| Partnership for Regional Livability |
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Partnership for Regional Livability
Bay Area Pilot Project
Name of Project: The Bay Area Footprint applies state of the art information and decision tools to identify alternative development paths. The process to develop the Footprint effectively involves community and local stakeholders in broad and democratic decision-making on planning for the region and for specific areas (e.g. transit corridors, greenbelts, inner city revitalization) for development, preservation and restoration.
Project Abstract: The Bay Area Alliance on Sustainable Development has identified the issue of growth over the next 20 years as a top priority. To meet the challenges of growth, the Three Es of Economy, Environment and Equity must be addressed together. The Bay Area Alliance draft Commitments to Action call for:
The Bay Area Alliance is committed to promoting social equity so that all residents can share in the benefits of economic prosperity and a quality environment.
These commitments require regional information about the consequences of different land use patterns that effect housing, transportation mobility and access, infrastructure investment, and the preservation of critical ecosystems of the Bay Area.
The initial Footprint focus is on the Jobs-Housing Balance. The purpose of the Jobs-Housing Footprint analysis is to determine the amount of land that would be needed to accommodate within the Bay Area the housing needed for projected population and job growth through 2020. This exercise embraces the concept that it is desirable public policy in recognition of the "Three Es"- Environment, Equity and Economy - to provide housing within the region for the projected growth in population and jobs instead of pushing new workers and poorer residents further out into the Central Valley. The failure to accommodate housing closer to jobs has significant environmental and equity impacts as well as economic consequences.
It is further hoped that by providing objective information, the Jobs-Housing Footprint Project will facilitate productive collaborative consensus among the various stakeholders and elected officials in the Bay Area to minimize land use conflicts in the future. It will assist civic leaders and public officials reach agreement about how and where the Bay Area will grow physically over the next two decades. It will delineate lands appropriate for urbanization at specified densities, and those areas which should be protected and not urbanized.
The Bay Area Footprint would be a process and products to determine what the physical capacity of the nine-county Bay Area to accommodate jobs, housing and population growth while protecting and improving the environment. The product would be a series of map overlays, scenarios and simulation models to illustrate the consequences of such growth. This project will require sophisticated information and decision tools including GIS mapping, visualization and simulation that would allow for both mapping current land use patterns and looking at alternative development paths in the future.
Participants, especially from neighborhoods, business, and local government would be involved in developing the tools and using them for planning, policy making and project approval. The information tools would be designed with local input from the stakeholders. The tools would be used to improve the public's understanding of growth options (e.g. housing developments in their backyard) and how such choices would affect their quality of life. The process for developing the assumptions behind the Bay Area Footprint is meant to generate consensus. Therefore, the participation process would be tracked along with the development of products depicting the Bay Area Footprint.
Rationale and Benefits: A better understanding of current housing and land use patterns and their interplay with the Bay Area ecosystem health on a regional basis using new information tools for examining alternative development paths can inform planners, citizens and decision makers about the consequences of current decisions. The new information tools are available. The question is how to apply them in a way that will promote better and more democratic decision-making. That would be focus of this collaborative pilot project
Local Support: The Bay Area Alliance has identified this effort as an important initiative for the region. A work group of the Bay Area Alliance composed of business leaders and economic development organizations have recommended the Jobs-Housing Footprint as a useful tool for addressing the jobs-housing imbalance. The work group on Environmental Quality and Biodiversity has also recommended that "a region-wide plan and map showing which lands should be considered for restoration and preservation and which could be considered for development, consistent with sustainability criteria." The social equity caucus informing the Bay Area Alliance has emphasized the importance of evaluating existing capacity of inner city infrastructure and an equity analysis of urban investments. A number of public sector agencies, including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Association of Bay Area Governments, along with private sector and civic sector organizations also have developed a Partnership for Smart Growth work group pursuant to a FHWA RFP.
How Might Federal Agencies Add Value: The Federal government already has initiatives underway in the area of information tools. This includes a federal interagency task force that has been supporting pilot projects as well as the Aurora Partnership, which involves a wide range of federal agencies and private organizations. The key federal agencies are Interior, Energy, EPA and Commerce.
Federal agencies would provide information and data through existing channels. Mapping data from the USGS and the Census Bureau (especially the data being collected for the Year 2000 census) would be made accessible to the Footprint. As the Bay Area Footprint methodology is designed with federal agency input, new data needed would be integrated with existing surveys and other data collection instruments.
Financial evaluation of infrastructure, for instance through the Department of Transportation, FHWA, EPA and others, would assist in prioritizing optimal areas to revitalize and develop within the Bay Area region.
Federal partners would assist in bringing together regional and state sources of information on environmental quality and biodiversity health. Federal technical assistance would be provided to integrate the data in a standard format, enabling better analysis and comparison of data between jurisdictions.
Timeline: A design team will work to develop this project between May-June. It is anticipated that the Footprint project would take at least 12 months.
The Community Capital Investment Initiative (CCII) is designed to engage high-quality business, community, and government leadership in the use of market forces and access to capital to reduce poverty and create healthy and prosperous communities in the 46 communities in the Bay Area with concentrated persistent poverty. The growth of poverty is one of the top five challenges to sustaining economic prosperity in the Bay Area. CCII has the highest priority within the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development Pilot Project.
Any strategy for smart growth and sustainable development needs, as a key aspect, to address improvement of economic opportunities and quality of life in inner cities. One of the important ways to “grow inward, not outward” is to create better community businesses, housing, and schools leading to vital downtown centers. Without addressing inner-city improvement, strategies to reduce sprawl become much more difficult.
The Community Capital Investment Initiative seeks to identify and build on the comparative advantages of the targeted communities and guide investment according to comprehensive economic development strategies. CCII envisions use of a partnership approach to integrate ‘place-based’ community economic development with ‘sector-based’ high growth business development and management support.
Often community development deals are put together by a range of enabling organizations and financed by a community capital infrastructure whose strategic mission is to work in low-income communities. However, the labor-intensive nature of the deals combined with the limited experience of the organizations have not often led to business models that can increase the scale of the deal-making and resulting positive community impact. In many deals minimal interaction occurs between community economic developers and the mainstream business/finance infrastructure.
At the same time, banks - guided by the Community Reinvestment Act - and other mainstream sources of capital have often invested in single deals, not informed by a coherent and comprehensive community development strategy. These deals may well be productive of gentrification rather than community wealth creation. Also, disjunction among government agencies, conflicting jurisdictions, different priorities, and complex regulatory and permitting processes often inhibit potentially beneficial developments from taking place.
The premise being tested by the Community Capital Investment Initiative is that greater collaboration and learning among mainstream business, community development, and government leadership can encourage smart growth and sustainable development - i.e. development that leads to economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility (the 3 Es) - in the targeted communities.
