learning from neighborhoods: the story of the hampton neighborhood initiative, 1993-2003

LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

WRITTEN BY

MICHAEL BAYER HNTB

WILLIAM POTAPCHUK COMMUNITY BUILDING INSTITUTE

THE STORY OF THE HAMPTONNEIGHBORHOODINITIATIVE, 1993-2003

THE HAMPTON NEIGHBORHOOD INITIATIVE, 1993-2003 • 1

imagineIMAGINE THE FIRST ACT OF A DISHEARTENING SCRIPT THAT HAS PLAYED OUT IN MANY CITIES

OVER A PERIOD OF DECADES: CITY GOVERNMENT ACTS UNILATERALLY AND ARROGANTLY IN

NEIGHBORHOODS. Citizen leaders organize to block city initiatives they think have not been

thought through. City government tries again, this time with superficial citizen involvement.

Neighborhood leaders see through the ruse. City officials, frustrated by citizens opposing

them, continue doing their work the same way, with attitude. Neighborhood organizations,

home to cynics who like fighting City Hall, stagnate. Neighborhoods decline.

Usually, the next act begins under the title: “City leaders organize a neighborhood

initiative.” In most cases, citizens react as they have so many times in the past: What is the

city trying to foist on us now?

What does a city that does not want to repeat this script do?

How can City Hall change so citizens want to work with it?

How do neighborhood leaders accustomed to fighting city-driven initiatives begin to

trust City Hall and choose to form partnerships — with the city, other neighborhoods and

other agencies?

It’s not easy. But one of the oldest cities in the United States — HAMPTON, VIRGINIA — is in

the midst of decade-long renaissance that has transformed the way citizens, city hall, schools

and community-based organizations come together to improve their neighborhoods…

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

n Hampton, one person whounderstood the first act of this

script well was Andy Bigelow. He hadbeen involved with his neighborhoodorganization and was part of anumbrella group known as theHampton Federation of CivicAssociations. And he knew how thecity worked — City Hall proposed,neighborhood leaders opposed. Sohe reacted the way many citizens did— by fighting plans, fightingproposals and demanding change.

But Bigelow was tiring of alwaysplaying defense against City Hall. Herealized that many neighborhoodorganizations existed, at least inpart, to fight proposals by devel-opers and the city. And, despite thetime and effort he and others wereputting in to sustain their organiza-tions, not only did little seem to

change, some neighborhoods clearlywere headed downward.

Bigelow looked cynically at the1993 announcement of the city’s newNeighborhoods Initiative. The typicalquestions filled his mind: Was thecity’s stated intention to collaboratewith neighborhoods just another wayto control them? Was “collaboration”another name for superficial citizeninvolvement? Would this effort beanother passing fad, raising theexpectations of citizens but disap-pearing after the next election? Wasthis another level of bureaucracyseparating citizens from the depart-ments that delivered services to them?

Another protagonist was JoanKennedy, a longtime city employeewho served as city planning directorbefore her appointment as the firstdirector of Hampton’s NeighborhoodOffice in 1993. A former VISTAvolunteer, Kennedy cared deeplyabout Hampton’s neighborhoods andhad done her best to do what shethought was right for them. Theauthor of plans that residents hadvehemently opposed, Kennedy wasfrustrated, too. Her experience inplanning had not prepared her for theconflict resolution and communitybuilding the city seemed to need.

Kennedy observed that she hadbeen most successful when she tookthe time to forge relationships with

community leaders. When a strongrapport between city officials and theneighborhoods existed, she found thatall sides could work through toughissues and take action. As director ofthe new Neighborhood Office, shebelieved that building relationshipswith longtime citizen leaders andadversaries, such as Bigelow, was acritical foundation for success.

One of the Neighborhood Office’sfirst programs was a “NeighborhoodCollege,” a several month longtraining program for citizens. Thegoals of Neighborhood College wereambitious: to teach citizens about citygovernment, to explain the neighbor-hood initiative, to build partnershipskills, and, most importantly, to trans-form the relationships with citizens byhaving city staff both teach and partic-ipate in the effort.

Kennedy encouraged Bigelow toattend the city’s first NeighborhoodCollege, and he went, with eyeswide open.

“I was still not a believer,” Bigelowsaid. “I could still see what was wrongwith the initiative, as well as what Ithought could be done better.”

Through the first few of severalsessions, he continued to think theinitiative’s goals were unobtainable.But as he learned more about thecity’s new approach to neighbor-hoods and pondered it, his attitude

2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

I

began to change. Maybe there wassomething to it.

Attending Neighborhood College“made you sit and think that maybeother things could happen in ourneighborhoods, that maybe relation-ships could be different,” he said. “Ifound it to be a mind-broadeningexperience, and thought, maybe Ihave to start thinking outside of thebox I’m used to.”

Bigelow decided to give the newneighborhood initiative a chance andbegan to participate, as a partner.

If Bigelow were a lone convert, thisstory would be a short one. But he’snot. Throughout Hampton are scoresof neighborhood leaders who haveparticipated in the NeighborhoodsInitiative and have undergone similartransitions in their thinking.

“I thought it was eyewash,” saidAndre McCloud, a resident of theGreater Wythe neighborhood whonow serves on the NeighborhoodCommission. “It was only after I wentthat I realized how much I did notknow about the city. It really openedmy eyes.”

In time, Bigelow and McCloudwould become two of the initiative’smost ardent supporters. Today, 10years later, Bigelow sees a changedclimate in Hampton.

“As neighborhood leaders, we’retalking with city officials, we’re

working with City Hall, and we’reaccomplishing our goals throughoutthe city,” he said. “We see that we canapproach issues positively and getthings done, and I think most civicgroup leaders who have worked withthe initiative would tell you that.”

Neighborhood leaders are not theonly ones who have changed. Whilethe popular press touts corporatetransformations from GE to IBM,similar efforts within public sectororganizations often are overlooked. InHampton, that change is profound.Not only have staff throughoutgovernment changed their attitudesand enhanced their ability to workwith neighborhoods, they havechanged the way the organizationworks to foster sustained collabora-tive efforts with communities.

The initiative’s successes aretangible: a community centerfunctioning in a long-shutteredschool, a museum celebrating thehistory of the only resettlementcommunity in the United Statesdesigned and constructed byAfrican-Americans; a learning centerin a former bar; neighborhoodsstabilized and on the rise.

Neighborhoods have achieved theirgoals by mustering resources theywould not have been able to accesswithout collaborating with the city.From the city’s perspective, the initia-

tive has helped to identify neighbor-hood needs and priorities and allocatelimited resources that are not onlyresponsive to neighborhood priorities,but leverage resources from citizens,community based organizations,schools, businesses and other partners.

The successes are intangible, too:new and rich networks of citizens andcity officials who know and trust oneanother and are willing to worktogether when a crisis arises.

In this document, we tell thestories of Hampton’s NeighborhoodsInitiative during its first 10 years,the elements upon which the initia-tive is built, and the lessonsthat the city and neighbor-hoods have learnedduring this innova-tive experiment incivic involvement.But the story isfar from over.

In the finalanalysis, perhaps the most importantlesson is that Hampton is stillchanging, still improving, stilllearning. The effort to improve neigh-borhoods has evolved constantly, inthe community as well as within localgovernment. And the evolution is notdone, as neighborhood leaders inHampton continue to address anevolving set of challenges.

Although the goal of building

relationships has been realized, the work of building relationshipsand reaching out in new ways isnever done.

Act three is just beginning. ■


“As neighborhood leaders,

we’re talking with city officials,

we’re working with City Hall,

and we’re accomplishing our goals

throughout the city…”

—ANDY BIGELOW

ampton, a city of just under150,000 people, shares a penin-

sula with its neighbor, NewportNews, at the southern end of theChesapeake Bay. The city offers someof the most affordable urban opportu-nities among bayside communities forpeople wanting to live near the water.That is good news and bad.

Hampton, like many other juris-dictions in Virginia, is heavilydependent upon real estate taxes tobalance the city budget. The valueand condition of its housing stock,therefore, are vital to the city’s fiscalhealth, and this asset is at risk.

In the early 1990s, the issuebecame clear. According to the 1990census, housing values in Hamptonwere among the lowest in theHampton Roads region, a wakeup callfor a city that, at the time, wasbecoming a poster child for thereinventing government movement.

“The statistics scared us,” said thenMayor James Eason. “We knew wecould not continue this decline.Otherwise we were going to be likesome cities in Virginia that we did notwant to be like.”1

Effective neighborhood initiativesrarely emerge from a vacuum; rather,a history, a set of conditions, and amobilization of public and politicalwill coalesce into a commitment tocreate, staff and fund what for many

jurisdictions can become a majorfocus over a long period of time.Hampton was no exception. Whilethe disheartening data from the 1990census may have been the trigger,Hampton had been headed towardmore proactive work in neighbor-hoods for several years.

Indeed, the history of Hampton’sNeighborhoods Initiative starts withthe city’s efforts in 1987 to update itsComprehensive Plan, the policydocument that guides land use anddevelopment in the city. One of themajor proposals in the draft plan wasa new east-west expressway. And, as ithad been each time this idea wasraised before, the community wasangry.

Joan Kennedy, then Director ofPlanning, remembers:

I had just done my spiel about howthe comprehensive plan is the commu-nity’s vision. But when I looked around,there was just this sea of angry faces outthere. I thought this must come a lotcloser to being these people’s nightmarerather than their vision.2

Not only were residents angryabout the road, they were upset thatthey had not been consulted aboutthe plan before it was publicized.Rather than pushing forward with theplan as many jurisdictions do, citymanager Bob O’Neill took a step back.Meeting with neighborhood leaders,

he proposed a consensus buildingprocess. Neighbors agreed, on twoconditions: “City Council had topublicly support the process and theproposed highway had to be removedfrom the plan and not reconsideredunless the consensus committeeagreed to it.”3

Facilitated by assistant citymanager Mike Monteith, a diverse setof stakeholders reached consensus ona revised Comprehensive Plan,agreeing to preserve the proposedroad’s right of way as a park until thetraffic on adjacent roads reachedcertain levels, at which time the roadwould be built.

The effort was viewed by many asa great success. Monteith describedthe reactions of staff:

The planners were amazed; theresults were more creative thananything they had done previously.When the community has an equal voicewith you, you have to really debate theplanning issues, to figure out how tomeet everybody’s requirements. That’swhen you really get creative.

And then he summed up:There’s no doubt it was the most

successful comp plan we’ve had todate… It is the only one that has dealtwith controversial issues in a long-term,and not a short-term way.

This was the beginning of thechanging relationship between neigh-


H

HOUSING VALUES,

ROAD FIGHTS

AND YOUTH ISSUES

SPAWN AN INITIATIVE

bors and City Hall. Said Jim Dick, aneighborhood representative to theconsensus committee, “When theprocess was initiated, it was a kind ofus-against-them mentality. You couldsee it on both sides. Once everyonestarted recognizing each other asindividuals, we could discuss issuesand deal with them.”

Linda McNeely, another partici-pant who was later elected to CityCouncil, concluded: “The biggestthing I got out of the consensus groupwas that the city government and staffwere not the enemy.”

The success with the consensus-based conflict resolution processinspired the initial paradigm shift inplanning processes in Hampton.Senior staff from throughout citygovernment were trained in facilita-tion skills; the planning departmentbegan to involve citizens in neighbor-hood planning; and, despite a subse-quent stumble on an effort thatsought consensus on solid wasteissues, this type of participatoryprocess was growing legs.

About the same time, another setof activities received federal funding.In 1990, the US Department of Healthand Human Services Center forSubstance Abuse Prevention (CSAP),which had been making importantinvestments in communities duringthe late 1980s and early ‘90s, funded a


HAMPTON ROADS REGION

project in Hampton. Starting life asthe Families and Youth At-RiskInitiating Committee, the HamptonCoalition for Youth (as it became

known) grew into an impor-tant springboard for neigh-borhood action.

The broad-based coalition,which sought to improveopportunities for youth anddecrease risky behavior,engaged adults, youth,nonprofits, the faith commu-nity, and city leaders in amulti-year learning, planningand action process. Theirwork was inspired by anemerging national youth

development field that focused oncreating healthy environments thatsupport youth.

