Building Healthy Corridors
Neighborhood business corridors are the heart of every community. The resources, services and amenities available along those corridors directly impact the wellness and overall quality of life for residents.
CorridorLive! is a program designed to revitalize and reactivate local business corridors through a deep and long-term commitment to a neighborhood. Working with local leaders, The Desk supports the acquisition of key real estate assets to help gain the necessary traction to transform their business corridor. The Desk works hand-in-hand with the community throughout the transformation process by bringing comprehensive supports, including capital and technical expertise.
Building by building, block by block, the community’s vision is brought to life.
CorridorLive! Framework
The condition of a neighborhood business corridor has a direct impact on the wellness of residents, property values, and overall connectivity as a community.
Disinvested corridors have blighted properties and high vacancies which often result in crime, lower residential property values, absentee property owners, and limited access to quality goods and services.
Healthy and well-invested corridors with local ownership and control of the real estate allow communities to create a positive experience for the local residents. This effort directly contributes to a higher quality of life and overall neighborhood stabilization — because people want to live in safe and inviting communities.
Community Desk Chicago’s CorridorLive! framework is designed to integrate the critical components for corridor revitalization efforts – community, development strategy, coordinated capital, and implementation support.
Community
Community drives the vision and helps to ensure revitalization efforts are culturally appropriate and beneficial to the residents living in the neighborhood.
Development & Activation Strategy
The development and activation strategy focuses on immediate stabilization efforts like outdoor activations and board-ups as well as long-term revitalization and wealth building efforts. The strategy includes targets for strategic acquisitions along the corridor, outlines a road map for business recruitment and retention, and defines corridor branding among other components.
Coordinated Capital
Coordinated capital de-risks investments in neighborhoods by weaving the various funding sources together in advance to move quicker, reduce costs and build momentum.
Implementation Team
The implementation team coordinates the necessary skill sets and resources to execute the plan.
The CorridorLive! Phases
CorridorLive! works to stabilize local business corridors and position them for long-term growth through three key phases:
Planning and Design
Leveraging existing community plans, The Desk works with local leaders to define the “experience” residents want in their neighborhood business corridor. This experience varies by neighborhood and is reflective of their population, culture, and long-term economic development goals. The desired experience serves as a detailed roadmap for property acquisitions, business recruitment, outdoor activations, and more.
Business District Stabilization
Stabilizing the business corridor is the first priority. The focus of this phase is to begin to build the brand for the district, engage residents, and address immediate safety issues. Our collective efforts include: uniform signage, façade improvements, outdoor community spaces, and emergency repairs and board-ups. Coordination with local officials, government partners, and area anchor institutions are critical to this stage of work.
Wealth-Building & Long-Term Revitalization
In parallel with stabilization efforts, we work with local entities – nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and community groups — to increase their ownership and control of the properties along the corridor, increase the mix of services and products provided there, promote the growth and development of local small businesses, and build an environmentally sustainable infrastructure. The Desk works to coordinate the capital and other technical resources to directly acquire and renovate properties along the corridor. These properties are then owned and activated by local leaders, small businesses, or community shared ownership.
Corridorlive! Development Fund
Capital is critical to the success of Corridorlive! to support strategic property acquisitions, leveraging municipal grants and de-risking neighborhood-level investments. Community Desk Chicago is currently raising $5M in patient capital to support our efforts. For information about our capital raise and pilot neighborhood, please email us at hello@communitydeskchicago.org.