CCII will focus on identifying and encouraging completion of keystone housing, commercial, industrial, and business developments that are projected to create significant deal-flow and lead to substantial economic, social, and environmental benefits in the targeted communities.
To establish the Community Capital Investment Initiative, the Bay Area Alliance will invite business, community, and government leaders to constitute a Community Investment Roundtable. The Roundtable will be organized to encourage collaboration in mutually beneficial transactions among:
Participants in the Community Investment Roundtable will agree to assist in encouraging completion of keystone developments and consider investment in deals flowing from these developments. The Roundtable will meet as a whole as well as establishing a Business Council, a Community Council, and a Government Council.
The Roundtable will be responsible for approving and facilitating keystone developments including:
The Business Council will be composed of business champions with a spectrum of expertise from the finance, real estate, and business development sectors. The Business Council will function as a subsidiary of the Bay Area Council - the organization of the largest employers in the Bay Area - and be responsible to:
The Community Council will be consist of social equity champions, community development leaders, and community sponsors of developments that receive Initiative approval and support. The Community Council will:
The Government Council will bring together representatives from federal, state, and local governments and regional regulatory bodies to:
CCII will engage dedicated staff as well as seek staff support from participants in the Community Investment Roundtable. Staff will:
By working together, participants in the Community Investment Roundtable and the Business, Community, and Government Councils will be creating a regional smart growth sustainable development infrastructure. This infrastructure will encourage identification, evaluation, investment, and monitoring of community and region-wide keystone developments, each of which will produce a flow of deals.
Elements of the community development dimension of this infrastructure - particularly in the field of low-income housing - are in place. CCII will help strengthen and coordinate this infrastructure and assist in building relationships with mainstream developers and business and finance leadership.
Typically the developments and deals will be structured as public/private/community partnerships, with the each stakeholder having some equity participation. Each investment institution participating in CCII will agree to carefully consider investment in each keystone development and the associated deal flow. In addition to passing the Roundtable’s due diligence, the developments and deals will have to meet the investment criteria and pass due diligence review of the individual investing organizations. By virtue of participating in CCII, each keystone development and associated deal will be enhanced by the entrepreneurial intelligence, community support, and public cooperation that the Roundtable can focus on the different projects.
This community investment Infrastructure will also work with communities to prepare for keystone developments. It can be seen as a region-wide incubator-without-walls to assist communities in undertaking keystone developments and deals. Typically, also, CCII will obtain a small equity position in the developments and deals that it facilitates. In this way CCII will eventually become partially and, perhaps, completely self-funded.
The Community Capital Investment Initiative emerges from and builds on a number of Bay Area Regional efforts, including the Bay Area Partnership, the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development, and the Capital for Communities Project, and the Alameda Green Business Recognition Program.
The Bay Area Partnership for Building Healthy and Self-Sufficient Communities for Economic Prosperity was initiated by the Bay Area Council and the US Department of Health and Human Services, Region IX. The Bay Area Partnership is a public-private coalition of government, business, community, philanthropic, and service leaders committed to developing a new, more effective approach to the way health, social educational, economic, and community development programs are planned, funded, and implemented. The Partnership has published A Guide to the Bay Area’s Most Impoverished Neighborhoods - By County, which identifies the 46 communities in the Bay Area with the greatest concentrations of poverty.
The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development is a broad alliance of business, community, and environmental organizations and public agencies formed to implement in the Bay Area the perspective arrived at by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development in the Bay Area. The Alliance is focusing on the creation of a Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area and the regional coordination of action initiatives leading to economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility (3 Es). Expanding inner-city investment is one of the eight commitments to action included in the Compact.
CCII is a direct elaboration of the Capital for Communities Project of the Bay Area Council and the Irvine Foundation that has been in formation for more than a year. The Capital for Communities Project has completed the Summary Matrix of Community Development Capital Providers - a baseline inventory of the community capital intermediaries serving the Bay Area, surveying their capacity and detailing the amount of capital available through them. The Project drafted A Capital for Communities Strategic Framework, which describes the premises for the Project, its proposed organization and timeframe, and its mode of evaluation.
Based on the matrix and the concept paper, a series of meetings have been convened with leaders from the community capital infrastructure. These meetings endorsed the concept of the Capital for Communities Project, approved a set of criteria for success, and identified an initial set of possible keystone developments. Meetings have also taken place with the Federal Reserve, business and social equity leaders, and government officials.
The findings from this feasibility investigation include:
The Green Business Program is a partnership among business leaders, environmental groups, non-profit organizations, regulators, and local governments coordinated by the Association of Bay Area Governments and East Bay Small Business Development Center. The goal of the Program is to encourage public support and patronage of environmentally responsible businesses by recognizing those businesses that demonstrate ongoing compliance with environmental regulations as well as excellence in pollution prevention and resource conservation.
The Program has obtained participation of all of the relevant federal, state, regional, and local regulatory organizations, so when a business completes the program they know they have complied with all environmental and health and safety regulations. Businesses completing the program are recognized as “Green Businesses” and can post a certificate to that effect in their establishment. The Program is proceeding by business sector and has already dealt with auto repair and printing businesses.
The study Growing Together presents evidence that regional metropolitan areas in United States that exhibit more similar levels of income between city and suburb also tend to have raster economic growth across the entire region. The Bay Area Economic Forum’s paper, THE BAY AREA: Leading the Transition to a Knowledge-Based Economy, identifies poverty as well as cost of housing, quality of K-12 education, environmental protection, and traffic congestion as the five leading challenges to continued regional prosperity.
The Bay Area Partnership has identified 46 communities in the Bay Area with concentrated, sustained, and, in many cases, increasing levels of poverty. Although significant amounts of capital flow in and through the Bay Area, there is a relative absence of developments in these targeted communities that produce bankable or near-bankable “deals” that offer market or near-market rates of return and neighborhood equity participation.
New national efforts, including the Wall Street Project led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City led by Harvard Professor Michael Porter, and most recently, President Clinton’s New Markets Initiative, are recognizing inner cities as important markets for United States enterprises. If these efforts succeed so that more capital flows and national businesses locate in inner cities, there could be a tendency toward gentrification in those communities, with the current residents not benefiting and the environment adversely impacted.
Two of the largest problems faced by mainstream housing, commercial, and business developers in inner-city areas are:
This situation makes it worthwhile for a market-rate, mainstream developer to consider partnering with community and environmental groups and government agencies. When all parties agree in front on the type of development that is desired and participate in the profit from the development, it becomes possible for all parties to cooperate in expediting the development. This reduces costs and improves profits. Such partnerships can be in the economic, social, and environmental interests of all parties.
