18 September, 2023 12 12 Comments

Delray Pie

September 18, 2023 By 12 Comments

I’m stealing this opening from a friend.

If he wants credit, I’ll reveal his name next week. If he wants to enter the witness protection program, I’ll try  to help.

But I love the analogy and I thought I’d share. So here goes.

Imagine, if you will, that every time you step forward to help, you get hit in the face with a pie.

That’s what happening to the good folks who have hung in there at Old School Square.

Last week, they went to a Downtown Development Authority (DDA) meeting to discuss the results of a city commission workshop in which it was decided that the DDA should consider working with the non-profit to offer arts classes and to begin to get the Crest Theatre up and running again. I believe it was also decided that an invitation to negotiate will be made available to other organizations. That’s the right and proper thing to do. Let the best ideas win.

Without dredging up the ugliness, they got hit in the face with a pie from a board member who doesn’t have her facts straight.

The details of the latest pie in the face are not important. It’s the same tired, discredited arguments that have been made since Old School Square was terminated “without cause” (how’s that for irony?) in 2021. Still, Old School Square fired back with a letter to the DDA chairman requesting that the facts be read into the public record.

That’s a good and necessary step.

But there’s a deeper issue here and one that we really ought to understand and address.

But let’s digress for a moment.

Books– with lots of chapters and lots of words– have been written about how to build a successful city.

I wrote one of them and I’ve read a lot of them too.

Cities are complicated places; they succeed or fail for a variety of reasons. But if you boil it down, there are two essential ingredients for success. Let’s call them table stakes; the minimal entry requirement for success.

They are?

Drum roll please…

It must be safe to aspire, and it must be safe to volunteer.

That’s it.

The rest is negotiable.

Sure, it helps if you have a pristine beach or a city with what they call “good bones.”

Universities and cultural amenities are cool and good schools are a huge advantage but if volunteering is treacherous, you’re toast. If aspiration is anathema, you’re DOA.

Not only won’t you move forward, but everything that you’ve managed to build is in danger if citizens who aspire feel it’s dangerous, frustrating, or downright impossible to invest or volunteer.

I’m afraid that’s where we’ve been in Delray Beach. We’re digging out, but we have work to do.

It reminds me of that old saying: There’s a reason why we can’t have nice things—just yet anyway.

It’s hard to build community when there are elements who just won’t accept facts.

Of course, we are entitled to our opinions, but you really can’t have your own facts and function properly. The Earth is not flat and nobody at Old School Square took a dime of taxpayer money and stuffed it into their pockets. All public money given the organization was earned after services were rendered. For years, volunteers raised 75-80 percent of the money used to run our cultural arts center and did all the work, now the taxpayer pays 100 percent. That’s a fact.

The volunteers didn’t stick the taxpayers with a bill for the renovation of the Crest Theatre either. That project was funded by a generous donor who had a pie thrown in her face and withdrew her money.

Now the taxpayers must ante up millions for projects that were privately funded through the efforts of Old School Square.

If you’re an arsonist, you shouldn’t be able to burn down a house and then blame others for the destruction you caused.

Old School Square fired back at the latest pie in the face by stating the facts. That was the right thing to do.

But the larger issue is the pie throwing itself;  the larger issue is the sense that if you fall on the wrong side of the political divide, you face peril.

It’s not fun to write that sentence, but building anything of value requires radical candor. Problems don’t magically go away, if left unaddressed, they fester. In our community, we have a bad habit of just trying to plow forward. We skip the healing part, we skip the analysis and we sacrifice the learning and the reconciliation that’s possible if we talk through issues and try and find the lessons in painful moments.

The new composition of the city commission is making strides. We have kind people serving on the city commission. Our city and our world need empathetic leadership at every level.

I am not asking for some kumbaya moment. But I’m thinking we should take advice from Otis Redding and try a little tenderness.

Robust debate is healthy and necessary. If you see something you don’t like, speak out, even if you shake when you do so.

We can disagree. We can even compromise, imagine that?

But we cannot be successful if volunteers don’t feel safe to serve or disagree.

You can say Old School Square made mistakes, but if you are alleging corruption, you better bring the goods.

Margaret Atwood who wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale” is an expert communicator on dystopias and utopias.

She says we have a choice.

“Writing dystopias and utopias is a way of asking the reader the question, “where do you want to live?” she recently said. “And where you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now.”

Yes indeed. What do we do right now?

We have a choice.

I hope we choose kindness and support those who value building a community where it is safe to dream, volunteer, invest and aspire.

If we don’t, there will be nobody to throw pies at, volunteers and those who aspire will find somewhere else to give their time, talent and treasure. We will lose what took decades to build. We already have when it comes to Old School Square.