Coalition leaders took to heart asimple but profound statement from the Search Institute, a leader inthe field of youth development:“Communities do make a differencein the lives of youth. And many of thecontributing factors are within acommunity’s control.”4

The coalition’s work culminated ina 1993 report to the mayor, whichincluded a “Neighborhood InitiativesProgram” as one of four major recom-mendations. The report framed manyof the principles that ultimatelyshaped Hampton’s neighborhood

initiative: a commitment to involvingyouth, an asset-based approach, and arecognition that schools served as thecenter of most neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Hampton’s govern-ment was being reinvented, onestultifying bureaucratic process afteranother. City Manager Bob O’Neill,with the support of Mayor Eason andthe Hampton City Council, believedthat “the fundamental transformationof public systems and organizations tocreate dramatic increases in theireffectiveness, efficiency, adaptability,and capacity to innovate” was notonly possible, they were going tomake it happen in their ownbackyard.5

“Luckily for us, Hampton has beenblessed with city managers andcouncils that encouraged experimen-tation,” Monteith said. “The citymanager was not happy unless thestaff was re-creating the wheel everyday. We had a corporate expectationto push the envelope, and that helpedus significantly.”

One of the tenets of thereinventing government movementwas the recognition that ‘one size doesnot fit all,’ a principle that wouldunderlie Hampton’s neighborhoodefforts. Federal policies that treated allcities in the same manner no longerwere viewed as effective. City govern-ment policies that addressed all

neighborhoods in the same way werenot effective either. A city council thatbuilt community centers in everyneighborhood, for example, withoutfirst asking the neighborhoodswhether this was important to themwould not be making the best invest-ment of public resources.

While national recognition wasstill over the horizon, efforts that hadstarted in the late 1980s were alreadytaking hold. Like many cities thatwere reinventing themselves,Hampton officials debated their visionstatement for almost a year, culmi-nating with one that is simple andbold: “To be the most livable city in Virginia.” ■



t is against this backdrop that, in1993, the mayor declared in his

state of the city address that neighbor-hoods would be one of the city’s fourmost important priorities. But priori-ties do not make a program, and cityleaders were bucking the samenational trends that were challengingother communities. City decision-makers had recognized a shift indecision-making from the national,state and local scales to the global,regional and neighborhood arenas. IfHampton were to prosper, under thisline of thinking, neighborhoods hadto be empowered to identify theirown agendas and carry them out.

Moreover, the leadership structurein many American cities had beenchanging from top-down to bottom-up. No longer were cities dominatedby one or more corporations thatdetermined the course of city politicsand ensured that local needs weremet. As the relative power and influ-ence of these corporations waned, avacuum was created and neighbor-hoods were “not prepared to makedecisions, so the city had to dosomething to help them getprepared,” Eason said.

These factors, coupled with apotentially dire housing andemployment outlook, made it clearto city officials that, despite theirbest efforts to reinvent city govern-

ment, Hampton did not and wouldnot have all of the resources itneeded to meet the needs of itsneighborhoods without workingwith them. To create the kind of citythat citizens wanted, city govern-ment would have to collaborate withthe citizens to set priorities anddetermine how best to fulfill eachneighborhood’s (and, by extension,the city’s) most pressing needs.

As city leaders tried to accomplishthis goal, however, it became clearthat they did not know what theneighborhoods’ priorities were, muchless which citizens were willing topartner. Not only did city governmentlack an effective system for workingwith neighborhoods, the neighbor-hoods themselves were not organizedin a way that ensured their leaderstruly were representing the peoplewithin their borders. City staff did notdiscover the second problem untilthey tried to deal with the first.

“What was clear up front was thatthe city was never going to have theresources necessary to meet all neigh-borhood needs unless we got into anactive partnership with neighbor-hoods,” said Bob O’Neill, who leftHampton in 1997 and now serves asexecutive director of the InternationalCity/County Management Associationin Washington D.C. “And even if ourresources were not limited, we were

still missing neighborhood priorities,so we also had to build communityleadership to discover them.”

To identify neighborhood priori-ties, new lines of communicationbetween city government and neigh-borhoods, and leadership and collab-oration within neighborhoods wouldneed to be created and fostered. Asthese needs became clearer, theconcept of a neighborhood initiativebegan to take form.

Fortunately, Hampton was wellpositioned to move ahead. To many inHampton, collaborating with neigh-borhoods seemed like a natural step.In some older neighborhoods,Hampton residents traditionally hadidentified with their neighborhoodsand carried a strong sense of neigh-borhood pride. The City Council hadreinforced these feelings over theyears through policies aimed atstrengthening and supporting neigh-borhoods.

Several key staff, including JoanKennedy, Mike Monteith, and CindyCarlson from the Hampton Coalitionfor Youth, worked together to developa description of the Department ofNeighborhood Services. ■

FRAMING

THE INITIATIVE

I

o move the idea forward, CityManager Bob O’Neill appointed

a committee (known as the “initiatingcommittee”) to design the process ofworking with neighborhoods andidentify members of the public whowould serve on a steering committee,which would take on the task ofdetermining how to structure theinitiative. At the same time, the CityCouncil established the Departmentof Neighborhood Services (soonrenamed the Neighborhood Office),staffed by Joan Kennedy and threeneighborhood facilitators.

The Neighborhood Office’s initialwork plan was straightforward. Staffwould spend the first year workingwith the steering committee todesign the neighborhood initiativeand figure out what the office wasgoing to do. They would develop anorganizational structure, gatherinformation about neighborhoods,launch some initial programs,monitor how well the programswere being carried out, and developsome early “lessons learned” thatcould be applied to the program’sdesign. If all went well, in thesecond year, the office would beprepared to develop a set of threeneighborhood plans, then continueon a schedule to draft three planseach year until every neighborhoodin Hampton had one.

At least that was the idea. But assoon as the office opened, a line beganforming at the door.

Many neighborhood leaders wereeager to be served, so many, in fact,that Kennedy and her staff decided tochange their approach. Each neigh-borhood that came in became a pilot,so residents would not have to waitfor services as the city developed theprogram design. This provided theNeighborhood Office with “laborato-ries” where they could apply the ideasthat staff and the steering committeewere developing on their own as wellas gathering from other communities.

“We didn’t say ‘no’ to any neigh-borhood,” Kennedy said. “Ouroriginal plan was to be very struc-tured, but that was when we didn’tknow anything about neighborhoodwork. This is a very messy businessand you have to be very flexible.”

The office began working witheight pilot neighborhoods —Aberdeen Gardens, Park Place, OldNorth Hampton, North Back River,Eason Park, Wythe, Wythe-Phenixand Newtown – and from these earlyefforts, staff developed a set of obser-vations that were contrary to some ofthe commonly held assumptionsabout neighborhoods. It was theselessons, much more than nationalresearch, that determined the finaldesign of the neighborhood initiative:

■ Many neighborhoods that appearvisually or statistically most distressedoften have the richest human assets;their residents have a long history oftaking care of one another.

■ People will invest themselves in theirneighborhoods, some at great incon-venience and some despite great fear.

■ People do not always blame othersfor neighborhood problems or claimothers should do all the work. Theycommonly look to themselves andtheir neighbors to make things betterand seek to enlist the support of thepolice, the churches, the schools andthe city in their efforts.

■ When asked open-ended questionsabout life in neighborhoods, peopletalk first about safety, a sense ofcommunity, youth, jobs and goodhousing. Many of these concerns arehighly symbolic and can be addressedreadily with existing resources.

■ When they talk about safety, manypeople in fact are asking for adifferent relationship with their policeofficer. They want someone theyknow, someone who will be part ofmaking their neighborhood safer,someone they can reach out to.


T

NEIGHBORHOODS

LINE UP

AS OFFICE

OPENS

■ Many neighborhoods understand anddesire the concept of ‘partnership.’The greater challenge to them ischanging the mindset of government.

These observations became theassumptions upon which the initia-tive was built and provided a contextthat distinguished Hampton’sapproach. ■


CITY OF HAMPTON NEIGHBORHOOD DISTR ICTS


GUIDING

PRINCIPLES

s they moved ahead on thedesign, city staff and the

steering committee asked themselvesmany questions, trying to look at theproblem from every angle: How dowe define a neighborhood? Whichneighborhoods should participatefirst? How does city governmentprepare neighborhoods to participatein this process? How do we developpartnerships? How do we focus onyouth? What is the best way to takea holistic approach to the idea of

neighborhood “health”?After a year of study and experi-

ence of working with neighbor-hoods, the steering committee, withinput from the NeighborhoodOffice, concluded that the initiativewould have the best chance tosucceed if it had a clear philosophyor set of values that articulated anew vision of neighborhoods andthe human, physical and intangibleresources within them.

The committee envisioned a city

“where individuals and families, bycreating healthy neighborhoods,have the opportunity to succeed inrealizing their full potential for abetter quality of life.” The committeewas especially adamant that theinitiative would be about creating“opportunities,” not “doing to orfor” neighborhoods. Instead, thevision would be realized by acting ona set of principles that wouldunderlie the entire initiative:

A

▲


PARTNERSHIP

By supporting partnerships amongneighborhoods, schools, businesses,community institutions and govern-ment, the city could help to provideneighborhoods with resources thatcould make a difference but notprovide all the resources itself. Theidea was to maximize the ability ofneighborhoods to help themselvesand minimize the use of experts fromoutside the neighborhoods.

This type of partnership wouldrequire a new type of relationshipbetween neighborhoods and the city,based on a willingness of both citygovernment and neighborhoods tocollaborate. City government wouldhave to be willing to enter into long-term relationships with neighbor-hoods and not be tempted to tryquick fixes. Neighborhoods,meanwhile, would have to avoidreverting to the old model of “wecomplain and the city should deliver.”

INCLUSIVENESS

Every neighborhood should havean opportunity to participate in theinitiative. Similarly, all citizens andother stakeholders should be invitedto participate in any activity related tothe initiative.

Inclusiveness was important for avery practical reason. If the city wereto enter into partnerships with neigh-borhoods and carry out changes inphysical or social structures, then thecity had a responsibility to ensure thatthe partnerships were genuine, andthat neighborhood representation wasnot limited to a vocal few. Thisprinciple would be applied citywide(by including all neighborhoods) andwithin neighborhoods themselves (byoffering the opportunity to everyonewho would be affected by decisions inthe decision making process).

COMPREHENSIVENESS

A neighborhood’s quality of life isnot limited to bricks and mortar.Thus, neighborhood efforts shouldnot be limited to physical improve-ments. A healthy neighborhood feelssafe and supports the needs of itsresidents for social interaction, recre-ation, education, civic involvementand access to goods and services.

A FOCUS ON YOUTH AND FAMILIES

Traditionally in Hampton, youthand families had been viewed asseparate from neighborhoods, schoolsand local government. Services andresources had been targeted narrowly,most often in response to crises. Butstrengthening and supporting youthand families should happen wherepeople live.

Neighborhoods, therefore, wouldbe viewed as resources for families.This “youth focus” would not besomething done for youth. Rather,youth would be involved indesigning and carrying out theprograms and opportunities thatwould be available to them.

RECOGNIZING UNIQUENESS

Only a neighborhood can definewhat makes it healthy. Therefore, theinitiative would attempt to appreciatethe culture, heritage, character, assetsand aspirations of every neighbor-hood in the city.

…strengthening

and supporting

youth and families

should happen

where people live.


BUILDING ON STRENGTHS

In the past, city government hadfocused on problems, because, byidentifying problems, the city couldintervene, which brought money andattention to neighborhoods. Butthrough this process, the city effec-tively had taught neighborhoods tovalue their problems.

Instead of focusing on what neigh-borhoods did not have or could notdo, the initiative would focus on theability and capacity of neighborhoodsto shape their own futures, in theconcept the city called “asset orienta-tion,” or viewing residents and neigh-borhoods as producers, notconsumers. These “assets” includethe skills, gifts, knowledge, energy,resources and values that citizensbring to their neighborhoods, bothindividually and collectively. Throughthe initiative, the city would tap theseassets to fill gaps it could not addresswith city resources.