A new smart growth sustainable development paradigm is needed to establish criteria to guide and expedite development that avoids gentrification produces a combination of economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility. CCII is an attempt to evolve this new development paradigm in the Bay Area by:
The Community Capital Investment Initiative is based on the proposition that opportunities exist to formulate community development strategies to identify and encourage completion of keystone developments that link community developers with the mainstream business/finance infrastructure and relevant government agencies. It is anticipated that these keystone developments will often take the form of public/private/community partnerships. By combining appropriate financial return with community wealth creation, these keystone developments can generate:
The work of the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development with its broad-based involvement of business, government, community, and environmental leaders has set the stage for this project. The Bay Area Alliance Executive Committee is made up of leadership from the Bay Area Council, Urban Habitat Program, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Sierra Club, and PGE. It is in liaison with and was formed as an outgrowth of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.
The Capital for Communities Program, sponsored by the Bay Area Council and the James Irvine Foundation, has provided the initial impetus for CCII. Several local cities including Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose are supportive of the Program, as is the Federal Reserve.
Barbara Desoer, Northern California President of Bank of America, and Edward Jensen, retired President, CEO, of VISA International have agreed to be corporate champions. The community capital intermediaries in the Bay Area have participated in the creation of CCII and indicated support, as have the National Community Capital Association, The Calvert Foundation, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and Oakland Advisors…(many other supporters to be added)
Participation of federal agencies at the regional level, in cooperation with local, regional, and state engagement, is a key dimension of the Community Capital Investment Initiative. The Bay Area Partnership - recipient of the federal golden hammer award for smashing bureaucracy - has already established a precedent for this type of multi-agency government collaboration in the Bay Area. CCII can be seen as an expansion of the partnership model to focus market forces on addressing poverty in the communities that the Bay Area Partnership has identified.
By joining the Community Investment Roundtable and the Government Council, representatives from the regional offices of federal agencies will join with local, regional, and state government representatives to define the smart growth sustainable development paradigm from the government perspective and to establish criteria for evaluating keystone developments. Based on these criteria, the Government Council can conduct due diligence review of the keystone developments and the resulting deal flow to determine that the developments pass the all of the relevant government regulations and meet government public benefit objectives.
Once a keystone development has passed due diligence by the Government Council and the Roundtable as a whole, then the different federal agencies - in collaboration with the other government jurisdictions - will engage the relevant governmental programs and incentives. Crossing departmental boundaries, the different agencies will be facilitated in cooperating to provide maximum support for the keystone developments and the communities in which they are located.
One of the needs for federal participation is to create and make available a coherent and comprehensive, easily accessible data base of all of the federal, state, regional, and local tax, finance, and other incentive programs, funding possibilities, loan guarantees, credit enhancements, and support mechanisms. This will enable keystone developments and the communities in which they are located to access the full range of government support.
The Government Council will benefit from participation of regional leadership from the full range of federal agencies, including: the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Agency, Department of the Treasury, Department of Commerce, Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, the Justice Department, the Department of Education, the General Services Administration and (given the scope of military base closures in the Bay Area) the Department of Defense.
Federal agencies, including Commerce, Treasury, HUD, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, Energy, and EPA could collaborate in developing a registry of market rate developers interested in smart growth, sustainable development, and partnering with communities and public agencies. These federal agencies could also collaborate in a program to encourage additional mainstream developers to undertake smart growth, sustainable, partnership approaches to development.
The Community Capital Investment Initiative will assist the different finance industry regulators as well as banks and other capital sources by providing what amounts to a regional incubator-without-walls for keystone housing, commercial, and business developments and the resulting deal flow. This will increase the likelihood that these deals will succeed.
Too often the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the safety and soundness regulations of the different bank regulators - the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Agency, and the California State Banking Commission - have conflicted. Banks have been criticized on safety and soundness grounds for making an investment encouraged by the CRA divisions of the regulators. Passing the Government Council due diligence will help insure that the keystone developments and the resulting deal flow will be likely to pass both CRA and safety and soundness regulations.
When a keystone development passes Government Council due diligence and benefits from CCII’s different forms of support, it will enhance the development’s ability to receive equity investment from banks and other capital sources. The Federal Reserve has begun to encourage banks and other sources of capital to make more equity investments through community development venture funds and other vehicles.
Participation by the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Treasury as well as the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and the President’s New Markets Initiative can encourage large national corporations to participate in and do business with the keystone developments and their component businesses. The Department of Labor has an important role to play, in association with the various Private Industry Councils (PICs) and other job-training and welfare-to-work programs, in workforce development - identifying, training, placing, and monitoring retention of workers in the keystone developments.
As the new smart growth sustainable development paradigm organized by public/private/community partnerships takes shape, new types and forms of development are also emerging, such as: community development finance institutions (CDFIs), transit villages, growth sector oriented business incubators and incubator-without-walls programs, eco-industrial parks, and mixed-use in-fill developments.
The federal government can help in establishing learning circles and research funding to encourage the rapid elaboration and advancement of each of these development forms. This learning - which should involve, among other departments, Commerce, Treasury, EPA, Energy, Transportation, and Labor - will also be of significant benefit for the Empowerment and Enterprise Zone programs.
Federal agencies have a role to play in assisting communities to bring forward keystone developments. Federal agencies can collaborate in the analysis of the strategic advantages of different communities, looking at internal and external markets, strength of different business sectors, workforce characteristics, entrepreneurial pool, physical infrastructure, and transportation. Based on this analysis, different business sectors with optimal community fit can be identified to encourage keystone developments that are focused in those sectors.
Once the strategic analysis is completed, federal agencies can assist in the encouragement and training of business and social entrepreneurs in these communities who can partner with mainstream developers and business leaders to conceptualize, formulate, and carry out business plans for keystone developments.
Treasury, Commerce, Transportation, and Labor all are relevant to the process of analysis of community strategic advantage, while Education, Labor, and Commerce are important in relation to the identification, training, and support of community business and social entrepreneurs.
In the analysis of the strategic advantage of communities, gaps and problems will be identified. It may be transportation infrastructure. It may be crime. It may be schools. It may be credit and capital sources. It may be wealth training. In all of these cases federal agencies can collaborate with local, regional, and state agencies to coordinate programs and resources to improve the business climate and quality of life in the communities.
There will be opportunities for interventions in the communities to support the business climate development by improving transportation, waste management and toxic clean-up, crime prevention, education, and blight removal and façade improvement. This can involve Transportation, particularly in relation to the TEA21 legislation, Education, EPA, Justice, HUD, and Commerce.
