Building entrepreneurs feeds community revitalization

By Endya Watson, communications and outreach fellow

The Russell neighborhood of Louisville, KY and the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, MN are hundreds of miles apart. They are home to dissimilar residents and marked by different historic beginnings. Yet they recently had one thing in common: a vacant building that projected hope and opportunity for the community.

Louisville’s Russell neighborhood is characterized as a food desert, which NeighborWorks network member Community Ventures saw as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. In 2015, the organization acquired a building that housed a once bustling soul food restaurant. The renovated facility, now called Chef Space, is Louisville’s first kitchen incubator. In a new project called Jay’s 120, chefs can try out their food business at Chef Space for 120 days. According to Chris Lavenson, president of Chef Space, the incubator was a perfect fit for a neighborhood in need.

“There’s a clear need for access to healthy food in this community, not just from a food and feeding standpoint but from a connection and cultural opportunity standpoint,” Lavenson said. “When you have a need you want to make sure you have a sustainable solution.”

Chefs apply to Jay’s 120 to test out their restaurant business in a fully equipped retail space. Since Chef Space opened, about 30 businesses that started off without a license or even a logo have moved on to open their own business in the community.

In St. Paul, the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood is budding with potential for job creation. A strip of land where a manufacturing corporation once stood is now being revamped for new business. Just down the street in a former car dealership, Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) is setting up shop to give youth and minority contractors a chance to get in on the wave of revitalization.

Dayton’s Bluff small business incubator will open this summer. In partnership with the Neighborhood Development Center, Dayton’s Bluff NHS, also a member of the NeighborWorks network will provide training and resource for aspiring contractors. The partnership was born when the Neighborhood Development Center sought a space for a minority-owned business incubator and Dayton’s Bluff NHS wanted to expand its established YouthBuild program.

“All I could think is what great synergism there would be with the YouthBuild program and a contractor incubator in the same building,” said Jim Erchul, executive director of Dayton’s Bluff NHS. “We hope the youth in the program will gain role models by being housed in the same place.”

Since the early 90s, Dayton’s Bluff NHS has partnered with City Academy, the nation’s first charter school, on the YouthBuild program. The program teaches students the ins and outs of construction work. The objective of the program is to place youth in a job or post-secondary education once they graduate. Erchul hopes the forthcoming incubator will feed this mission.

“Our number one issue around here is having better paid jobs for folks,” Erchul explained. “With all the construction going on in the area, ideally what we’d like to be able to do is train our youth for jobs that will become available right in the neighborhood.”

Both incubators are on track to boosting economic development in the two neighborhoods. Lavenson called Louisville’s incubator a realistic place for people to build generational wealth.

“When you can help someone create a business in their own community then be able to buy a home and build equity, you’re giving them an asset to send children to school and provide a healthy home for their family.”

And one more thing rings true for both neighborhoods—an entrepreneur’s desire to focus and work hard has great power to revive a community.