PLANNING WITH ACTION

Because neighborhood planningcan be a long and complex process,citizens looking for quick action canbecome frustrated. To balance theneed to be deliberative aboutcomplex and expensive issues yetshow some immediate progress,

planning efforts would includeshort-term actions that everyonecould readily agree to, on issueswhere the resources were readilyavailable, such as neighborhoodcleanups, or neighborhood signs.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Because the initiative would relyon the strengths and abilities ofcitizens to identify priorities and helpto carry out plans, developing leader-ship would be critical to its success.Several programs or “building blocks”would be created to develop neigh-borhood leadership and strengthentheir skill set.

LISTENING

Finally, for the initiative tosucceed, city officials and neighbor-hood leaders would have to listen toone another and encourage respectfor diverse ideas — a philosophicalshift for two groups that were moreaccustomed to telling each otherwhat to do. ■


hetoric, as citizens know, onlygoes so far. The emerging

philosophy of the initiative had all theright words, but the real test would bein the actions. After working with thepilot neighborhoods, articulatinglessons, and beginning to reorganizeinternally, city officials realized theyhad raised expectations and needed todeliver a comprehensive approach.They also had a strong sense of whatwas needed, given their analysis, theearly lessons, and, most importantly,from listening to citizens.

The underlying framework wasstraightforward – share leadership ofthe initiative with neighborhoodleaders and institutional stakeholders,build individual and organizationalcapacity in neighborhoods and citygovernment, catalyze numerous smallneighborhood improvements, anddevelop citizen-driven neighborhoodplans to define visions and goals andsignificant actions – ownership,capacity, and actions based on plans.

Undergirding this framework was

a core belief that Joan Kennedyfrequently asserts. Especially today, acommunity has only so much energyto work on community improvement,she said. People in a community oftenspend their time fighting orbackbiting or working on unrelatedprojects that do not support eachother. Synergy is found, she suggests,when a community has people

working together on efforts andstrategies that support each other.This commonsense approach can befound throughout Hampton’s efforts.■

BUILDING

THE INITIATIVE

BEYOND

THE PRINCIPLES

R


n the earliest years, theNeighborhood Initiative was a

staff-driven enterprise. Staff listened,staff consulted, staff engaged, butultimately staff decided. Yet theprogram’s philosophy articulated agoal of partnership. That goal waseasier to implement on the neighbor-hood level using existing structures,by creating ad hoc processes thatbrought together potential partners.At the citywide level, a forum forregular conversation and deliberationamong partners did not exist.

The architects of the initiativedecided it was essential to build acitywide body that brought togetherneighborhood leaders and otherstakeholders to guide the neighbor-

hood initiative. InHampton, those bodies arecalled commissions andthus, the NeighborhoodCommission was born.

The NeighborhoodCommission providesleadership, policy guidanceand support to theNeighborhood Initiative.While it is now seen ascritical to the initiative, itwas not always that way. Asthe commission began todo its work, questions arose

about its role, how it related to otherorganizations, and whether it was

organized properly. Commissionersdid not understand what they weresupposed to do and spent a lot of timesetting policy and approvingNeighborhood Development Fundprojects. They also had trouble under-standing how their work related tothe ongoing work of two othergroups, the Neighborhood Task Forceand the Neighborhood CollegeAlumni Association, the first made upof city officials, the second ofresidents. With so much on theirplate, the commission was notcompletely effective, and after a time,they decided to reinvent themselves.

During the reinvention process,they wrestled with core questions.Did they effectively function like aboard of directors for a nonprofitorganization, setting policy directionfor staff, or were they more like aboard advising City Council, doling

out neighborhood developmentgrants? Did they need to be represen-tative of every neighborhood, or onlyof neighborhood perspectives? Someof the commission’s most difficultmeetings occurred during this time.

The conversation led to the delin-eation of 10 neighborhood districts,covering every part of the city.Representatives were to be electedfrom each district through a neigh-borhood-based process. These are thefirst ten members of the commission.Three representatives of the city —currently an assistant city manager,the director of public works, and thepublic communications officer —join them. In addition, three institu-tional representatives are on thecommission, representing business,nonprofits and the faith community.As a part of the city’s commitment toinvolving youth directly in decision-

SHARING LEADERSHIP:

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

COMMISSION

I

…it was essential

to build

a citywide body

that brought together

neighborhood leaders

and other

stakeholders…


making, two youth representativesalso serve. Three representatives fromthe schools round out the 21-member body.

Today the commission functionslike a non-profit board of directors,providing policy guidance to theinitiative, establishing the directionand making decisions. Meetingmonthly, members typically organizearound the goals and objectives setout in the city’s strategic plan. Mostof their work takes place incommittee, where they gather,

sometimes once a week, to examineissues related to youth, capacitybuilding and marketing the program,among other issue areas identified inthe strategic plan.

Like the initiative itself, thecommission struggles with questionsof outreach and involvement. AsAndy Bigelow, who serves on thecommission, says, “The commissionstill struggles to get citizens andorganizations involved in the initia-tive. We are still stymied, we have notbeen able to break through to get folks

interested in doing things in neigh-borhoods. It’s almost like we’rerelegated to deal with the few folkswho want to engage us. But this ebbsand flows. Our relationship with oneorganization will get better, then thepeople involved will disappear andwe’ll start over again. We’re still strug-gling to find a way to work with thatproblem, but I think we’re makinginroads and are being more acceptedfor what we are.”

While the commission has beenchallenged with connecting withcitizens who are not on the commis-sion, it has played an essential rolein building partnerships amongcommissioners, as well as creatingstronger connections with theschools, city government and non-profits agencies at a citywide level,around work in specific neighbor-hoods, a task that was very difficultprior to its creation. ■

NEIGHBORHOODCOMMISSION

DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES . . . . . 10

CITY REPRESENTATIVES. . . . . . . . . 3

INSTITUTIONAL

REPRESENTATIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

SCHOOL REPRESENTATIVES . . . . . . 3

YOUTH REPRESENTATIVES . . . . . . . 2

TOTAL NEIGHBORHOOD

COMMISSION MEMBERS . . 21


he initiative’s first challenge wasto embrace neighborhoods as

partners. “But when we first startedout, we had no idea of how to do it,”Joan Kennedy explained. “Nobodyknew anybody else, and someresidents viewed city employees asheartless bureaucrats instead of the‘average human beings’ that most of usare … We also needed to unravel thelayers of mistrust toward city govern-ment that had built up over the years.”

This lesson was brought home toKennedy during a conversation shehad with a citizen while still servingas planning director. It happenedwhile she was staffing a consensusbuilding committee working on aneast-west parkway. During the heat ofthe controversy, a man who wasserving on the committee saw her athis church, which, coincidentally, wasthe same church she attended. Sosurprised was he to see her in a placeof worship that he told her, “I didn’tknow you went to church!” Heexpressed even greater shock upondiscovering that she had children.Apparently, some citizens did notbelieve city workers had regular livesoutside the office.

Many more residents would needto have this kind of epiphany if theinitiative were to succeed to evoke thesea change in thinking that the citywas seeking. But how could the city

create an environment where thiswould happen?

As the importance of this questionbegan to sharpen in their minds, staffmembers from the NeighborhoodOffice were making anotherdiscovery. They found that manycitizens understood the concept ofpartnership, but few really under-stood how the city was applying theidea in the initiative. Despite earlyoutreach efforts, many citizenscontinued to view city government asthe provider of services and neighbor-hoods as the recipients.

Changing this mindset wouldrequire that the relationship betweenneighborhoods and city governmentchange as well. In an attempt to do

this, Kennedy and others createdNeighborhood College, an intense,multi-session program taught by cityofficials as a kind of City Government101, a school for neighborhoodleaders.

The program was built on theassumption that citizens distrustedgovernment at least in part becausethey did not understand what citygovernment did. NeighborhoodCollege would try to bridge this gapby giving neighborhood leaders aninsider’s view of the city. At its core,the program was an opportunity forcity staff and neighborhood leaders tobuild relationships with one anotheracross organizational lines in a non-contentious setting.

In one session, dubbed Budget101, participants learned about cityrevenues – where the money camefrom, where it was spent, how littlediscretionary income the city reallyhad, and why expanding the commer-cial tax base improved the city’s finan-cial health. Another session focusedon economic strategies. A thirdexamined land use. A fourth looked atthe connections between youth,neighborhoods and schools. Mixed inwere tours of City Hall and neighbor-hoods.

“Through Neighborhood College,you get a better understanding onwhat it takes to run a city and you get

BUILDING

NEIGHBORHOOD

CAPACITY:

SEND ‘EM

TO COLLEGE

T

to know (city) staff people,” saidAndy Bigelow. “You get some ideaabout what (city officials) really wantto do, and what they’re trying to do.”

Sitting side by side at the weeklysessions, residents and city officialsbegan to forge personal relationshipswith one another. No longer were thecity manager, planning director andother city officials viewed as peoplewho just attended public meetingsevery Tuesday night.

As time went on, this helped someof the barriers that separated thepublic and the government to disap-pear. “The citizens got to know us aspeople, and we found that there’s a lotof mileage in that,” Kennedy said.

Inside city government, the experi-ence of Neighborhood College ledsome officials to realize that they hadno idea what was going on in someneighborhoods. Talking directly withresidents helped to open lines ofcommunication that did not existbefore. These conversations helpedofficials look at neighborhoodsthrough the citizens’ own eyes.

One Parks Department employeewho attended Neighborhood Collegeremarked that after completing thecourse she began to see neighbor-hoods as more than the trees andgrass for which she was responsible.She could see them in terms of whatthe people who lived there wanted

them to be. Other staff members hadsimilar experiences.

Fifteen neighborhood leaders andfive city employees attended the firstclass in the spring of 1995.Recognizing the value of the connec-tions the program yielded, the citysoon established a NeighborhoodCollege Alumni Association toprovide a medium for graduates tospread the word about the benefits ofthe college.

The strategy worked. Thesecond Neighborhood Collegeattracted 25 people andcemented a program that wouldserve as one of the initiative’sbuilding blocks. More than 323graduates (as of early 2003) and thealumni association now activelycontribute to community affairs.

The Aberdeen Gardens neighbor-hood, in particular, has madeattending Neighborhood College apriority. “Most of my (committee)chairs are graduates,” said RooseveltWilson, president of the AberdeenGardens Historic and CivicAssociation. “I think it’s a wonderfulprogram.”

It may be old-fashioned civic pride,but it works. Stephanie Taylor,another graduate, described what shegained: “I now know how to imple-ment positive change in my neighbor-hood and where to go to access

resources through the city. I have anew pride in the city by virtue ofknowing what’s been done, and whatis being done to make Hampton abetter place to live.”

Neighborhood College hasprovided the city a medium toprovide better and more completeinformation to residents, as well asaccess to city leaders. These factors,over time, have helped to improvethe public perception of city govern-ment and bolster the credibility ofthe initiative. ■


Neighborhood College

has provided the city

a medium to provide

better and more complete

information to residents,

as well as access

to city leaders.


uilding trust goes beyondbuilding relationships, however.

By acting as a partner with neigh-borhoods, the Neighborhood Officehad raised the bar for all city depart-ments by raising the public’s expec-tations. Although this was a giantstep forward, Neighborhood Officestaff feared the growing goodwillwould only continue if neighbor-hoods had positive interactions withall city departments. This wasespecially important because inmost cases these other departments(and not the Neighborhood Office)possessed the resources that neigh-borhoods most wanted.

It was one thing for the city to saythat Hampton had changed the way itworked with neighborhoods, butwhat if residents approached a citydepartment to act collaboratively onlyto be rebuffed? Even one bad experi-ence could undo some of themomentum the initiative had created.For the initiative to be successful, allcity departments would need tochange the way they did business anddevise a way to provide their serviceson a neighborhood basis.

In the past, citizens who had soughtcity services were not always greetedwarmly. After all, some bureaucratshad reasoned, wasn’t it the job of citygovernment to meet the broad policygoals set by elected officials and not

become mired in the single-issuepolitics of local complainers?

“Neighborhood organizationsand leaders tended to be viewed as anuisance, always telling the citywhat to do and diverting us fromdoing what we thought was best,”Joan Kennedy said.

“Our first message was internal tocity government, namely, that weneeded to view neighborhoods as astrategic issue and neighborhoodleaders as resources and partnersinstead of complaining adversaries,”Kennedy said, and to do this, align-ment from the top was needed.