The office of each federal agency in the region is located in some one or more communities. Many of the 46 priority communities are the location for or in proximity to one or more federal offices. The siting of federal offices is an important encouragement to economic development. The leaders of federal agencies can be strong forces for assisting communities in preparing to undertake a keystone development and for helping support a keystone development once it is in operation.
Federal participation in the Government Council and in particular keystone developments can be a way for federal agencies to learn about how to play their community roles more effectively as good neighbors facilitating appropriate development. A federal learning circle addressing the role of federal offices in encouraging smart growth and sustainable development in the communities where they are located could not only benefit CCII, but also the federal roles in other regions.
Some of the issues of poverty in the Bay Area need to be addressed at the regional level as well as at the level of the individual communities. Federal agencies can play an important role in assessing regional strategic advantages and problems in relation to economic, social, ecological, and physical capital and infrastructure as they relate to the strategic advantages of the different communities. Based on these assessments, federal agencies can assist with region-wide programs to build on strengths and address problems in the region and its component communities.
Many examples can be cited, including:
Through a performance-based approach over a fixed time period, CCII will determine whether this effort is succeeding in reducing poverty, creating good jobs, and building wealth in the targeted communities.
The key measures of success for Community Capital Investment Initiative will be whether the keystone developments can produce a flow of deals, offering market and near market rates of return, of a scale and magnitude to impact the targeted communities by:
By engaging mainstream business leaders, leading community economic developers, and government agencies in collaboration, all three groups will have an opportunity to explore creative new relationships and learn from each other in ways that:
21. Increase the capacity of the community economic development providers and intermediaries to produce larger scale deals connected to the economy of the region.
22. Improve the ability of the mainstream financial sector to service low-income communities.
23. Encourage inter-governmental cooperation to encourage appropriate inner-city economic development.
In its first phase during the next two years, Community Capital Investment Initiative seeks to establish its structure and bring to completion at least 4-6 keystone developments. Examples of a completed development could include:
The greatest barrier to the success of the Community Capital Investment Initiative is the fact that regional cooperation bringing together the diverse organizations and constituencies envisioned by CCII has not been done before. Many different institutions and organizations with different cultures and different perceived short-term interests need to be organized and integrated to engage in common action.
The key to success is the recognition the profound reality that all of the different groups share a powerful long-term interest in avoiding the destructive growth patterns that have led to a jobs housing imbalance, clogged transportation, poorer air quality, and a decline in inner city communities. These diverse stakeholders all share an interest in encouraging smart growth sustainable development leading to a prosperous, environmentally responsible, socially equitable Bay Area made up of successful, safe, healthy, and just communities.
While there are many partial precedents for this undertaking, the Bay Area has never succeeded in accomplishing regional cooperation on this scale. Therefore, a first barrier will be convincing the different stakeholders that this type of cooperation is not only desirable, but also possible.
Another impediment to sustainable development is competing and inconsistent regulations among different governmental agencies. The Alameda Green Business Program has demonstrated the power of obtaining in-front agreement of all the different regulatory agencies so that businesses who receive certification are assured that they are in compliance with all relevant agencies regulations. However the regulatory cooperation proposed for CCII extends the terrain to the entire Bay Area and expands beyond environmental regulations to include the full regulatory territory.
Success with CCII will depend on building close working relationships among the participants. Bureaucratic indecision and inaction will be the enemy of this Initiative. A number of parties need to cooperate to accomplish CCII’s objectives. Establishing this efficient deliberation and flexible cooperation in relation to the initiation and completion of business deals will require an entrepreneurial sensibility among all participants as well as a tolerance for different perspectives.
The goal for the first year and one half is to constitute CCII and approve 4-6 Keystone developments with investment beginning to flow to the developments. The developments must be spread geographically throughout the region (such as in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Richmond, and East Palo Alto.
The timetable for CCII will include:
Partnership for Regional Livability Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development Pilot Project Community Capital Investment Initiative
Draft For Discussion - June 8, 1999
(1) Name of Project - Community Capital Investment Initiative
The Community Capital Investment Initiative (CCII) is designed to engage high-quality business, community, and government leadership in the use of market forces and access to capital to reduce poverty and create healthy and prosperous communities in the 46 communities in the Bay Area with concentrated persistent poverty. The growth of poverty is one of the top five challenges to sustaining economic prosperity in the Bay Area. CCII has the highest priority within the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development Pilot Project.
(2) Project Abstract
Any strategy for smart growth and sustainable development needs, as a key aspect, to address improvement of economic opportunities and quality of life in inner cities. One of the important ways to "grow inward, not outward" is to create better community businesses, housing, and schools leading to vital downtown centers. Without addressing inner-city improvement, strategies to reduce sprawl become much more difficult.
The Community Capital Investment Initiative seeks to identify and build on the comparative advantages of the targeted communities and guide investment according to comprehensive economic development strategies. CCII envisions use of a partnership approach to integrate 'place-based' community economic development with 'sector-based' high growth business development and management support.
Premise
Often community development deals are put together by a range of enabling organizations and financed by a community capital infrastructure whose strategic mission is to work in low-income communities. However, the labor-intensive nature of the deals combined with the limited experience of the organizations have not often led to business models that can increase the scale of the deal-making and resulting positive community impact. In many deals minimal interaction occurs between community economic developers and the mainstream business/finance infrastructure.
At the same time, banks - guided by the Community Reinvestment Act - and other mainstream sources of capital have often invested in single deals, not informed by a coherent and comprehensive community development strategy. These deals may well be productive of gentrification rather than community wealth creation. Also, disjunction among government agencies, conflicting jurisdictions, different priorities, and complex regulatory and permitting processes often inhibit potentially beneficial developments from taking place.
The premise being tested by the Community Capital Investment Initiative is that greater collaboration and learning among mainstream business, community development, and government leadership can encourage smart growth and sustainable development - i.e. development that leads to economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility (the 3 Es) - in the targeted communities.
CCII will focus on identifying and encouraging completion of keystone housing, commercial, industrial, and business developments that are projected to create significant deal-flow and lead to substantial economic, social, and environmental benefits in the targeted communities.
Structure
To establish the Community Capital Investment Initiative, the Bay Area Alliance will invite business, community, and government leaders to constitute a Community Investment Roundtable. The Roundtable will be organized to encourage collaboration in mutually beneficial transactions among:
The Community Investment Roundtable
Participants in the Community Investment Roundtable will agree to assist in encouraging completion of keystone developments and consider investment in deals flowing from these developments. The Roundtable will meet as a whole as well as establishing a Business Council, a Community Council, and a Government Council.
