I would like the Board of Education to get back their portion of the increment for this TIF area.  However, this may or may not be possible according to existing state law.  It it is not possible, I would settle for 30% of the increment to go to the Board of Education and to affordable housing.

The first step in looking at a potential TIF and the first step in most any development process is a market study.  I wanted a community-driven process.  The city hires a consultant.  There are a number of TIF consultants.  They do a market study.  I rejected that. 

I wanted any market study to be done from a community-driven process that included doing things a little differently than they usually do because we have an extremely diverse community - very, very diverse - ethnically, racially and economically.  And we have within our community (and I think this is generally true) those people who tend to be able to be more involved, going to meetings and participating in block clubs.  Those people generally tend to have a little bit more money, have a little bit more time on their hands, jobs that allow a little bit more flexibility, and they also tend to be less diverse in terms of their racial and ethnic composition.  But they definitely tend to have one perspective on a community where there are probably 50.  

I wanted to make sure we had a process that is not only community-driven but is not superficial in terms of having community meetings or block club meetings where just a few people who come to meetings will speak out.  I wanted a process where people have an opportunity to interact in a lot of ways, even in their own home.  And to do that, it's been a real challenge.  It's actually turning into a very exciting process, but it's turning into a real struggle just to get people to understand what I'm talking about.

On a separate track and at the same time as this development process was being defined by UPCORP, they were working on developing a "Developer Olympics" with the LaSalle National Bank.  The idea of this event was to involve people all over the city in an exercise that would enhance the creative thinking about development in Uptown. 

However, this event - the Developer Olympics - ended up being scheduled before we were able to begin the community process.  They were going to use this site as the foundation or example and come out with proposals for the site a month before we started the community process.  All of the partners, myself included, were fearful that this unfortunate timing would have poisoned the community process because everybody would have assumed that there was already a done deal.

The people at LaSalle National Bank and UPCORP agreed.  They are doing the Developer Olympics with a hypothetical site, and scholarships have been made available so people from the community can participate. And, in addition, the bank will fund and help develop a day-long activity at Truman College for the community that will be designed to give people the information and some of the skills they need to know to do the community part of the planning process that will also begin at about the same time.  Pretty exciting.  And it has a great deal of potential.  I'm hopeful that out of it will come a real community-driven process.