One of the initiative’s primaryinternal issues was allocating cityresources. To change how the city didbusiness – to provide what the initia-tive leaders were calling ‘neighbor-hood-based service delivery,’ orallocating resources on a neighbor-hood basis – better communicationamong city departments was requiredand a new approach to allocatingresources between city departmentsand the neighborhoods themselveswas needed.

To address these issues, citymanager Bob O’Neill assigned theheads of the departments with theresources most in demand by neigh-borhoods to a Neighborhood TaskForce. After studying the issue, thetask force concluded that the city’s

relationship with neighborhoods washampered by systems that workedwell for city government but not aswell for neighborhoods. If Hamptonreally were serious about changing itsrelationship with neighborhoods,these systems would have to change.

The means to better neighborhoodservice delivery took the form of areaimprovement teams. The first, estab-lished in Aberdeen Gardens, wascomprised of officials from severalcity departments who worked withneighborhood groups on specificprojects to improve the neighbor-hood’s quality of life.

The team was directed to think lessabout the departments they workedin and more about what had to bedone to improve neighborhoods. Theidea also was to provide opportunitiesfor the neighborhood to help itself.

The area team concept workedwell in Aberdeen, a cohesive African-American neighborhood in central

FOCUSING

CITY GOVERNMENT

ON

NEIGHBORHOODS

B

Hampton where some homes hadbeen in the same families since the1930s. This neighborhood hadresources the area team could drawupon: residents hosted meetings ofthe area team in their homes, andseveral contractors who had theability to complete public improve-ments lived in the neighborhood.

However, when the task forcetried to form a team in each ofHampton’s 10 newly created neigh-borhood districts (defined byanother Neighborhood Officeproject), the concept was not assuccessful. By applying the same ideathroughout the city, the initiativewent against the reinventing govern-ment principle of ‘one size does notfit all,’ and the approach did notwork well. Moreover, as Kennedysaid, “we had the capacity to beextremely responsive to one area, butnot to the whole city at one time.”The resources that existed in

Aberdeen did not exist to the samedegree in other neighborhoods.

After a few years of stops andstarts, the city decided to establisharea teams only after a neighborhoodcompleted a plan or was seekingservices best served by that model; ineffect, the area teams morphed intoimplementation teams that wouldhelp to carry out the plan.

Today, area teams are tailored to theissues that a community is trying toaddress; instead of a standardmembership, teams are made up ofcity staff who control the resourcesthe projects require.

The notion of the NeighborhoodTask Force and the area teams bridgedsome of the competing conceptswithin the reinventing governmentmovement. Initially focused on theidea of “citizen as customer,” propo-nents of reinvention had urged localgovernments to create seamless, one-stop connections to their customers.

If Hampton’s area teams had onlyorganized themselves to deliverservices better, they would haveviolated the “partnership” principle ofthe neighborhood initiative (itself amanifestation of the reinventinggovernment movement), becausethey would have been actingindependently of the neighborhoods.

By working with citizens collec-tively and fashioning a servicedelivery strategy that is driven by thecommunity, the city is effectivelycollaborating with the community toachieve shared goals – a dramaticchange from separate agencies withseparate plans working on differenttimelines that was in place before theinitiative began.

Once the program was off theground, the issue of internal ‘align-ment’ became a central challenge.Although the efforts made by theNeighborhood Task Force were “thespark that created a new way ofworking in the city government,”according to assistant city managerMike Monteith, the challengeremains. Some departments havebought into the communityinvolvement process and havedevised creative ways to involve thepublic in decision making, whileothers are not as comfortable withthe approach, he said.

“Today, we still have departments

that don’t understand communityparticipation,” Monteith said. “Andwe still hear from sectors of thecommunity who complain that theold way of doing business is still alive,but we are getting there.”

To accomplish the initiative’sbroader goals, the city and its neigh-borhoods would have to learn how towork together. This would be a two-fold learning process. At the begin-ning, the city could not collaboratewith neighborhoods because it didnot know what the neighborhoods’priorities were. However, even if allsides were willing, nobody knewexactly how to proceed. To besuccessful, the initiative would haveto address both aspects.

“In true collaboration, the citybrings what it knows to the table andthe neighborhood brings what itknows, and we make somethingbetter than what either could doalone,” Kennedy said. ■


ABERDEEN MUSEUM • BEFORE ABERDEEN MUSEUM • AFTER


he internal capacity issues thatthe Neighborhood Task Force

was grappling with had an externalanalog: neighborhood capacity, or theability of neighborhoods to musterthe resources needed to carry outtheir goals.

In the early days of the initiative,Neighborhood Office staff struggledto define capacity and what it lookedlike. Soon it became clear, however,that capacity, in whatever form it wastaking, was weak across the city, afinding that became a driving forcebehind the city’s decision to launchprograms such as NeighborhoodCollege.

Building capacity has been perhapsthe most important function of theinitiative because of the key role thatneighborhoods play in it. If neighbor-hoods cannot come together to setpriorities, gather resources and imple-ment their goals, the initiative as awhole cannot succeed.

In many neighborhoods, capacityhas proven to be the dividing linebetween success and failure.Successful neighborhoods “are theones that care the most and haveplaced their own projects as numberone on their agenda,” Joan Kennedysaid. Neighborhoods where leadershave assumed responsibility forseeing projects through and who havemade neighborhood work almost a

full-time job generally have achievedtheir goals, while less successfulneighborhoods have lacked one ormore of these elements.

When the initiative began, theNeighborhood Office often founditself serving as a link to potentialneighborhood partners. This task hasevolved over time as the office hasestablished itself and staff has imple-mented tools and programs. Today,the office’s neighborhood facilitatorsserve more as coaches and consult-ants to neighborhood organizationsand less as links between the commu-nity and city government.

The neighborhoods that havecome forward to participate generallyhave done so under two differentguises. “A neighborhood organizationmay come in and not be effective,because they’ve had the same personin charge for a number of years, andno one is coming out to meetings,”Kennedy said. “Or, we may have fivepeople come through the door whowant to organize, but they don’t knowwhat to do.” The more complex theissue, the more complex the capacityissues usually are.

This is where the facilitators comein. Their work can be as basic as facil-itating a meeting or helping neighbor-hood leaders inform residents aboutmeeting times.

Although this investment of staff

time helps to create effective neigh-borhood leaders and, by extension,effective neighborhood groups, theindividualized nature of the workmeans that facilitators must help todevelop new leadership wheneversomeone leaves his or her post, aphenomenon that happens frequentlyin some neighborhoods.

“If you invest too much in a singleperson, and that person for whateverreason ceases to be an effective leader,you are nowhere, you’re back tosquare one,” Kennedy said.

As a result, in recent years, a keyfunction of the Neighborhood Officehas been to develop organizationalcapacity that is not tied to individuals.Neighborhood College has beenHampton’s primary tool to achievethis, and over time, the program hasevolved to meet the needs of the cityand the program’s participants.

The original design requiredparticipants to meet twice a week for12 weeks, a commitment that provedto be too time- and resource- inten-sive for everyone involved. So the citydivided the course into two parts. Thefirst teaches residents how to be moreeffective citizens, while the secondgathers neighborhood leaders in aclassroom, provides them with skill-building exercises, then sends themout to apply these skills in theirneighborhoods.

FOCUS FIRST ON

CAPACITY BUILDING,

THEN DO MORE

T

By providing leaders with a forumto work together, the city is encour-aging them to create a peer network tohelp support one another. To augmentthese efforts, the city is developing athird phase of Neighborhood Collegethat will focus on organizationaldevelopment, in a forum that resem-bles the kind of training provided to apublic board or commission. Thesesessions will focus on building thecore competencies of neighborhoodorganizations.

Although capacity-building effortsare intended to help neighborhoodsaccomplish their goals, the means ofbuilding community can be an end initself. This is another important point.

“Working together for a commoncause often can make the biggestdifference in a neighborhood’s qualityof life,” Kennedy said.

Residents do not work togetherunless they feel invested in theirneighborhoods. Indeed, one of thehallmarks of the NeighborhoodsInitiative is the emotion with whichpeople both inside and outside citygovernment speak of it. In manyways, the initiative has prompted inresidents new feelings about the city,in addition to new attitudes (see storyon Buckroe Beach). ■



iven Joan Kennedy’s history asplanning director and the role of

planners in creating the program, theinitiative had a strong planning flavorin its early years. As noted earlier, theinitial idea of the initiative was todivide the city into neighborhoods,pick three neighborhoods each year,complete plans for these areas, andthen move on to the next set of neigh-borhoods until every neighborhood inHampton had a plan.

But as neighborhoods becameinvolved in the initiative (partici-pating as pilots and with neighbor-hood leaders serving on the steeringcommittee), the process broke down.The design then was changed so thatevery neighborhood that steppedforward could participate, and manyof these neighborhoods, when giventhe opportunity, came into theprocess on their own terms and withtheir own ideas about what theywanted to do.

This experience caused the cityto evaluate the program design, atwhich time internal issues such asthe problem of how to allocate cityresources became apparent. As thecity worked on these internal issues,several external issues came intofocus, including the need toimprove neighborhood capacity,which led, in turn, to programssuch as Neighborhood College. The

first 10 years of the initiative can beviewed, then, as a push and pull ofinternal and external issues,coupled with the city’s responses tothese issues in the form of programsand other interventions.

The history and evolution of theinitiative can be viewed another wayas well. In broad terms, the initiativehas performed four functions:allocating resources, building neigh-borhood capacity, reaching out to thepublic and organizing itself.

The programs that fall under eachof these functions can be thought ofas building blocks that, together, makeup the initiative. In this way,Neighborhood College can bethought of as one of the primarybuilding blocks for building neigh-borhood capacity, while organiza-tional initiatives such as theNeighborhood Task Force can be seenas a building block or foundation forallocating city resources. ■

INTERNAL AND

EXTERNAL

PUSH AND PULL:

AN ENDURING

THEME

G

uccess, it turns out, sometimeshinges on small improvements.

Although some neighborhoods joinedthe initiative to develop large projectssuch as community centers, othersmaller and less visible improvementsoften are just as important to a neigh-borhood’s vitality. Ironically, becauseof their size and the way city govern-ment was structured, some of thesesmall improvements were among themost difficult to carry out.

A number of neighborhoods, forexample, wanted more streetlights toimprove safety and reduce crime.These projects qualified for the city’slist of proposed public works projects,but to build a small-ticket item like astreetlight or two was not easy. Thecity prioritized the project list tomaximize its limited resources, butbecause the city had no way to pay forsmall-ticket items unless money wastaken from larger ones, small projectswere seldom completed. Given thecity’s financial situation, this was notgoing to change unless a new sourceof funds was created.

In 1995, the Neighborhood TaskForce recommended that the cityestablish a Neighborhood Improve-ment Fund to support neighborhood-level public improvements. Eventuallythe fund was divided into two separateprograms: matching grants for small,self-help projects and the larger

Neighborhood Improvement Fund forprojects that involved physicalimprovements to public property.Nearly 100 neighborhood-basedprojects have received supportthrough these funds since theirinception.

Matching grants are available forshort-term, collaborative projects thatare consistent with the initiative’sgoals. Projects may be social in natureor involve physical improvements topublic or private property. However,they must be designed to increaseneighborhood capacity or reinforce asense of community.

Although the city does not limitthe scope of projects eligible formatching grants, the grantsthemselves are limited to $5,000. Toreceive one, a neighborhood organiza-tion must collaborate with othergroups and/or city agencies. They alsomust provide matching resources(through fundraising or sweat equity)for each dollar the city invests. Inaddition to labor and cash, the cityalso accepts land donations anddonations of materials and services aspart of the match.

Programs like the NeighborhoodDevelopment Fund point to the valueand effectiveness of theNeighborhood Task Force. Citymanager Bob O’Neill established thetask force after it became apparent

that the initiative could not moveforward until city governmentoperated in a manner that allowed itto serve neighborhoods – the internalalignment issue discussed earlier. This experience had taught cityofficials a lesson. “If you have adepartment with a strategic focus andno control over resources,” like theNeighborhood Office, “you are set upfor failure,” Joan Kennedy said.