The Roundtable will be responsible for approving and facilitating keystone developments including:
Business Council
The Business Council will be composed of business champions with a spectrum of expertise from the finance, real estate, and business development sectors. The Business Council will function as a subsidiary of the Bay Area Council - the organization of the largest employers in the Bay Area - and be responsible to: · Help refine and elaborate keystone developments and identify potential mainstream developers to partner with community developers. · Oversee economic due diligence on keystone developments by designating experts (deputies) from participating companies to assist with business and financial analysis of keystone developments and the resulting deal flow. · Seriously consider investment in approved keystone developments and the resulting deal flow. Community Council The Community Council will be consist of social equity champions, community development leaders, and community sponsors of developments that receive Initiative approval and support. The Community Council will: · Help identify and refine keystone developments. · Oversee training for community developers/entrepreneurs and identify potential community developers to partner with mainstream developers. · Conduct social equity and environmental due diligence on proposed developments. Government Council The Government Council will bring together representatives from federal, state, and local governments and regional regulatory bodies to: · Conduct regulatory and public benefit due diligence on proposed developments. · Collaborate in streamlining regulatory and permit approval. · Facilitate engagement and coordination of relevant federal, state, regional, and local programs that can enhance the keystone developments and support the communities where they are located and the region as a whole in addressing poverty reduction and wealth creation. Staff CCII will engage dedicated staff as well as seek staff support from participants in the Community Investment Roundtable. Staff will: · Assist in organizing and coordinating the Roundtable and the three Councils. · Recruit and prescreen initial neighborhood and regional keystone development proposals and their associated economic, social, and environmental strategies. · Monitor keystone developments being supported. · Initiate work with communities seeking keystone developments. Functions By working together, participants in the Community Investment Roundtable and the Business, Community, and Government Councils will be creating a regional smart growth sustainable development infrastructure. This infrastructure will encourage identification, evaluation, investment, and monitoring of community and region-wide keystone developments, each of which will produce a flow of deals. Elements of the community development dimension of this infrastructure - particularly in the field of low-income housing - are in place. CCII will help strengthen and coordinate this infrastructure and assist in building relationships with mainstream developers and business and finance leadership. Typically the developments and deals will be structured as public/private/community partnerships, with the each stakeholder having some equity participation. Each investment institution participating in CCII will agree to carefully consider investment in each keystone development and the associated deal flow. In addition to passing the Roundtable's due diligence, the developments and deals will have to meet the investment criteria and pass due diligence review of the individual investing organizations. By virtue of participating in CCII, each keystone development and associated deal will be enhanced by the entrepreneurial intelligence, community support, and public cooperation that the Roundtable can focus on the different projects. This community investment Infrastructure will also work with communities to prepare for keystone developments. It can be seen as a region-wide incubator-without-walls to assist communities in undertaking keystone developments and deals. Typically, also, CCII will obtain a small equity position in the developments and deals that it facilitates. In this way CCII will eventually become partially and, perhaps, completely self-funded. Prior Efforts The Community Capital Investment Initiative emerges from and builds on a number of Bay Area Regional efforts, including the Bay Area Partnership, the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development, and the Capital for Communities Project, and the Alameda Green Business Recognition Program. Bay Area Partnership The Bay Area Partnership for Building Healthy and Self-Sufficient Communities for Economic Prosperity was initiated by the Bay Area Council and the US Department of Health and Human Services, Region IX. The Bay Area Partnership is a public-private coalition of government, business, community, philanthropic, and service leaders committed to developing a new, more effective approach to the way health, social educational, economic, and community development programs are planned, funded, and implemented. The Partnership has published A Guide to the Bay Area's Most Impoverished Neighborhoods - By County, which identifies the 46 communities in the Bay Area with the greatest concentrations of poverty. The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development is a broad alliance of business, community, and environmental organizations and public agencies formed to implement in the Bay Area the perspective arrived at by the President's Council on Sustainable Development in the Bay Area. The Alliance is focusing on the creation of a Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area and the regional coordination of action initiatives leading to economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility (3 Es). Expanding inner-city investment is one of the eight commitments to action included in the Compact. Capital for Communities Project CCII is a direct elaboration of the Capital for Communities Project of the Bay Area Council and the Irvine Foundation that has been in formation for more than a year. The Capital for Communities Project has completed the Summary Matrix of Community Development Capital Providers - a baseline inventory of the community capital intermediaries serving the Bay Area, surveying their capacity and detailing the amount of capital available through them. The Project drafted A Capital for Communities Strategic Framework, which describes the premises for the Project, its proposed organization and timeframe, and its mode of evaluation. Based on the matrix and the concept paper, a series of meetings have been convened with leaders from the community capital infrastructure. These meetings endorsed the concept of the Capital for Communities Project, approved a set of criteria for success, and identified an initial set of possible keystone developments. Meetings have also taken place with the Federal Reserve, business and social equity leaders, and government officials. The findings from this feasibility investigation include: · There are a number of potentially bankable deals in the 46 priority communities with established, respected community development organizations and/or partners. · There is a sufficient supply of capital - both debt and equity - in the region. · There is an established community economic development infrastructure comprised of numerous intermediary organizations, however they have not tended to work together and not to collaborate closely with the mainstream capital infrastructure. · While many mainstream capital organizations are making investments in the priority communities through individual deals, there is often not a coherent investment/development strategy to leverage impacts and optimize synergies. No one company or institution is likely to be able to accomplish this alone. · A commitment by the business community at the highest executive levels to invest and engage market forces in the revitalization of the priority communities would make a significant difference. The Alameda County Green Business Recognition Program The Green Business Program is a partnership among business leaders, environmental groups, non-profit organizations, regulators, and local governments coordinated by the Association of Bay Area Governments and East Bay Small Business Development Center. The goal of the Program is to encourage public support and patronage of environmentally responsible businesses by recognizing those businesses that demonstrate ongoing compliance with environmental regulations as well as excellence in pollution prevention and resource conservation. The Program has obtained participation of all of the relevant federal, state, regional, and local regulatory organizations, so when a business completes the program they know they have complied with all environmental and health and safety regulations. Businesses completing the program are recognized as "Green Businesses" and can post a certificate to that effect in their establishment. The Program is proceeding by business sector and has already dealt with auto repair and printing businesses. (3) Rationale and Benefits The study Growing Together presents evidence that regional metropolitan areas in United States that exhibit more similar levels of income between city and suburb also tend to have raster economic growth across the entire region. The Bay Area Economic Forum's paper, THE BAY AREA: Leading the Transition to a Knowledge-Based Economy, identifies poverty as well as cost of housing, quality of K-12 education, environmental protection, and traffic congestion as the five leading challenges to continued regional prosperity. Problem The Bay Area Partnership has identified 46 communities in the Bay Area with concentrated, sustained, and, in many cases, increasing levels of poverty. Although significant amounts of capital flow in and through the Bay Area, there is a relative absence of developments in these targeted communities that produce bankable or near-bankable "deals" that offer market or near-market rates of return and neighborhood equity participation. New national efforts, including the Wall Street Project led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City led by Harvard Professor Michael Porter, and most recently, President Clinton's New Markets Initiative, are recognizing inner cities as important markets for United States enterprises. If these efforts succeed so that more capital flows and national businesses locate in inner cities, there could be a tendency toward gentrification in those communities, with the current residents not benefiting and the environment adversely impacted. Two of the largest problems faced by mainstream housing, commercial, and business developers in inner-city areas are: 1. Complex and conflicting regulatory and permit approval procedures. 