 

 

 

24 October, 2022 10 10 Comments

It’s All About Soul

October 24, 2022 By 10 Comments

There’s a darkness in the center of town.

It’s been said that placemaking done right builds on “the soul” of a place.

I like that sentiment.

Too often, we think of placemaking as construction when it’s really about storytelling.

I believe that every place has a story to tell and that our job as citizens is to honor that story.

If we do, we will be good stewards of our communities and we will make sure that change—which is inevitable—will be authentic and feel good. But if we don’t, we will lose our soul and the essence of what makes a place special.

Losing what’s special about a place, doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen. If we keep pulling threads, eventually the garment falls apart.

I believe that good design helps build great places, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

The other part—the most important part— is the people equation.

A great place must be “people friendly.” It must be warm and inviting and above all it must be respectful of its past, mindful of its present and always thinking about the future.

Those thoughts hit me when I drive past a still vacant Old School Square on my way to work in the morning.

To me, those beautiful buildings—once bustling with activity—seem sad and lonely. The Crest Theatre, home to so many magical performances over the years, is now an abandoned construction site. The classrooms once the home of art and photography classes are empty. The newly renovated Cornell Museum has had its walls stripped of art.

It didn’t have to be this way, but that’s a whole other story.

Meanwhile, The Downtown Development Authority is poised to come in and pump some life into the grounds and I have no doubt that if given ample resources, they will.

But as good as that agency is—and I’ve been a supporter over the years—I don’t think it will be easy to replace the soul of Old School Square. And as Billy Joel sings: “it’s all about soul.”

Old School Square’s soul was embodied by the special people who gave their time, passion, love, and hard-earned money to that place on the corner of Atlantic and Swinton for 32 years before the City Commission on a 3-2 vote kicked them to the curb. The public had no opportunity to weigh in before the vote, because the item to terminate the lease was never on an agenda.

But I suspect, based on the thousands of people who signed a petition to reverse the decision, that the community would have asked the commission to stop. Sadly, that never happened.

For 14 long months, there have been clumsy efforts to replace the non-profit that created Old School Square.  But that’s not proving to be so easy. And I know why: you can’t dial up soul.

You can’t issue an RFP and ask a group to bring love and passion as well as operating chops and tons of money. That’s what we’ve lost–love, passion and 80 percent of a $3 million operating budget. And it’s not a one time loss. It will be felt every year until you find a way to bring the soul back to what was Delray’s signature civic project.

Into that vacuum, comes the DDA. They are taking on a difficult and expensive assignment.

Again,  I support the agency.  When I was an elected official, and the downtown was humming, I would get occasional calls from citizens who wanted to disband the taxing authority.

“We don’t need the DDA anymore,” they would declare. “The downtown is busy. Their job is done.”

I would disagree, because the first rule of success in life, business, cities, and downtowns is this: you are never done.

Complacency is a killer.

Just when you think you’ve got it made, life will remind you that you don’t.

So, for the record, I hope the DDA succeeds.

But I will always believe that the Commission’s decision to terminate Old School Square, the very creators of the concept, was a tragically bad one. Costly in so many ways and while the politicians mercifully come and go, you the taxpayer will be saddled with those costs for years to come.

The biggest cost is the people who were thrown to the curb. They were awfully good folks—as good as it gets. Contributors who were generous and passionate about their town who were, in the end, told to get lost. People who ought to know better but don’t are lying about them and when they do they reveal who they really are.

That’s tragic and hurtful. And it matters. More than dollars and cents.

My friends, it’s the people who provide the magic.

It’s the people who provide the soul of a place.

People and only people can animate a brand, a community, a non-profit, a neighborhood.

So, it’s not about plugging in another entity or designing a great looking space. Of course, the entity is important and the space as is well, but it’s who comes/volunteers (and stays) at the table and who replaces them when they move on that matters most.

There was a time when our city government had multiple “connection” or entry points. There were Citizen Police Academies, there were Resident Academies, a Youth Council and more charrettes and more visioning exercises than you could count.

Old School Square was the heart and soul of those efforts to connect us.

It was a place to gather and celebrate our history, discuss our present and plan our future.

Old School Square was the physical and spiritual embodiment of our community. And it was wiped out without notice, forethought, or empathy.

I would be the last person to argue that what we lost was perfect. But Old School Square was good and there were times when it was great.

And that’s why you work to make it better. You don’t throw it away. You don’t kick it to the curb and then flail around asking the Boca Museum to help you (think about that for a moment, call on a Boca institution to run our community’s cultural center? Come on, folks) before resting on the DDA.

The DDA has promised to enlist volunteers and engage stakeholders as they embark on this new task. They are even suggesting the creation of a non-profit so they can solicit donations. Hmm….sounds familiar. It sounds like Old School Square.