In effect, the Neighborhood TaskForce was an internal capacity-building tool. The task force devel-oped a strategic plan and came upwith the idea of a NeighborhoodCommission made up of neighbor-hood leaders who wouldgovern the initiative. Thetask force also involved itselfin the day-to-day issues, forexample, in the way the citywas addressing neighbor-hood blight.

“Nobody in the city waslooking at neighborhoodissues proactively, so thatbecame the task force’s role,”Kennedy said. Over theyears, the task force wouldexamine issues such aspublic safety and develop other ideasthat city departments work togetherto implement. ■


S

SMALL

IMPROVEMENTS

MAKE A BIG

DIFFERENCE


ay “Greater Wythe Area Plan” inHampton and staff roll their eyes

or sigh. And that’s before you ask thecitizens what they think. Planningdirector Terry O’Neill recalls oneresident of the Greater Wythe neigh-borhood in southwestern Hamptonwho grew exasperated after manymeetings, frustrated at a process thatseemed to go on and on. Finally, heannounced to the group, “When Ifirst got into this, all I wanted was aneighborhood watch.”

The Wythe plan was one of thefirst plans undertaken byNeighborhood Office, and, after eightmonths of start-up time, the several-month planning process (that in someways continues to the present dayand) that ensued eventually resultedin a new neighborhood plan.

Since embarking on the Wytheplan, the city’s approach to neigh-borhood planning has evolved, andit helps to understand what leaderswere trying to change.

In the years before the initiative,the Department of Planning workedwith neighborhoods to develop smallarea plans, most of which focused onland use. Deciding that this approachwas too limited, especially in neigh-borhoods where land use was justone of many pertinent issues, cityofficials decided that neighborhoodplans drafted under the initiative

ideally would address physical,social and civic issues.

This more holistic conceptualiza-tion of the plan created challenges onboth sides of the table. On the cityside, many different departmentsneeded to be present if the plan wereto address a broad array of issues. Yetmany of these departments were notused to planning with neighbor-hoods, nor did they believe they hadsufficient staff capacity to beinvolved at all of the meetings.Neighborhoods, on the other hand,were used to physical planning, andthe first issues they usually put onthe table focused on “curb andgutter” problems, no matter whatwas really happening in the neigh-borhood. Both sides had to figure outhow to work comprehensively.

There also was an internalcoordination issue. Although the

Neighborhood Office operatesseparately from the Department ofPlanning, it participates in thedrafting of neighborhood plans, withNeighborhood Office staff oftenserving as plan facilitators. Despitethis organizational distance, theneighborhood planning processplays a key role in the initiative, for itis through plans that neighborhoodsset priorities (which serve as thebasis for the city’s funding decisionsand provide direction to the neigh-borhoods that create them).

Hampton has created severaltemplates it follows to completeneighborhood plans. When a neigh-borhood enters the processmistrusting city government,however, planners set aside thesetemplates and engage the neighbor-hood’s stakeholders in designing theprocess. This is an importantinnovation because the partnershiprequired during the implementationprocess requires that neighborhoodsbe invested in their plans, andhaving neighborhoods buy into theprocess at the outset helps to ensurethis outcome.

Hampton, like many communities,also struggles with representation andcommunication within its planningprocess. Are the stakeholders at thetable representative and do theycommunicate with the broader

NEIGHBORHOOD

PLANNING:

HELPING

NEIGHBORHOODS

SHAPE THEIR FUTURE

S

community? City planners haveencouraged stakeholders to act asinformation conduits to their neigh-bors. This process has worked well insome neighborhoods, but not inothers, as planners have discoveredthat some stakeholders are not adeptat, or even interested in, involvingothers from their neighborhoods.

“Many people have clamored formore (public) involvement,” JoanKennedy said, “but once theythemselves were involved they didn’tsee the need to involve anyone else.”Through this experience, staff haslearned that, in the absence of effectivecommunication networks in neigh-borhoods, stakeholders have a difficulttime representing their areas. Thischallenge is now managed explicitly asa part of the process design for aneighborhood plan.

The planning process has sufferedin some neighborhoods from a non-representative mix of stakeholders.The mix matters because the people atthe table determine the direction andoutcome of the plan. In the Newtownneighborhood, for example, theprocess began with several adult stake-holders who told the city officials atthe table that the neighborhood didnot have many youth. Upon looking atthe data, however, the group foundthat Newtown had a higher concentra-tion of young people than the average

neighborhood in Hampton. Later,when youth were brought into theprocess, they became a major part ofthe plan. Similar types of disconnectshave surfaced among stakeholders inother neighborhoods.

As the city has worked with moreand more neighborhoods, it hasbecome apparent that a plan is not themost appropriate intervention inneighborhoods that have moreimmediate needs. Further, the citydoes not have the staff and resourcesto complete full-blown plans in everyneighborhood.

To help the Neighborhood Officedecide when a plan was appropriate,the Neighborhood Task Force devel-oped a “decision tree” that helps todetermine whether neighborhoodrequests would be served bestthrough existing resources, a plan, orother types of interventions.Although this tool has been effective,it was never in common use, althoughstaff from the Neighborhood Officeapply its concepts when deciding howbest to work with neighborhoods.

Expectations also pose a challenge.Sometimes, as the planning processmoves toward implementation, thereis confusion on what the roles of theneighborhood and the city will be. Toclarify these roles, the city has found ithelpful to develop a memorandum ofunderstanding that specifies who will

contribute what during the planningprocess. This memo also addresseslogistical issues and other groundrules. Officers from the neighborhoodorganizations and city staff sign theseagreements, which have helped toclear up confusion and provide aroadmap for implementation.

Despite all of these challenges, theneighborhood planning process inHampton generally has beensuccessful. Because the City Councilhas been willing to fund majorprojects identified in neighborhoodplans, neighborhoods know theirhard work will be rewarded and,consequently, they believe in theprocess.

“Every process is different,”Kennedy said. “One of the lessons welearned over time is that a neighbor-hood plan is a good opportunity forpeople to learn about the neighbor-

hood, and what we think of as charac-teristics of a neighborhood often arenot borne out by the data. So we asstaff look at neighborhoods throughdifferent eyes as well.”

Work on neighborhood plans ledto other lessons as well:

■ Neighborhoods want problems withcity services solved before they arewilling to take the concept of apartnership seriously.

■ Although the details changed, theHealthy Neighborhoods design wason target if everybody abided by theguiding principles.

■ Every time a new stakeholder cameto the table, the recommendationsfor neighborhood plans had to berevised before the new person wouldaccept them. ■


…neighborhoods

know their hard work

will be rewarded and,

consequently, they

believe in the process.


lthough the initiative tappedinto the latent demand of many

neighborhoods to work with the cityto achieve a goal (whether theyenvisioned themselves as partnerswith the city or not), the process ofinvolving neighborhoods has notbeen an easy one. Although manyneighborhood leaders literally “linedup at the door” when theNeighborhood Office opened, notevery neighborhood was represented.Others had to be invited to partici-

pate, and the initiative had to reachout to the community to bring themin. Even neighborhoods that havebeen involved since the initiativebegan have varied in their level ofinvolvement over the years. Thus,community outreach has been anongoing process.

Spurred by the program’s earlysuccesses, the NeighborhoodCommission decided in 1997 to raisethe initiative’s profile through acelebration of neighborhoods it called

REACHING OUT

TO THE

COMMUNITY:

NEIGHBORHOOD

MONTH

A

Neighborhood Week. Enthusiasmabout the idea swelled, and dozens ofvolunteers stepped forward to create aprogram that exceeded the expecta-tions of many. However, it wastremendously difficult to make all ofthe activities happen within oneweek. The basic concept ofNeighborhood Week was a good one,however, and the event was laterexpanded into Neighborhood Month.

Neighborhood Month is a monthlong celebration of unity and neigh-

borhood pride hosted by theHampton Neighborhood Commission.Neighborhoods, as the brochurestates, “are a cause for celebrationbecause not only are they the ‘Heartof Hampton’ but where we live,work, and play.” Events includeopen houses, neighborhood yardsales, community picnics, multicul-tural festivals, community cleanups,marathons, and even a trip to the national Neighborhoods USAconference. ■



s the Neighborhoods Initiativeenters its second decade, the

first 10 years of experience hasyielded many lessons about collabo-rating with neighborhoods, bothpositive and negative.

On the plus side:

■ Decisions on allocating city resourcesare better.

■ Neighborhoods that participate inthe process make sure that projectsare implemented and take responsi-bility for that implementation.

■ Neighborhood plans are morecomprehensive and relate better towhat people in neighborhoodsreally care about.

■ Neighborhood plans have a betterchance of being implemented.

However:

■ The process is messy.

■ The city loses some control over theprocess.

■ The process is resource intensive.

■ The process takes more time than a process without as much publicparticipation.

“These community involvementprocesses, especially in neighbor-hoods, are not just a method to seekpublic involvement; they actuallybecome part of the process ofbuilding and sustaining a sense ofcommunity in neighborhoods,” saidJoan Kennedy. “People get to knowand understand their neighbors; theylearn and come to care about theirneighborhood; they start to work onthings together; they become acommunity instead of just peoplewho happen to live in the same areaof the city.”

Communities that want to emulateHampton’s model still mustcustomize its elements to their situa-tion, said former city manager BobO’Neill, who has studied the issuenationally and who applied theprinciples of reinventing governmentto Fairfax County, Virginia afterleaving Hampton in 1997.

“Conceptually, this approach isbroad enough to apply, but there is noset of universal techniques that workin a cookie-cutter fashion,” he said.“What a neighborhood strategy lookslike has a lot to do with a city’s neigh-borhoods, culture and the level oftrust in neighborhoods among polit-ical leaders.

“People want to make the placeswhere they live better,” O’Neill said.“When you give them an opportunity

to make a contribution, they arewilling to do it.”

Terry O’Neill, the city’s planningdirector, said the relationships builtby the initiative have allowed cityofficials to “know what’s betweenthe words” written in neighborhoodplans.

“The initiative has done a greatdeal to improve relations with thecommunity,” O’Neill said. “We trulybelieve we are making far betterdecisions because we have a muchbetter sense of the community.”

A DECADE OF

LESSONS LEARNED

A

“People want to

make the places

where they live

better… give them

an opportunity to

make a contribution,

they are willing

to do it.”

— BOB O’NEILLFORMER CITY MANAGER

Terry O’Neill said Hampton wasfortunate to have, from the outset,many community leaders who under-stood and valued collaboration.“Without those individuals partici-pating, I’m not sure we could havesustained” the initiative, he said.

The program, in turn, has helpedto spawn a network that allowsofficials to know whom to call whenissues arise. And before they make acall, a relationship has already beenforged, trust exists and both sidesunderstand they can give their honestopinions, discuss their viewpointsquickly and reach an understanding,Terry O’Neill said.

“It really is of immense value,” hesaid.

Terry O’Neill credits the leadershipof Mayor James Eason, whosupported the program when it wasjust a concept, and Bob O’Neill, whoas city manager was willing to takechances to make it work. They helpedto instill within city government thewillingness to look at problemscreatively and were able to fosteramong city employees a trust thatthey could find answers to the issuesat hand.

These efforts have embedded inHampton the spirit of collaboration asa fundamental value. “It is so

immersed, there’s no way to stop it,”Terry O’Neill said.

Neighborhoods now expect highlevel of interaction from city govern-ment and are willing to demand it if itdoes not happen.

As the city and its neighborhoodslook toward the future, Kennedy andothers see the initiative growingbroader, by having every area of thecity represented by an active andeffective neighborhood-servingorganization, and deeper, by gettingall neighborhoods to have definedobjectives as well as plans to makemeasurable progress in meeting them.

Regardless how it proceeds, theinitiative is in Hampton to stay.

Assistant city manager MikeMonteith believes the initiative wouldcontinue to function even if he, JoanKennedy and other key leaders wereto leave the city.