2. The possibility of community or environmental groups organizing opposition to the developments and prolonging the political and/or legal decision-making process. This situation makes it worthwhile for a market-rate, mainstream developer to consider partnering with community and environmental groups and government agencies. When all parties agree in front on the type of development that is desired and participate in the profit from the development, it becomes possible for all parties to cooperate in expediting the development. This reduces costs and improves profits. Such partnerships can be in the economic, social, and environmental interests of all parties. New Development Paradigm A new smart growth sustainable development paradigm is needed to establish criteria to guide and expedite development that avoids gentrification produces a combination of economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental responsibility. CCII is an attempt to evolve this new development paradigm in the Bay Area by: · Establishing a context for community and mainstream business development partnerships leading to community wealth creation as well as market or near market financial return. · Coordinating local, regional, state, and federal efforts in these development partnerships in ways that improve inner cities as investment opportunities and as places to live, work, and go to school. Opportunity The Community Capital Investment Initiative is based on the proposition that opportunities exist to formulate community development strategies to identify and encourage completion of keystone developments that link community developers with the mainstream business/finance infrastructure and relevant government agencies. It is anticipated that these keystone developments will often take the form of public/private/community partnerships. By combining appropriate financial return with community wealth creation, these keystone developments can generate: · Market rate deals unfamiliar to mainstream capital sectors. · Deals requiring special expertise and credit enhancement where non-traditional partnerships can yield results. · Below market deals that should be carried out because of their contribution to regional competitiveness. · Regional programs to enhance credit availability and improve the business opportunities for businesses in targeted communities. (4) Key Participants The work of the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development with its broad-based involvement of business, government, community, and environmental leaders has set the stage for this project. The Bay Area Alliance Executive Committee is made up of leadership from the Bay Area Council, Urban Habitat Program, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Sierra Club, and PG&E. It is in liaison with and was formed as an outgrowth of the President's Council on Sustainable Development. The Capital for Communities Program, sponsored by the Bay Area Council and the James Irvine Foundation, has provided the initial impetus for CCII. Several local cities including Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose are supportive of the Program, as is the Federal Reserve. Barbara Desoer, Northern California President of Bank of America, and Edward Jensen, retired President, CEO, of VISA International have agreed to be corporate champions. The community capital intermediaries in the Bay Area have participated in the creation of CCII and indicated support, as have the National Community Capital Association, The Calvert Foundation, the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and Oakland Advisors…(many other supporters to be added) (5) The Federal Government Role Participation of federal agencies at the regional level, in cooperation with local, regional, and state engagement, is a key dimension of the Community Capital Investment Initiative. The Bay Area Partnership - recipient of the federal golden hammer award for smashing bureaucracy - has already established a precedent for this type of multi-agency government collaboration in the Bay Area. CCII can be seen as an expansion of the partnership model to focus market forces on addressing poverty in the communities that the Bay Area Partnership has identified. Government Council By joining the Community Investment Roundtable and the Government Council, representatives from the regional offices of federal agencies will join with local, regional, and state government representatives to define the smart growth sustainable development paradigm from the government perspective and to establish criteria for evaluating keystone developments. Based on these criteria, the Government Council can conduct due diligence review of the keystone developments and the resulting deal flow to determine that the developments pass the all of the relevant government regulations and meet government public benefit objectives. Once a keystone development has passed due diligence by the Government Council and the Roundtable as a whole, then the different federal agencies - in collaboration with the other government jurisdictions - will engage the relevant governmental programs and incentives. Crossing departmental boundaries, the different agencies will be facilitated in cooperating to provide maximum support for the keystone developments and the communities in which they are located. One of the needs for federal participation is to create and make available a coherent and comprehensive, easily accessible data base of all of the federal, state, regional, and local tax, finance, and other incentive programs, funding possibilities, loan guarantees, credit enhancements, and support mechanisms. This will enable keystone developments and the communities in which they are located to access the full range of government support. The Government Council will benefit from participation of regional leadership from the full range of federal agencies, including: the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Agency, Department of the Treasury, Department of Commerce, Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, the Justice Department, the Department of Education, the General Services Administration and (given the scope of military base closures in the Bay Area) the Department of Defense. Support for Keystone Developments: Federal agencies, including Commerce, Treasury, HUD, the President's Council on Sustainable Development, Energy, and EPA could collaborate in developing a registry of market rate developers interested in smart growth, sustainable development, and partnering with communities and public agencies. These federal agencies could also collaborate in a program to encourage additional mainstream developers to undertake smart growth, sustainable, partnership approaches to development. The Community Capital Investment Initiative will assist the different finance industry regulators as well as banks and other capital sources by providing what amounts to a regional incubator-without-walls for keystone housing, commercial, and business developments and the resulting deal flow. This will increase the likelihood that these deals will succeed. Too often the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the safety and soundness regulations of the different bank regulators - the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Controller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Agency, and the California State Banking Commission - have conflicted. Banks have been criticized on safety and soundness grounds for making an investment encouraged by the CRA divisions of the regulators. Passing the Government Council due diligence will help insure that the keystone developments and the resulting deal flow will be likely to pass both CRA and safety and soundness regulations. When a keystone development passes Government Council due diligence and benefits from CCII's different forms of support, it will enhance the development's ability to receive equity investment from banks and other capital sources. The Federal Reserve has begun to encourage banks and other sources of capital to make more equity investments through community development venture funds and other vehicles. Participation by the Department of Commerce and the Department of the Treasury as well as the President's Council on Sustainable Development and the President's New Markets Initiative can encourage large national corporations to participate in and do business with the keystone developments and their component businesses. The Department of Labor has an important role to play, in