All that is fine, but  I also hope they take some time to heal some deep wounds. Reach out to some of the people who loved Old School Square. Reach out to the woman who gave it life: Frances Bourque.

I know that won’t be a popular move with some of the powers that be. So what? It’s the right thing to do.

A warm gesture would be good for the soul.

And what’s good for the soul is good for the town.

20 November, 2017 0 Comments

The Power of Saying Yes

November 20, 2017 By Leave a Comment

Peter Kageyama preaches the virtues of loving your city.

The talk could have been titled: “Just Say Yes.”

“Or for goodness sakes….relax and experiment.”

We’re talking about author/speaker Peter Kageyama’s keynote at last week’s “Community Conversation” at Old School Square convened by the Delray Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Kageyama is the author of “For the Love of Cities” among other books and pieces that encourage people to fall in love with their city and experiment. The St. Pete resident is a dynamic speaker who shows real world examples of how cities from Auckland to Anchorage and Grand Rapids to Greenville, S.C. have benefitted from “co-creatives”—people who move forward with ideas and projects that help you fall in love or stay in love with their cities.

Most of the projects are small—some are bold and some are simple and they can range in cost from $20 to a whole lot more—but the end result is often surprise and delight.

Kageyama believes cities should be fun places that encourage experiments and pop-up experiences—even if you have to break a few rules along the way.

Examples ranged from a lip dub version of “American Pie” in Grand Rapids that garnered 5 million views on YouTube to a $1,200 project in Greenville, S.C. that placed statues of brass mice in fun places downtown. It may sound silly—and it is—but the message is that’s Ok, cities should be fun.

But these projects also create value—Grand Rapids’ version of the Don McLean classic was in response to a report that the city was dying (Get it: “the day the music died”) and stirred hundreds of citizens to show the world that their city was alive and had pride. The statues of cute little mice in Greenville is an endless source of fun for visitors and locals alike and even led to a children’s book.

From murals and dog parks to public art and drum circles—cities that have personality win our hearts, minds and wallets.

And when you fall in love—you tend to commit, volunteer, invest, interact and put down roots. It’s community building and in a polarized world full of all sorts of sad and calamitous stuff these little “endearments” make a huge difference.

The cities that are fun will win and the cities that are boring will lose.

This debate has been simmering in Delray for a few years so Mr. Kageyama’s presentation was both timely and relevant. While Delray was named “America’s Most Fun City” there’s been a lot of hand wringing over festivals, parades, parks, 100-foot trees, tennis tournaments etc.

We hear about “full cost recovery” and the burdens that some of this stuff place on city budgets, staffing etc.

But we never really talk about the value of these types of activities or the cost of being boring.

Kageyama started his presentation with a pyramid giving a hierarchies of elements cities strive to deliver.

At the base is functionality and safety: cities need to function (permits, toilets flushing, roads in good shape etc.) and they need to be safe. The next level is the ability of a city to be comfortable: are there places to sit, is their shade, is our downtown walkable, can we ride a bike without being killed etc.)?

The next rung is conviviality—are we nice to each other? Is our public discourse toxic or civil?

The top of the pyramid is fun. Do we enjoy living here? Do we enjoy each other as neighbors? Does our city create opportunities for us to connect?

A local panel consisting of our Downtown Development Authority Director, Old School Square President, West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition Director, Chamber President and the head our Marketing Cooperative talked about the need to work collaboratively—which is the true definition of an All America City.

There was a palpable sense in the room—and I see and hear this in my travels around town—that Delray is tired of dysfunction, infighting, divisiveness and a lack of progress on key initiatives ranging from ideas to help South Federal Highway to enacting the hard work of the Congress Avenue Task Force. (Disclosure: I chaired the task force, it’s no fun to see the hard work of dozens of volunteers gather dust on a shelf).

But it’s not just the big ideas and vision that is lagging—it’s the small stuff too. The sense that city staff has been stifled, that talent is frustrated and that we are at risk of losing the creative spirit and sense of community that distinguished Delray.

Interim Chamber President Vin Nolan—an economic development professional—said it best when he said in cities “you are never done” and if you think you are then.. you really are done.

Rob Steele of Old School Square senses a desire to take Delray to a new level of creativity and inclusiveness. He’s right.

You can have progress, job creation, opportunities and fun without breaking the bank or losing your uniqueness and charm. Nobody said it was easy. But enlightened leadership welcomes ideas—isn’t afraid to experiment and looks for ways to engage citizens. Kageyama mentioned the Delray Affair—our city’s signature event, both historic and important.

Why not have a series of events that encourages us to have an affair with our city?

Why don’t we invite people to fall in love with Delray?

We can fix leaky pipes, collect parking fines and fill potholes—that’s the functional part and it’s important. But we can have fun too.

I think we’re ready.

Check that, I know we are.