“It may change form and mighteven take a step backwards, but Ithink (if the city were to take anotherapproach), there would be enoughuncomfortableness with the way thecity did business that the City Councilwould eventually wonder why theywere working a lot harder than theyused to, and something would comeforward to fill that gap,” Monteithsaid. “The community would demandto be involved.” ■


Y.H. THOMAS:

THE MAGICAL POINT OF INTERVENTION

Y.H. THOMAS • A-1

o understand the sense ofownership and pride that the

volunteers at the Y.H. ThomasCommunity Center havefor their facility, considerERNIE FERGUSON. Everyweekday for almost sevenyears, Ferguson, 68, who isretired, has served as facili-ties manager, workingmorning, noon and night,without receiving so muchas a penny for his time.

His fellow volunteersrefer to him as “Mr. Ferguson,” and,although they log many hoursthemselves, they speak about himwith a combination of awe and pride.

“He works here like it’s his job,”says Leroy Crosby, president of the Y.H. Thomas Community Centerboard, on which Ferguson also serves.

“We couldn’t stop him if wewanted to,” says Will Moffett, thecenter’s executive director.

“I love what I’m doing,” Fergusonsays. “I’m going to be honest. I can’timagine not doing what I’m doing.”6

How the Old North Hamptonneighborhood partnered with thecity to create and sustain the Y.H.Thomas center is one of the initia-tive’s biggest success stories. It is alsoa story of good timing, because itserves as an example of the “magicpoint of intervention,” according to

Joan Kennedy, head of Hampton’sNeighborhood Office.

Old North Hampton is a predomi-nantly black, low-income neighborhoodin central Hampton,just north of Interstate64 and less than a milenorthwest of City Hall.Although the neighbor-hood is not rich inresources, it has astrong sense of neigh-borhood pride. Since

1953, it also has served as home toone of Hampton’s greatest neighbor-hood assets: the former Y.H. ThomasJunior High School.

However, in the years before thecenter opened, the neighborhoodhad been experiencing a downwardspiral due to crime, drugs, juveniledelinquency, and absentee landlords.Families struggled to find safe placesfor their children to play, seniorsfeared the streets and neighborhoodleaders had grave concerns aboutthe future.

The community recognized thepotential of renovating the schoolbuilding to provide many of servicesit needed to improve itself. But thecity, facing competing priorities fornew community facilities and facingsignificant economic challenges, didnot have the resources needed to fund

the construction and operation of acommunity center.

“If you look at socioeconomic data, the neighborhood has a lot (ofpotential issues) to focus on,” saysKennedy. “But they had a lot ofdifferent neighborhood-based organ-izations that pulled together arounda common cause.

“In this case, the neighborhoodidentified what was key and impor-tant to them, and we had good senseto respond,” she said.

From 1953 to 1968, Y.H. Thomasserved as the first and only juniorhigh school for African-Americans inHampton, drawing students from theentire city. Named afterYarbourough HenryThomas, an African-American educatorwho served as principalof Hampton’s UnionStreet School for 25years before his deathin 1946, the schoolshared many of thetraits of the neighbor-hood that surrounds it:short on resources,teachers and students focused onwhat they had and worked together tomake things better.

Former students recall that bookswere worn after many years of use.Pages were missing, others were

T

A-2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

ripped, and the covers were tattered.The administrative staff was small,but the teachers looked out for theirstudents and instilled values that thealumni still carry today.

If a student needed lunch money, ateacher was there to help, recallsSheila Williams, who graduated in1967. “The teachers taught us well,”she said. “They gave us one-on-oneattention as much as possible. Theywould challenge us to look beyondthe barriers and tell us that ‘you canbe somebody.’ They tried to extendthe morals we had at home. Theymolded us and prepared us foradolescence.”

The school closed in 1968 whenHampton integrated its schools.Students scattered to other schools,but many stayed in touch with oneanother. Meanwhile, the building wasused for other purposes but slowly fellinto disrepair.

In 1986, a group of parents in theneighborhood organized the Y.H.Thomas Athletic Association, usingthe school grounds for football andcheerleading practice. The programwas successful, and as its popularitygrew, association leaders looked at thedeteriorating building and began tothink about how they might use it.

In 1992, a year before theNeighborhoods Initiative began, theneighborhood organized the Coalition

for Community Pride and Progress toconvert part of the building into acommunity center. Although theneighborhood was not the next in linefor a community center, city managerBob O’Neill realized the opportunitythe proposal presented, and so, uponhis urging, the City Council agreed tosupport the renovation with $1.25million in capital budget funds.

The project would inform the city’sthinking on future neighborhoodcollaborations. “It really set the stagefor the Neighborhood Initiative andwas a model for future projects,” JoanKennedy said.

The coalition proposed a partner-ship where the city would fund therenovation if the community assumedthe responsibility of developingprograms, managing the center andoperating it. The partnership helpedto spark a grassroots neighborhoodrevitalization strategy, and the centeropened in 1996.

By turning a deteriorating buildinginto a thriving neighborhood center,the Old North Hampton communitypreserved an important communityasset and created a gathering place tomeet the neighborhood’s cultural,civic and social needs. The projectalso proved that the neighborhood,with help from the city and a citywidebase of volunteers, had the ability tocarry out its goals.

“The community has a sense ofself-esteem,” Moffett said. “This was acommunity that felt downtroddenand disenfranchised, with all theopen-air drug dealing, violence anddeterioration and blight. This facilityhas done a lot to give people a senseof empowerment and of being able tocontrol their own destiny.”

Today the center hosts more than15 programs, including tutoring,mentoring and athletic programs.Participation in these programs hasincreased 25 percent in recent years,

Y.H. THOMAS • A-3

and 30,000 people walked throughthe doors in 2001. A large roster ofvolunteers donates a total of 650hours to the center each month.

Partnership is key to the center’ssuccess. The project relied on a$910,000 from the CommunityDevelopment Block Grant fund, aswell as $150,000 from the Hamptonschool district, $425,000 fromAmeriCorps and $85,000 inNeighborhood Development Funds.The AmeriCorps grant helped to train35 young people (many from theneighborhood) to help in the renova-tion, which in turn reduced theproject’s cost.

The community also worked sideby side with the city to ensure asmooth transition when the centeropened. The Parks and RecreationCenter loaned the center an executivewho taught the neighborhood how tooperate a center. The relationshipbetween the center and the depart-ment has remained close, as parks andrecreation staff have providedongoing training for volunteers, aswell as ongoing support as needed.

Many of the volunteers belong tothe Y.H. Thomas Alumni Association,which was established in 1999.

Scores of former classmates hadkept in touch with one another insmall groups over the years, but thealumni had no formal organization.

Several were involved in the Coalitionfor Community Pride and Progress,and, after the center opened, a fewdecided to host a reunion to catch upwith people they had not seen, insome cases, since they had graduated.None of the organizers had ever heardof a junior high school reunion,either, but, undaunted, they began tocontact everyone they knew, finallystaging the event in November 1999.

After the reunion, the group estab-lished an association and created afoundation that has raised more than$55,000 in scholarship funds. Theassociation also organizes and staffsthe Kids Café, an after-school mealand tutoring program.

The center itself is a flurry ofactivity on weekday afternoons, withteenagers playing basketball in thegym, friends gathering in the lobby,and others participating in the KidsCafé and working in the computerlab. Will Moffett oversees it all, trying

to instill the same values of respectand mentoring that the teachers at theschool did a generation ago.

When he’s not talking with youngpeople, he catches up with volunteerslike Albert Simpson, a member of thecenter’s board of directors.

Simpson said he feels connected tothe school because of its history andits link to the community, both theimmediate neighborhood and the cityat large.

“I did not want to see this buildingturned down and (Thomas’s) legacydestroyed, to see his name put intorubble,” Simpson said. “I love thistown. This is my town.”

Neighborhood efforts like the Y.H.Thomas center are one reason theNational Civic League recognizedHampton as an “All America City” in2002.

“The capacity and the pride of thecommunity are extraordinary,”Kennedy said. “They had a groupthat had a strong sense of ownershipand that wanted to stay and fight fortheir neighborhood instead ofabandoning it.” ■

Neighborhood

efforts like the

Y.H. Thomas center

are one reason

the National Civic

League recognized

Hampton as an

“All America City”

in 2002.

ABERDEEN DRAWS ON HISTORY

TO DEMONSTRATE

EXTRAORDINARY

NEIGHBORHOOD CAPACITY

ABERDEEN • B-1

ou cannot understand theAberdeen Gardens neighbor-

hood, its extraordinary level ofcommunity involvement or itscapacity to achieve its goals withoutfirst understanding its history.

As the nation’s only resettlementcommunity designed and constructedby African-Americans for African-Americans, Aberdeen has fosteredwithin its residents a sense of commu-nity ownership, unity and strengthsince the days the first homes werebuilt in the 1930s.

This line of history remainsunbroken. Some of the modest butsturdy red brick homes have been inthe same families for almost 70 years,and people who grew up in Aberdeenbut have moved elsewhere oftenreturn to reminisce and see oldfriends.

“The people of Aberdeen believethat the history of our neighborhoodbelongs to all of us,” said RooseveltWilson, president of the AberdeenGardens Historic and CivicAssociation. “It inspires us and bondsus. This is a neighborhood thatblacks built for themselves, and thatspirit of ownership and self-suffi-ciency lives on today.”

When the NeighborhoodsInitiative was launched in 1993,Aberdeen was ready and eager toparticipate. In late 1992, several

descendents of the first settlers hadmet to talk about how they couldcommemorate their parents by havingthe neighborhood designated as ahistoric district and building amuseum, perhaps by converting oneof the neighborhood’s few vacanthomes into a showcase.

These descendents, known as theAberdeen Rattlers because they usedto play organized softball, havefocused their energy since theirplaying days on promoting the neigh-borhood’s history and looking afterneighbors who are ill or elderly.

They became the force behind thecivic association, collaborating withother neighborhood residents toestablish a nonprofit organization in1993. The next year, the associationpetitioned for and received a historicdesignation for the neighborhoodfrom the Commonwealth of Virginia.Soon thereafter, they began to collab-orate with the city on an 18-monthprocess to draft a neighborhood plan.

Working with the city helped theneighborhood find a direction andidentify “something to work for,”Wilson said. The neighborhood wasinspired by the city’s mission to createthe most livable community inVirginia and decided to adopt asimilar charge: “To enhance thequality of life for all citizens inhistoric Aberdeen Gardens and

adjacent neighborhoods, with anemphasis on heritage, to become themost livable community in the UnitedStates.”

This mission is echoed in theneighborhood’s theme: “In unity,there is strength, and with commit-ment and work, we can achieve.”

The goals the neighborhoodidentified through the planningprocess articulate its desire to beinclusive and work with youth,adults and older people alike.

Through community outreach, theneighborhood seeks to:

■ Provide the kind of neighborhoodthat ensures the protection, involve-ment and well-being of thesenior/elderly population of ourcommunity in a manner that allowsfor a healthy peace of mind.

■ Develop and support neighborhoodinstitutions (facilities and organiza-tions) to increase involvement insocial, civic and political activitieswithin the community.

■ Create a neighborhood in which allyouth develop a sense of responsi-bility and a desire to be part of theircommunity.

The planning process sharpenedthe neighborhood’s desire to build a

Y

“In unity,

there is strength,

and

with commitment

and work,

we can achieve.”

— ABERDEEN NEIGHBORHOOD THEME

B-2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

museum. Given the city’s commit-ment through the NeighborhoodsInitiative to help neighborhoods carryout their top priorities (as identifiedin a neighborhood plan), Aberdeenand the Neighborhood Office set outto create something that wouldpreserve, protect and promote theneighborhood’s heritage.

“The neighborhood has a coregroup of people who have a strongsense of community ownership andare willing to work together for theirneighborhood,” said Joan Kennedy,director of Hampton’s NeighborhoodOffice.

In 1997, the neighborhood askedthe city to purchase and donate adilapidated house on Mary PeakeBoulevard that had been damaged in afire. As soon as the associationcontrolled the house, volunteersbegan to make repairs and prevent thehouse from deteriorating further. Theneighborhood then teamed with thePeninsula Homebuilders Associationto make more substantial repairs tothe roof and structure.

Working with the NeighborhoodOffice, the association secured a$100,000 grant from the state tocomplete the restoration. To matchthe grant, the neighborhood organ-ized a procurement committee tosolicit construction bids and receivecontracts, as well as a restoration

committee to organize volunteerswho would commit themselves towork on the museum and fulfill thematch through sweat-equity.