association with the various Private Industry Councils (PICs) and other job-training and welfare-to-work programs, in workforce development - identifying, training, placing, and monitoring retention of workers in the keystone developments. As the new smart growth sustainable development paradigm organized by public/private/community partnerships takes shape, new types and forms of development are also emerging, such as: community development finance institutions (CDFIs), transit villages, growth sector oriented business incubators and incubator-without-walls programs, eco-industrial parks, and mixed-use in-fill developments. The federal government can help in establishing learning circles and research funding to encourage the rapid elaboration and advancement of each of these development forms. This learning - which should involve, among other departments, Commerce, Treasury, EPA, Energy, Transportation, and Labor - will also be of significant benefit for the Empowerment and Enterprise Zone programs. Support for Communities Seeking and Hosting Keystone Developments Federal agencies have a role to play in assisting communities to bring forward keystone developments. Federal agencies can collaborate in the analysis of the strategic advantages of different communities, looking at internal and external markets, strength of different business sectors, workforce characteristics, entrepreneurial pool, physical infrastructure, and transportation. Based on this analysis, different business sectors with optimal community fit can be identified to encourage keystone developments that are focused in those sectors. Once the strategic analysis is completed, federal agencies can assist in the encouragement and training of business and social entrepreneurs in these communities who can partner with mainstream developers and business leaders to conceptualize, formulate, and carry out business plans for keystone developments. Treasury, Commerce, Transportation, and Labor all are relevant to the process of analysis of community strategic advantage, while Education, Labor, and Commerce are important in relation to the identification, training, and support of community business and social entrepreneurs. In the analysis of the strategic advantage of communities, gaps and problems will be identified. It may be transportation infrastructure. It may be crime. It may be schools. It may be credit and capital sources. It may be wealth training. In all of these cases federal agencies can collaborate with local, regional, and state agencies to coordinate programs and resources to improve the business climate and quality of life in the communities. There will be opportunities for interventions in the communities to support the business climate development by improving transportation, waste management and toxic clean-up, crime prevention, education, and blight removal and façade improvement. This can involve Transportation, particularly in relation to the TEA21 legislation, Education, EPA, Justice, HUD, and Commerce. The office of each federal agency in the region is located in some one or more communities. Many of the 46 priority communities are the location for or in proximity to one or more federal offices. The siting of federal offices is an important encouragement to economic development. The leaders of federal agencies can be strong forces for assisting communities in preparing to undertake a keystone development and for helping support a keystone development once it is in operation. Federal participation in the Government Council and in particular keystone developments can be a way for federal agencies to learn about how to play their community roles more effectively as good neighbors facilitating appropriate development. A federal learning circle addressing the role of federal offices in encouraging smart growth and sustainable development in the communities where they are located could not only benefit CCII, but also the federal roles in other regions. Strengthening the Regional Community Development Infrastructure: Some of the issues of poverty in the Bay Area need to be addressed at the regional level as well as at the level of the individual communities. Federal agencies can play an important role in assessing regional strategic advantages and problems in relation to economic, social, ecological, and physical capital and infrastructure as they relate to the strategic advantages of the different communities. Based on these assessments, federal agencies can assist with region-wide programs to build on strengths and address problems in the region and its component communities. Many examples can be cited, including: · FannieMae has committed to a multi-billion dollar program for home finance in the Bay Area and has authorized use of the location efficient mortgage in the Bay Area. These regional commitments can be of assistance in relation to the targeted communities. · ICETEA and TEA21 legislation and the Department of Transportation can be of assistance when a significant number of employers are willing to make commitments to purchase transit services for employees. Through loan guarantees, these commitments can be securitized and used to raise private funds for transit improvements. · The General Services Administration and the purchasing programs of the regional offices of the different federal agencies can take the lead in a regional program to source from keystone developments and businesses in targeted communities. · The Department of Labor and Health and Human Services can assist in regional coordination of job training, placement, and retention of workers in keystone developments, targeted communities, and targeted sectors. · Each business sector has an economic infrastructure and Commerce, Federal Reserve, Energy, Education, and other agencies can assist in charting and strengthening that infrastructure as well as focusing it in relation to targeted communities and keystone developments. · The federal government already supports the Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) industry through the CDFI legislation and funding. Treasury, Federal Reserve, the Office of Thrift Management, and other agencies can collaborate through CCII in undertaking a regional program to encourage community investment in the Bay Area through coordination, capacity building, and initiation of new CDFIs or CDFI branches in targeted communities. In collaboration with banks, this can lead to a return to neighborhood retail banking. The National Community Capital Association and the Calvert Foundation have indicated interest in participating in such a program. · The Economic Development Administration could be interested in supporting and funding an initiative to encourage a regional network of business incubators focused on high growth economic sectors and located in different targeted communities. Such a network could be an important force for integrating place and sector based economic development. · Ongoing federal programs supporting economic conversion of closed military bases in the Bay Area and clean-up and redevelopment of Brownfields can be integrated into CCII in a straightforward way. · Community indicators and a measurement system are needed to measure economic, social, and environmental progress in each neighborhood and the Bay Area region as a whole. The Federal Reserve, EPA, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Education can assist in the establishment of a system of community and regional indicators. · The fiscalization of land use decision-making is a problem often leading to destructive competition among cities and highly questionable land use decisions. The Community Investment Roundtable in general and the Government Council in particular can be a force for regional cooperation in land-use decision-making, as keystone developments are located in the optimal regional locations. This experience of regional cooperation can build positive experiences and become a force for the development of regional agreements leading to a regional revenue sharing program. Federal leaderhip from Commerce, Economic Development Administration, Federal Reserve, and Treasury, along with relevant state agencies can help local government officials explore this possibility. (6) Success Criteria Through a performance-based approach over a fixed time period, CCII will determine whether this effort is succeeding in reducing poverty, creating good jobs, and building wealth in the targeted communities. Measures of Success The key measures of success for Community Capital Investment Initiative will be whether the keystone developments can produce a flow of deals, offering market and near market rates of return, of a scale and magnitude to impact the targeted communities by: · Improving household income levels. · Providing high quality jobs. · Increasing home ownership. · Encouraging start-up and expansion of minority and women owned business. · Producing neighborhood renter, homeowner, and community organization equity participation in growth-oriented business developments. · Expanding of neighborhood-serving retail. Learning Goals By engaging mainstream business leaders, leading community economic developers, and government agencies in collaboration, all three groups will have an opportunity to explore creative new relationships and learn from each other in ways that: 1. Increase the capacity of the community economic development providers and intermediaries to produce larger scale deals connected to the economy of the region. 2. Improve the ability of the mainstream financial sector to service low-income communities. 