CNP E-NEWS – JUNE 2018

Vibrant City Awards Lunch Recap

The fourth annual Vibrant City Awards Lunch took place on Friday June 8, 2018, where a sell-out crowd of 600 city leaders, stakeholders and community development professionals gathered to celebrate leading neighborhood revitalization efforts. The event was hosted by Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and presented by KeyBank. Guests gathered at Cleveland’s Lakefront Reservation on the border of the Glenville and St. Clair Superior neighborhoods. They appreciated scenic views of Lake Erie, Gordon Park and Dike 14 from the Metroparks location at I-90 and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and enjoyed an outdoor lunch coordinated by Chef Chris Hodgson of Driftwood Catering. The event honored 18 award finalists and eight Vibrant City Award recipients.
Kenny Crumpton, Fox 8 personality and partner alongside Cleveland Neighborhood Progress for Cleveland Chain Reaction, served as emcee.
Bobbi Reichtell, recently retired executive director of Campus District, Inc. was named the recipient of the 2018 Morton L. Mandel Leadership in Community Development Award. Reichtell has dedicated her career to neighborhood development – working at settlement houses, community development corporations and intermediaries over the last four decades.
Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency (NOACA) received the Vibrant City Impact Award for being an invested neighborhood institution that is contributing to the lives of Clevelanders every day through its transportation related services and programs.

Additionally, six other efforts received Vibrant City Awards. They include:

CDC Community Collaboration Award: Famicos Foundation – Glenville Arts Campus
CDC Placemaking Award: Slavic Village Development – Fleet Avenue Revival
CDC Economic Opportunity Award: Burten Bell Carr Development – Arbor Park Place

CDC Neighborhood Branding/Marketing Award: Midtown Cleveland Inc – “Town” Branding/Video

Urban Developer Award: Sustainable Community Associates
Civic Champion Award: Marilyn Burns

To see more images from this event, please visit www.clevelandnp.org/VCAL
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PLACEMAKING

In addition to celebrating Cleveland’s neighborhoods and presenting awards themed around revitalization efforts at the Vibrant City Awards Lunch, Neighborhood Progress also unveiled a new video promoting city living.


WATCH HERE Cleveland: This is Where I Live offers resident testimonials and neighborhood footage showcasing the top reasons why more people are choosing to live in the city. The video is a part of the LiveCleveland! campaign and will be shared among community partners, real estate professionals, professional recruiters and corporate HR representatives. The video can be accessed hereon the LiveCleveland! YouTube channel and also via social media channels.

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY

Chain Reaction Season #2 Lands in Old Brooklyn!

Old Brooklyn was selected from a group of four neighborhoods to host the second season of Cleveland Chain Reaction. The west side neighborhood was identified in May and a total of 107 businesses applied to receive investment and locate their companies in the neighborhood. That investment – totaling $500,000 – will come from five local investors that have signed on for Chain Reaction season 2. They are Bernie Moreno, Dan Zelman, Eddie Ni, Vanessa Whiting and Rick Blaszak.

In late July, 20 semi-finalist companies that complete a small business boot camp facilitated by JumpStart Inc. will participate in the Business Pitch Competition. From there, the investors will select their favorite businesses and work to finalize deals. Each growing small business that receives an investment will then search for new business space in Old Brooklyn, adding to the total neighborhood investment that Chain Reaction creates.

This neighborhood economic development project is a collaborative effort between COSE, JumpStart, GlazenUrban, Fox 8 and Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. You can learn more atwww.ClevelandChainReaction.org.

CDC ADVANCEMENT

POLICY, ADVOCACY & RESEARCH

Cleveland VOTES Grants Announced

Cleveland Neighborhood Progress has announced its 19 grantees for the 2018 Cleveland VOTES grant cycle.Cleveland VOTES received submissions from community development corporations, academic institutions, and community nonprofits throughout Cleveland and its surrounding neighborhoods. Jennifer Lumpkin, Civic Engagement Strategy Manager for the voter mobilization initiative, says “this robust group of grantees will inform and shape the framework of equitable civic engagement and how we build a more aware and civic-minded public. Our grantees have already demonstrated their capacity to engage communities and the 2018 grantee cycle will employ a more collaborative and integrated approach to how build democracy here in Cleveland.”
Read more here.

RACIAL EQUITY & INCLUSION – YEAR OF AWARENESS BUILDING 

Do you receive the updates on our Racial Equity & Inclusion programming? You can find them atwww.clevelandnp.org. Additional info, including the 2017 Year of Awareness Building “By the Numbers” report, may be accessed here.

Also, if you are interested in signing up for our REI newsletter, please sign up here. As always, please send any feedback, questions, or interesting reading materials to REI@clevelandnp.org.

– DATES TO NOTE –

Note the upcoming events below or check out our calendar here.
To view professional development opportunities, click here.
July 4
Happy Fourth of July!
July 5
Organizers & Allies Meeting
July 11
July 12-13
July 14
July 17
Save the Date! St. Luke’s Summer Series
Aug 2
Organizers & Allies Meeting
Aug 6
Aug 7-8
Aug 18
Aug 21
Save the date! St. Luke’s Summer Series
Aug 31
Greater Circle Living Housing Tours

STAFF SPOTLIGHT

Devonta Dickey
Advocacy and Engagement Coordinator 

Devonta Dickey is a recent graduate from Denison University and the newest member of the Neighborhood Progress staff. He joins us as the Advocacy and Engagement Coordinator, amplifying our nonpartisan initiative called Cleveland VOTES. He also works on our digital economy strategies initiatives with the HackCLE team. Devonta earned a Bachelors degree in Environmental Studies with a concentration in Environmental Justice and Sustainability Design. He is originally from Chicago, IL, but now lives in Cleveland and is excited to learn more about our amazing city. He previously worked internationally in the City of Cape doing policy and planning work and worked with small town planners in the Village of Granville. He also interned with Neighborhood Progress last summer.
In discussing his new role that encapsulates his work around democracy and civic technology, Devonta states, “civic technology is about shifting power to the powerless.”