Strengthening Covington Neighborhoods Focus of Weekend Summit

The 2013 Covington Neighborhood Summit is Saturday and community members looking for strategies to improve their immediate surroundings will hear from speakers with first-hand knowledge of that effort.

 

The event is presented by the Center for Great Neighborhoods, Covington Neighborhood Collaborative, the City of Covington, APA Kentucky, and Place Matters.

 

Sessions will include topics of neighborhood development, creating community gardens, addressing vacancies and abandoned housing, and using social media to promote change. The event is free and includes breakfast, lunch, and parking.

 

The featured speaker is Marie Kittredge, the Executive Director of Slavic Village Development, in Cleveland, OH. She will present an overview of how the Slavic Village Development has been able to maintain and build momentum in their work re-imagining the Broadway Slavic Village community in spite of shrinking resources, a high rate of property abandonment, and 27% population lost between 2000 and 2010. Slavic Village Development is an example of the power of vision, strategic planning, and self-reliance that other neighborhoods can learn from.

 

Lisa Helm, Founder and Executive Director of Garden Station Community Garden and Art Park in Dayton Ohio, will present on the Garden Station, a former homeless camp and dumping ground turned community garden and art park. This session will examine the success of the Garden Station and speak to the ability of other communities to replicate that success in building community and civic engagement.

 

Paula Boggs Muething, the Vice President of Real Estate Reutilization and General Counsel for the Hamilton County Land Bank, will discuss landbanks and how they address challenges like vacant and abandoned housing in neighborhoods. Using examples in Cincinnati and Hamilton County, this session will emphasize the legal basis for landbanks and urban revitalization.

 

Gregory A. Smith, AICP Project Manager, and Leah Werner, project manager, of Oberer Companies in Dayton, Ohio will share their experience in several community revitalization projects. Using the Fort McKinley neighborhood and other projects in and around Dayton as models, this session will explore the various means available to spark revitalization efforts concentrating on infill housing.

 

Chris Morbitzer, from the City of Cincinnati will take participants beyond the basic how-to of social media and delve into the meatier issues that challenge both private sector planners and public officials, including issues of effectiveness, efficiency, and appropriateness in social media. The session will also include tools and tricks to help community leaders mobilize resources through social media.

 

To attend this year’s Neighborhood Summit, RSVP at http://www.greatneighborhoods.org.