3. Encourage inter-governmental cooperation to encourage appropriate inner-city economic development. Initial Objectives In its first phase during the next two years, Community Capital Investment Initiative seeks to establish its structure and bring to completion at least 4-6 keystone developments. Examples of a completed development could include: · Securing financial commitments and permitting for a transit village real estate development that partners community and market rate developers. · Obtaining financing and management support to incubate growth-oriented businesses in a targeted neighborhood. · Supporting development of an eco-industial park at a closed military base as a public/private/community partnership. · Implementation of a region-wide corporate vendor supply contracting program for minority and women owned businesses and businesses located in targeted communities. (7) Barriers to Success The greatest barrier to the success of the Community Capital Investment Initiative is the fact that regional cooperation bringing together the diverse organizations and constituencies envisioned by CCII has not been done before. Many different institutions and organizations with different cultures and different perceived short-term interests need to be organized and integrated to engage in common action. The key to success is the recognition the profound reality that all of the different groups share a powerful long-term interest in avoiding the destructive growth patterns that have led to a jobs housing imbalance, clogged transportation, poorer air quality, and a decline in inner city communities. These diverse stakeholders all share an interest in encouraging smart growth sustainable development leading to a prosperous, environmentally responsible, socially equitable Bay Area made up of successful, safe, healthy, and just communities. While there are many partial precedents for this undertaking, the Bay Area has never succeeded in accomplishing regional cooperation on this scale. Therefore, a first barrier will be convincing the different stakeholders that this type of cooperation is not only desirable, but also possible. Another impediment to sustainable development is competing and inconsistent regulations among different governmental agencies. The Alameda Green Business Program has demonstrated the power of obtaining in-front agreement of all the different regulatory agencies so that businesses who receive certification are assured that they are in compliance with all relevant agencies regulations. However the regulatory cooperation proposed for CCII extends the terrain to the entire Bay Area and expands beyond environmental regulations to include the full regulatory territory. Success with CCII will depend on building close working relationships among the participants. Bureaucratic indecision and inaction will be the enemy of this Initiative. A number of parties need to cooperate to accomplish CCII's objectives. Establishing this efficient deliberation and flexible cooperation in relation to the initiation and completion of business deals will require an entrepreneurial sensibility among all participants as well as a tolerance for different perspectives. (8) Steps and Timetable The goal for the first year and one half is to constitute CCII and approve 4-6 Keystone developments with investment beginning to flow to the developments. The developments must be spread geographically throughout the region (such as in Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Richmond, and East Palo Alto. The timetable for CCII will include: Phase I: September 1999 - December 2000 1. Constitution of the Roundtable and the Business, Community, and Government Councils. 2. Acquisition of start-up funding. 3. Contracting with staff. 4. Roundtable discussion and elaboration of the smart growth sustainable development paradigm. 5. Formulation of criteria for evaluating keystone developments and resulting deals by the three Councils and ratification of the criteria by the Roundtable. 6. Approval of a keystone development RFP by the Roundtable. Phase II: January 2000 - December 2000 1. Staff recruitment and prescreening of initial neighborhood and regional keystone development proposals and their associated economic, social, and environmental strategies. 2. Community Council completion of equity due diligence and recommendation to the Business Council for financial due diligence and to the Government Council for regulatory and public benefit due diligence. 3. Modification of the proposals as needed. 4. Final review and approval of the initial keystone developments by the three Councils and the Roundtable. 5. Negotiation of investment and other partnership agreements. 6. Initiation of keystone developments and programs to enhance the business climates the communities hosting the keystone developments. 7. Monitoring keystone developments by staff. Phase III: January 2001 - December 2001 1. Initiation of work with communities seeking keystone developments. 2. Identification, approval, initiation, and monitoring of the second set of keystone developments. 3. Initiation of an annual regional conference to report on, assess, learn from, and guide CCII.
Presentation will be made on 3/29 by James Nixon, Chairperson, Bay Area Roundtable of the Alliance
Partners: Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development (nine county region)
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley 2010 (South Bay) Tri-Valley Business Council Visioning Project (East Bay)
Background
The Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development was established in 1997 as a multi-stakeholder coalition to develop and implement an action plan that will lead to a more sustainable Bay Area. Richard Clark, CEO-retired of Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Michelle Perrault, International Vice President of the Sierra Club, both members of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, helped form the Alliance based on the idea of integrating the perspectives of the economy, environment and social equity.
In early 1999, the Alliance has created a draft Compact for a Sustainable Bay Area that recommends strategies and actions that move toward the essential three Es of sustainability. It presents goals and strategies in five areas: natural resources, economic development and jobs, community development and housing, transportation and opportunity and diversity. It also outlines a public education/citizen’s involvement effort, a process for indicator development and best practices. The Alliance is beginning a public review and consensus building process around the draft Compact. The Compact can provide a starting point for this pilot project.
In addition, the Alliance has formed a Roundtable composed of 17 local sustainability projects. The Roundtable has helped craft principles to guide the Alliance efforts. One project of the Alliance is creating a Jobs-Housing Footprint which is convening key stakeholders to map the potential developable land in the Bay Area and to better link project types of housing with expected jobs growth in the region. This Footprint can provide a potential focus for this project.
Joint Venture: Silicon Valley in the South Bay has recently completed Silicon Valley 2010, a community process involving over 2000 citizens in establishing goals and measure objectives for the economy, environment, society and regional stewardship. Joint Venture is now creating a Silicon Valley Civic Action Network to implement those goals. Tri-Valley Business Council in the East Bay is led a visioning process to establish goals and measurable objectives for sustainable development. The pilot project provides to opportunity to linking these efforts across the Bay Area around common goals.
The Pilot Project builds on these existing efforts and relationships to focus on specific opportunities for regional-federal partnership on priority sustainability issues around land use, housing and transportation. In recent years, top priorities for the region have been addressing traffic congestion and creating more affordable housing. The work of the Alliance, Joint Venture and Tri-Valley have all focused on the creating a new urban design that better integrates land use, housing and transportation around the new realities of the regional economy. The pilot project provides the opportunity to build a region-federal partnership around this new thinking.
Draft Pilot Project Work Plan
Mid April - Alliance Steering Committee will meet with representatives of the Roundtable, Joint Venture and Tri-Valley to establish the Regional Leadership Team for this Pilot Project. Co-chairs of the Team will come from both the private and public sector. Membership of the team will represent the regional, industry, and ethnic diversity of the Bay Area.
End of April - "Work-in-progress" draft of project ideas and partnership scenarios will be prepared and reviewed by the Regional Leadership Team. The "toolkit" required for this project will be identified. Examples include information tools, best practices on land use, housing and transportation, financing tools.
Mid May - Comments received from "work-in-progress" draft from the Partnership and the identification of federal agency participation in the pilot project begun. Further refinement of the pilot project draft by the Regional Leadership team
End of May - Finalize the "final draft of project ideas and partnership scenarios and preparing the "reverse RFP" for federal participation Mid June- Review and comment of final draft by the Partnership and development of the agreement for federal participation
End of June- Participate in the "Learning Session" with the other pilot regions and finalizing the Partnership Agreement around a final draft of project ideas and partnership scenarios.
Last updated March 24, 1999.