All of these efforts were successful.The procurement committee devel-oped a system for evaluating,documenting and reporting in-kinddonations that became a model for thestate. A local architectural firmdonated restoration plans, and theVirginia Extension Service providedtraining for gardeners who landscapedthe grounds. Another committee wasset up to inspect and approve therestoration work.

The strength and breadth of thesepartnerships have impressedobservers. In 2002, Aberdeen wasrecognized by Neighborhoods USA, anon-profit organization committed tobuilding and strengthening neighbor-hood organizations, as its nationalneighborhood of the year.

The volunteers logged thousandsof hours and completed the restora-tion in June 2001. The associationalso acquired an adjacent property tocreate a museum complex to hostvisitors as well as neighborhoodmeetings. The facility was dedicatedin September 2002.

That Aberdeen was able to pull offsuch a complex project is a testamentto its legacy of self-sufficiency.

The neighborhood was developed

during the Great Depression througha New Deal homestead resettlementprogram designed to relieve economichardship and create new jobs.Approximately 100 resettlementcommunities were developed acrossthe United States in the 1930s, butAberdeen Gardens was the only onebuilt by blacks for blacks.

The initiative sought to resettleinadequately housed low-incomefamilies in new communities builtwith public funds. The Hampton areawas targeted because the shipyardsand industries of Newport News, afew miles southwest of Aberdeen,employed large numbers of blacks,some of whom lived in slum housing.

The program provided tenantswith low-cost, modern gardenhomes in a rural environment (thearea was outside the city limits ofHampton at the time) where theycould use their back lots to raisechickens and grow vegetables. Thefirst tenants paid $3 a month in rent.A chicken coop was built on each lotand the community as a wholereceived 12 cows and 12 mules.

The first model homes opened inNovember 1936 and families began tomove in the next year. When theneighborhood was completed in1938, it contained a school, acommercial area and 158 two-storybrick homes. The original school has

ABERDEEN • B-3

been torn down and reconstructedbut the original houses and commer-cial buildings remain.

During World War II, tenants wereallowed to buy their homes.

The original seven roads had alpha-betical names from “A” to “G” butwere renamed by officials from theHampton Institute (now HamptonUniversity) to recognize prominentAfrican-Americans. Mary Peake, forexample, taught at the first school forescaped slaves at Hampton University.

Hilyard Robinson, considered thepremier black architect of his day,supervised the design. He conceivedthe project as a garden house develop-ment organized around the AberdeenRoad corridor, which provided thecommunity with its name.

The houses themselves aredesigned in a Colonial Revival style.

“Most of the people out here wereborn and raised here,” said HowardCary, the civic association’s vice presi-dent. “Most neighborhoods, theparents pass, and that’s it, somebodyelse moves in. But most of thesehouses are owned by the originalfamilies, and now third and fourthgenerations are living here.”

The museum project providedAberdeen with a momentum to tackleother projects. Working again withthe city, the neighborhood helped tosecure city funding for a $3 million,

24,000-square foot community center(pictured above), which will open inthe Fall of 2003 adjacent to LindsayMiddle School.

The neighborhood involved youthas well as representatives from thecity’s parks and recreation departmentin designing programs for the center,hoping to create a mix of activitiesthat would attract young people.

The idea is to give youth a safe,supervised and nurturing place tospend their free time, RooseveltWilson said. “Up until now, wehaven’t had a facility or communitycenter,” he said.

The building includes a gymna-sium with basketball and volleyballcourts, a fitness room, a multipurposeroom for exercise and a lobbyfeaturing a two-story glass windowentrance and a climbing wall.

Wilson credits the NeighborhoodInitiative with helping the neighbor-hood succeed. “It empowers us to dosomething for ourselves,” he said.

“We know we have a place downtownwhere we can get answers. We don’thave to run all around the city tryingto find out who to talk with.”

Wilson works closely with theNeighborhood Office, especiallysenior neighborhood facilitatorShellae Blackwell, and feels comfort-able calling her whenever he needshelp. “Shellae is like my right arm,”Wilson said, “whenever I have aproblem, I always run it by her. Shepoints us in the right direction. Wehave an easy relationship.”

Because of the help the Neighbor-hood Office provides, Wilson said the neighborhood never misses adeadline on projects. During theneighborhood planning process, forexample, the neighborhood workedso closely with the city, it was as if“they were part of our organization,”Wilson said, especially the city’s codecompliance and police officers, whoremain on a first-name basis withneighborhood leaders.

“They look out for us, and we lookout for them,” Wilson said.

The neighborhood also worksclosely with staff from the Parks andRecreation Department. City staffhelp the neighborhood operate its“yard of the month” competition.

Aberdeen has made a point ofencouraging its residents to attendNeighborhood College. “We makesure we get people there to see whatthe government does, as well as whatthey can do for themselves,” Wilsonsaid.

Wilson said the level of neighbor-hood involvement has been a boon tohim as president because his neighborsshoulder much of the responsibility forcarrying out neighborhood work.

The organization has 22 commit-tees, each of which has no more thanfour or five people. Wilson said heprefers to have more committeeswith fewer members so the panelscan concentrate on a small numberof tasks.

Wilson said the NeighborhoodInitiative provides Aberdeen with adirection as well as “something towork for.”

“I tell people that if you adhere tothe principles and listen to them, itwill lead to a better organization forthe neighborhood,” he said. ■

EMBRACING YOUTH

AS PARTNERS

YOUTH AS PARTNERS • C-1

lthough youth have been centralto the Neighborhoods Initiative

since it began, the concept of youth astrue partners in the process did nottake hold until Terry O’Neill had anepiphany one day.

O’Neill, director of Hampton’sDepartment of Planning, was facili-tating a neighborhood plan inAberdeen, working with the usualmix of stakeholders, mostly adults, ofcourse. But this time, with help fromthe Hampton Coalition for Youth andAlternatives, Inc., a non-profit agencythat works with young people, severalteenagers were at the table, too.

Although he was eager to workwith youth, O’Neill expected that theteens would become bored with theplanning process. Instead, theyunderstood the issues readily, took anunbiased approach to the problemsthe group was working on, and askedgood questions. O’Neill was veryimpressed.

“That turned on the light bulb forme,” O’Neill said. “In some neighbor-hoods, 20 percent of the population isunder the age of 20, but youth hadbeen underrepresented in the planningprocess. I became convinced that, notonly could (youth be involved inplanning), but that the process wouldhave been different if the young peoplehad not been part of it.”

Input from the young people

helped to change the way the neigh-borhood conceived a proposedcommunity center. The adults whosupported a center tended to focuson physical amenities, likebasketball courts, while youthwere more interested in a placeto work on computers andmeet their friends. The finaldesign would incorporate bothof these elements and save thecity money.

“The young people redefinedwhat the community center was forthem,” O’Neill said. “As adults, wetend to do things in the name ofyoung people and design facilitiesthrough our eyes, but that’s not whatthey see. And you will never be able toknow that unless you know whattheir perspective is.”

After this experience, O’Neillbegan to work with Cindy Carlson ofthe Coalition for Youth and RichardGoll, founder of Alternatives, brain-storming how to get young peoplemore involved in the initiative. Theirwork prompted O’Neill to hire twoyouth planners and add a youthcomponent to the city’s comprehen-sive plan. The energy generated bythis effort, in turn, helped to reinvigo-rate the city’s Youth Commission.

From then on, youth would beinvolved in the planning process inHampton from the beginning. “They

are even involved in the processdesign,” O’Neill said.

“Most planners go to greatlengths to get all kinds of adultsinvolved — people of every race,culture and socioeconomic group,”he said. “But how can you say you’vedone all you can do if you’re notincluding young people?”

O’Neill and other city officials mayhave been eager to work with youth,but, as bureaucrats, they had littleexperience in doing so. Figuring outhow best to engage youth would be alearning process. So the city decidedto rely on experts in youth outreachto help build these relationships.

Carlson would be an invaluableresource, having led Alternatives’

A

Input from

the young people

helped to change

the way

the neighborhood

conceived

a proposed

community center.

C-2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

prevention, intervention and educa-tion services for 17 years. She staffedthe original Coalition for Youth thatlater became a city departmentfocused on the city’s youth agenda.

The coalition’s mission was tocreate an environment where youthcan contribute to the community’squality of life. Rather than focusingon youth problems, the coalitionsought to empower youth to reach

their potential by collabo-rating with them asresources and developingcommunity partnershipsdirected toward youthsuccess.

“When youth issuescome up, whether they’rerelated to violence andsafety or something else,we convene the process,”Carlson said. With a staffof only three professionals,

the department does its outreach workthrough Alternatives, whose staff hasyears of experience working withHampton’s young people.

Alternatives itself was created in1973 as a drug treatment agency. Asmore and more people began tofocus on youth as assets, however,the organization reinvented itself tofocus on youth and communitydevelopment.

“By focusing on youth as the

problem, you’re never going to besuccessful,” Goll said. “We neededto shift away from fixing kids tofixing the system.”

The agency begins working withyoung people in seventh and eighthgrades through community serviceprojects, service groups and peer-to-peer education. The organizationalso sponsors a youth leadershipclass for ninth graders, and graduatesoften move on to serve on the city’syouth commission.

Although the coalition seeks toserve all youth, the young peoplewho participate through Alternativestend to be in their mid-teens. At thatage, youth have the right mix of time

and desire to participate. But thesmall window of opportunity meansthat the population of participants isconstantly turning over.

“It’s hard work,” Carlson said. “Ifadults are closed to the idea of youthbeing partners, then the effort tendsto be more of a group for the kids,and that’s not what it’s all about. It’sabout working together to makeHampton a better place foreveryone, and we are fortunate tohave youth who will work with us.”

In Hampton, any young personwho wants to participate in a programsupported by Alternatives is invited todo so. The agency does not try toscreen the participants.

The coalition’s mission

was to create an environment

where youth can contribute

to the community’s

quality of life.

YOUTH AS PARTNERS • C-3

“Other communities identify thebest and brightest young people andinvite them to serve on boards. Wedon’t think that works,” said KathyJohnson, executive director ofAlternatives. Instead, the Hamptonmodel is to build the skills of neigh-borhood youth so they can partici-pate at a variety of levels of civicengagement.

Since the first days of the Aberdeenplan, hundreds of youth have takenleadership roles in their neighbor-hood, worked with their adultpartners to build community and

tackle problems. Because of theircommitment, and to ensure theirongoing input, a Neighborhood YouthAdvisory Board was created. Youthnow have ongoing input into theNeighborhood Initiative.

“We’re building the infrastructurefor the growth and development ofour young people, so they can giveback now, not in the future,”Johnson said. ■

MICHELLE SIMPSON:

NEIGHBORHOOD COLLEGE HELPS ONE MOTHER

INSPIRE HUNDREDS OF YOUNG MINDS

MICHELLE SIMPSON • D-1

f not for Neighborhood College,MICHELLE SIMPSON likely would

not have had the opportunity toinspire hundreds of young minds.

As a mother of three, Simpson hadclimbed the ladder at Federal Expressin Hampton for 13 years, starting as acasual courier and working her way upto manager. But the demanding job lefther with little time for her family, andwhat time she did have was usuallyspent preparing dinner and helpingher children with their homeworkbefore they had to go to bed.

“I didn’t want to get caught up inthe tunnel-vision of work and lose myfamily,” said Simpson, 41. “It’s so easyto get lost in the shuffle.”

So the Maryland native decided toquit her job, “but I was clueless aboutwhat I wanted to do next,” she said.

Knowing she needed to bring inincome to help support her familywith her husband, she thoughtabout opening a center for school-age children, a place where studentscould go after school to finish theirhomework, so they too could spendsome quality time with their parentsat night. The idea fit well with hereducation, as she had a bachelor’sdegree in elementary educationfrom the University of Maryland.

“I wanted to give something backto working mothers,” Simpson said.But she didn’t know how to proceed.

She later talked with a friend, WillMoffett, who serves as the executivedirector of the Y.H. ThomasCommunity Center in Hampton. Hesuggested that she attend the city’sNeighborhood College and wrote hera letter of recommendation so shewould be accepted.

So she went and, from the firstclass, realized the program wouldprovide her with the contacts as wellas access to much of the informationshe needed to start a business.

