, ten years?

A group of kids that understand better and start to break down those differences because we're bringing them into the circle and saying, how do you how do you want to use this circle?

My absolute every single day, North Star is there is a day in our future when no one will say, that's not for me, No.

One.

And that's that's all we're doing.

That's all we're working towards.

Yes.

That's exactly my question.

When people said in your surveys and your data points, that's not for me.

On one hand, it maybe it isn't for them, but did you do a deeper dove on why it wasn't for them?

For those people that said it's not for me.

That's what I'm sort of really curious about.

Absolutely.

And those questions, I mean, yes and no.

If, you know, obviously if it was a digital survey, we weren't able to do a deeper dove.

If it was a one on one survey.

Absolutely.

We would do a deeper dove and we would ask more questions and peel back the layers.

I mean, and it's it's historic.

It's built in the stories that someone's grandmother told them.

It's something that happened last week.

And the way that someone feels from an activity that happened last week, it's everything.

It's all of it put together.

And so we start to really understand how we can move forward and have them trust us that we really, truly want this.

Like, we're not saying collaborate.

We're not saying we want to be in community with you and we don't like.

They have to believe that.

Everyone has to believe that.

So the day is everyone.

And I think until we build that trust, that's the work that we're doing.

You mentioned that one of the initial purposes of the use of University Circle Incorporated was to be a land bank.

There's still a lot of land in University Circle.

I'm thinking of the Mt.

Sinai space, the former home of the Art Institute and the big lot that's next to the Music Institute.

What's the work?

What's Land Bank work?

Is University Circle doing today?

Who's in charge of those spaces?

Who makes the decision about how they get used and are they really being held for special opportunities since they're such prime locations?

So I may give you the mic if you would like.

The mike, if you if there are some specific questions that you can answer.

But generally speaking, Elisa's in charge of our place management department.

Generally speaking.

Oh, there you are.

Generally speaking, we are moving out of that space because to do land banking and manage property in a really thoughtful manner takes an entire team.

We don't have the resources to do that at this point in time.

And most of the land and properties that we have owned over time, it's it's at a point in time where it needs a great deal of repair.

So the expenses to continue to maintain this is just not best in our wheelhouse.

There are developers out there who can do that work and do it really well and they have a whole team around them to do that work.

So our focus is shifting because it's just not the time in any more.

It was it was an incredible part of the way that the area grew.

But it is not our time to do that work now.

Those specific parcels of land at this point, the market is taking over.

And I don't know if you want to speak to any of those specific parcels of land because of the specifics.

But generally speaking, we will let the market take over as it should.

So good afternoon and I have been asked to keep this quick.

So I well, the specific parcels that you mentioned are owned by institutions by UCI.

And so the plan that Kate referenced is to set a vision for the entire district where the spaces that we are going to own and move forward our public realm.

But it will also set goals for that overarching district.

Where are the opportunities, where the work of institutions can support that overall neighborhood and our goals from that standpoint, too.

So that is the art of planning and university circle is that we don't control the lands like that and we want to have impact.

Other people can do that better.

Thank you.

Thank you to.

Kate Waters for joining us today at the City Club of Cleveland.

And thank you to all of you joining us here in person and those via our live stream and our live radio broadcast.

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The City Club is off next Friday, August 30th for Labor Day, but before that, please be sure to join us at The Happy Dog with a free forum on Tuesday, August 27th at 4 p.m.. Karim Crayton of the Brennan Center and retired Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor with the Ohio Supreme Court will be talking about the redistricting amendment and the upcoming the impact of the redistricting or redistricting amendment on the potential impact on the November ballot.

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