Her goal was to take the knowl-edge she gathered from her contactsand apply it to her goal. “In mymind I’m always thinking, when Imeet you, I want to know everythingyou know,” she said. “It was impor-tant to me to take all the informationI could get and redeposit it into thecommunity.”

When Simpson attendedNeighborhood College, participantswere required to do a variety of“homework,” including researchingtheir neighborhoods, touring otherneighborhoods, and making contactsat City Hall and in local agencies.

The process was eye opening. “I didn’t even know where City Hallwas until I went to NeighborhoodCollege,” she said.

Through contacts she made at the Virginia Peninsula Chamber ofCommerce, she connected with the Small Business Institute atChristopher Newport University inNewport News, where students in Dr.Stephanie Huneycutt’s undergraduateclass worked with her to develop abusiness plan and complete a marketanalysis.

In 1997, armed with this informa-tion, she opened a nonprofit youthdevelopment program, InspiringMinds, in her home. She began withseven girls, including her two daugh-ters, but the program quickly grewthrough word of mouth and nowserves 63 students in kindergartenthrough eighth grade (although theprogram is open to students throughhigh school).

Serving more children requiredmore space, so Simpson eventuallymoved her program into the Y.H.Thomas Community Center. Six staff

I

“I didn’t even

know where

City Hall was

until I went

to Neighborhood

College.”

— MICHELLE SIMPSON

D-2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

and several volunteers now work withstudents, and a retired math teachercomes in to tutor twice a week.During the six years of the program,Inspiring Minds has worked withmore than 350 students.

Despite its emphasis onhomework, Simpson says thatInspiring Minds is more than atutoring program. Students are taughtjob and social skills, through lessonsas well as field trips. They regularlyvisit the courthouse, the policedepartment, parks, museums andother work sites, where they get aninside look at how things operate,often through contacts Simpson madethrough Neighborhood College.

Taking a cue from theNeighborhood Initiative, Simpsonhas built partnerships with two localagencies that work with youth –Alternatives, Inc. and Kid Tech – and

the students participate in programsat these agencies at least once aweek.

Having her own business hasallowed Simpson to spend moretime with her daughters, Carnai andSharnell and her son, Thomas. Italso has allowed her to nurtureother children. “It makes me feellike a valuable part of Hampton,”she said.

Simpson credits the Neighbor-hood Initiative for empowering herand for motivating others tobecome involved in civic life. Inaddition to fostering confidencethat neighborhoods can solve theirown problems, the programprovides access to the tools thatcitizens need to do somethingpositive, if they see the need andhave the inclination to becomeinvolved, she said.

“It’s priceless, as far as I’mconcerned,” she said. “It’s like thekids I work with. They can grow upand be what they think they arenow, or they can use the informa-tion we provide to be anything theywant to be.”

Joan Kennedy, head of theNeighborhood Office, said Simpsonherself is inspiring, not only toother neighborhood leaders, but tocity officials as well.

“She took her NeighborhoodCollege opportunity to a differentplace and a new level,” Kennedysaid. “She grew our idea intosomething with a much greaterpotential. She gave us one of thosemagic moments when somethingbecomes much greater than what itwas originally planned to be.”

Simpson is confident thatcitizens in Hampton will continue

Simpson credits

the Neighborhood

Initiative for

empowering her

and for motivating

others to become

involved in civic life.

to be innovative in dealing withlocal problems as long as theNeighborhood Initiative is in place.

“Bad things happen all the timeand we can choose to deal withthem or ignore them,” she said. “InHampton, we are willing to recog-nize a problem and come up with asolution … The city makes it

possible for us to make a change (bysaying to citizens): ‘Here we are.Here are some resources. What doyou want to do with them?’

“The way I look at it, you caneither be an ‘excuser’ (of problems)or an ‘executor,’ and I want to besomeone who goes out and tries tofix problems.” ■

MICHELLE SIMPSON • D-3

BAYSIDE PLAYGROUND

CHANGES ONE NEIGHBORHOOD

AND MANY MINDS

ne day a few years ago, AMY

HOBBS was reading the neigh-borhood plan for Buckroe Beachwhen a provision caught her eye. Thecity would provide the bayside neigh-borhood with recreation equipment,the plan said, and the words sparkedin her a brainstorm.

“Why not a playground?” shethought.

Instead of asking the city to build aplayground and waiting for thedecision making process to moveforward, Hobbs decided that theneighborhood, despite longtime strug-gles with crime and blight, shouldbuild one itself. So she and a few of herneighbors organized the Friends ofBuckroe Beach Park, a subcommitteeof her neighborhood organization, theBuckroe Civic Association, and set offto raise $200,000.

Within two years, the committeehad raised more than $100,000 incash and materials and secured a$100,000 Neighborhood Improve-ment Grant from the city that requireda 10 percent match, which Buckroematched easily. After less than twoyears of fundraising and preparation,the 24,000-square foot S.S. Buckroeplayground opened in spring 2003.

“This has been a true communityeffort, with neighborhoods, citydepartments, schools, churches, civicgroups and the list goes on and on,”

said Hobbs, a mother of two whomoved to Buckroe with her husbandin 1991 and lives two blocks from thebeach. “This is much more than aplayground, it is the bottom rung inan infinite ladder of future possibili-ties for Buckroe and Hampton. Andwe are not done yet.”

Perhaps just as important to theneighborhood’s future, the project hashelped to change the neighborhood’srelationship with city government,which had featured more suspicionthan collaboration for years.

“People have done a 180-degreeturn,” Hobbs said. “I think themajority of the people in the neigh-borhood now realize that the people(in city government) are there tohelp us. They are our partners andthey don’t want to see Buckroe failany more than we do.

“There has been a real change inperception in how we can worktogether,” she said.

Joan Kennedy sees it, too. Thedirector of Hampton’s NeighborhoodsOffice has worked in Hampton fortwo decades and had never seen inBuckroe the level of communityinvolvement and cooperation withthe city that exists today. The attitudesof many Buckroe residents seem tohave changed, she said.

“This was an opportunity for citygovernment to show the neighbor-

hood that we could have a differentkind of relationship,” Kennedy said.“It also taught them that there was adifferent way of doing business and avalue in community building.”

The playground is drawing familiesfrom throughout Hampton, harkeningback to the days when Buckroe Beachwas a regional attraction. The beach,located in northeastern Hamptonalong the Chesapeake Bay, was namedafter a town in England by Frenchsettlers who arrived in the 1600s togrow mulberry bushes. In 1883, asummer boarding house opened, thefirst step in Buckroe’s transformationinto a resort destination.

The next year, a public bathhousewas built, and tourists were brought inon horse drawn carriages. In 1897, alocal entrepreneur extended a trolleyline to Buckroe and opened a hotel,dancing pavilion and amusement parkthat would draw tens of thousands ofvisitors to the neighborhood each year.

However, the neighborhood beganto decline after the Hampton RoadsBridge Tunnel opened in 1957,improving access to larger waterfrontareas in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.Tiny cottages and shanties that hadserved as summer homes in Buckroewere converted into low-renthousing, and the neighborhoodbegan to experience increasingincidents of crime.

BUCKROE BEACH • E-1

O

After the amusement park closedin 1985, the city purchased anddismantled it in 1989, creating acresof open space that many residentswanted to fill. Amy Hobbs was one.

Hobbs remembers when theBuckroe Civic Association put upwooden signs in 1998, welcomingvisitors to the neighborhood. “Ithought, what are we welcomingpeople to?’” she said, recalling theprostitution and drug dealing she hadwitnessed near her home.7

Hobbs got involved in the civicassociation, first as a member of itscrime watch, later in its fledglingefforts to get recreation equipment. Itwas during her work on the latterthat Hobbs had her brainstorm andbegan to work aggressively to createthe playground.

“I wouldn’t take ‘no’ for ananswer,” she said.

It turned out that many in Buckroeshared her dream. Hobbs took theidea to the Hampton City Council,which approved the idea and agreedto designate land within BuckroePark for the playground.

Hobbs’ subcommittee then set outto get as many people involved aspossible, believing that a project builtby the community would spurcommunity pride. Many residentsstepped forward to donate moneyand volunteer their time. Restaurants

and grocery stores donated food forfundraisers and the groundbreakingand dedication ceremonies. Afirefighter who owned a pavingcompany installed pavers thatfeatured the names of donors.

Students from a nearby middleschool worked with their families tospread tons of gravel and mulch onthe site, and a carpentry class from alocal school designed the fence thatsurrounds the playground and erectedit with help from local Boy Scouts.

The work on the fence andplayground surface offered opportu-nities for the neighborhood to buildpartnerships. Hobbs and hercolleagues also worked closely withthe Parks and Recreation Department.

The experience cemented thechange in neighborhood attitudesand, through related efforts to reducecrime and enforce city codes,Buckroe has turned around.

“It’s hard to say when the tideturned, but I know there’s a differencein our area from five years ago,”Hobbs said. “It just happened. Peoplegot fed up with the problems in ourneighborhood and started fightingback and realized the city could be apartner with us.”

The Buckroe situation is anexample of a neighborhood projectthat, for one reason or another,took on a deeper importance than it

was initially intended to have,Kennedy said.

The playground project served asan opportunity for thousands ofresidents to get involved, when in thepast, “getting a handful of volunteersto do any project in Buckroe was achallenge,” she said.

Although some people questionedthe rationale for using neighborhooddevelopment funds on a project thatwould serve people throughout thecity, Kennedy said the fact that itwould create a good image ofBuckroe in the minds of visitorsconnected it to the neighborhood’srevitalization efforts.

“A good image, we know, is one ofthe key factors in attracting newhomeowners and investors,” shesaid. “Will this playground buildimage all by itself? No. But it surelyis a nice start.” ■

E-2 • LEARNING FROM NEIGHBORHOODS

1 Osborne, David and Peter Plastrik. Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies forReinventing Government. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1997, p. 244.

2 Osborne and Plastrik, p. 229.

3 Plotz, David A. Community Problem Solving Case Summaries: Volume III.Washington, DC: Program for Community Problem Solving, 1991, p. 36.

4 Coalition for Youth, To Commit to the Future for Youth: Proposed Plan of Action.Hampton, VA: City of Hampton, 1993, p23.

5 Excerpted from Osborne and Plastrik’s The Reinventor’s Fieldbook: PracticalGuidelines, Lessons and Resources for Revitalizing Schools, Public Services andGovernment Agencies at All Levels.

6 “Journey to Excellence: YH Thomas Community Center Helps Hampton Win Praises,”Hampton Roads Daily Press, June 11, 2002.

7 “Storming the Beach: In Buckroe, Pride Makes a Comeback,” Hampton Daily Press,May 24, 2003.

HAMPTON NEIGHBORHOOD OFFICE

Hampton City Hall ■ 5th Floor

22 Lincoln Street ■ Hampton, VA 23669

PHONE: 757.727.6460

FAX: 757.727.6074

www.hampton.gov/neighborhoods

THIS DOCUMENT

WAS MADE POSSIBLE

BY A GRANT FROM THE

ANNIE E. CASEY FOUNDATION.

More information about the

Hampton Neighborhood Initiative

can be found at

www.hampton.gov/neighborhoods

or in the

Hampton Neighborhood

Initiative — Lessons and Resources

for Other Communities

by these same authors.

MICHAEL BAYER, AICP, is an urban planner and journalist. Inboth capacities, he has researched and written extensively aboutneighborhoods, transportation, land use and urban redevelop-ment. His articles have appeared in Planning magazine, theChicago Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Fort WayneJournal Gazette and other publications. Since 2000, he hasworked for the HNTB Corporation in Columbia, Md. He can becontacted at [email protected].

WILLIAM POTAPCHUK is President and founder of the CommunityBuilding Institute (CBI). CBI works to strengthen the capacity ofcommunities to conduct public business inclusively and collabora-tively in order to build healthy, sustainable futures. The formerExecutive Director of the Program for Community Problem Solving,Potapchuk recently led a research and action project on “Building Collaborative Communities” with support from theHewlett Foundation. Widely published, Potapchuk’s recent worksinclude chapters in the Consensus Building Handbook and theCollaborative Leadership Fieldbook. He can be contacted [email protected].

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