Cities

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Tulsa Struggles to Make Amends for a Massacre it Ignored for Nearly a Century

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On weekday mornings, enticing whiffs of bacon and fried potatoes waft from Wanda J’s Next Generation restaurant in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood. The smell of breakfast on the griddle offers a comforting contrast to the sound of big rigs and commuter traffic roaring by on the Interstate 244 overpass that cleaves the neighborhood in two. 

At first glance, the Greenwood section of Tulsa doesn’t look much different from places in other cities where, in the name of urban renewal, new highways were erected in the 1960s, obliterating or dividing minority neighborhoods. Around the corner from Wanda J’s, there are signs of a revitalization effort -- or of gentrification, depending on whom you ask. A sign on an empty lot promises a future mixed-use development; a two-story historic building nearby has already been renovated with retail on the ground floor that includes a combo coffee shop and yoga studio, a bookstore, and a Vietnamese sandwich shop. 

But the sidewalks that line the streets of this neighborhood offer a grim reminder of Greenwood’s darker past. Every 20 or 30 feet, a plaque lists the name of a business -- a restaurant, grocer, lawyer, doctor, clothing store -- and below it, the words, “Destroyed in 1921.”

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The New Gold Rush for Green Bonds

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BY  | JULY 2018

Hanging on the wall just outside Bryan Kidney’s office in Lawrence, Kan., is the framed first page of a bond offering statement. Unlike most -- or really, any -- bond statements, this one required a color printer. It could even be described as cheeky: It’s for the sale of the city’s first green bond, and every reference to “green bond” or “green project” is printed in green ink.

Kidney, the city’s finance director who shepherded the $11.3 million sale last year, says the green ink originally started out as a joke. 

But then, he thought, why not? When the projects are fully implemented, Lawrence is projected to save 3,201 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) annually, which is equal to burning 3.5 million fewer pounds of coal. “I get really passionate about this stuff,” Kidney says. “I was just so excited that Lawrence stepped up to be a leader in sustainability.”

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Scott Wiener Thinks He Knows How to Fix California's Housing Crisis

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Other legislators aren't so sure.
BY  | JUNE 2018
California's go-for-broke legislator failed this year in his bid to spark a revolution in housing policy. He's ready to try again. (AP)

To California Sen. Scott Wiener, nothing epitomizes his state’s housing failures more than the seemingly endless fight over a five-story condo building at the corner of Valencia and Hill streets in San Francisco’s Mission District. The area is in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, which rezoned a third of San Francisco in 2008 to increase density near transit and to make housing more affordable. The lot was formerly home to a fast-food restaurant whose neighbors included several three-story apartment buildings and the historic Marsh theater.

Shortly after the Neighborhoods Plan took effect, a developer proposed a 16-unit building with two affordable housing units on the site of the restaurant. Although it adhered to the new zoning plan, the 1050 Valencia project was to be the tallest building for many blocks, and Mission District residents moved to stop it. In addition to complaining about the project’s height, they insisted the modern building would damage the historic character of the neighborhood. This was despite the fact that the stucco and wood-shingled restaurant there at the time was neither historic nor aesthetically appealing. In addition, the Marsh theater owner was concerned that construction noise and a proposed first-floor bar would disrupt theater business. It took years for the condos to be approved. The developer agreed to mitigate the noise impact and reduce the number of units from 16 to 12.

Not satisfied, the opponents turned to the Board of Permit Appeals, which sympathized with them and lopped off the top story of the building. That reduced the number of units from 12 to nine—and eliminated the two affordable units. “Welcome to housing policy in San Francisco,” wrote Wiener, who was then a member of the city’s board of supervisors. “A policy based not so much on our city’s dire housing needs but on who can turn out the most people at a public hearing.”

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How Cities Fell Out of Love With Sports Stadiums

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Major league teams used to get everything they wanted from sports-mad cities. Now they have to fight for it -- and increasingly, they’re losing.
BY  | MAY 2018
(AP)

St. Louis is used to getting stood up by football teams. The city has been home to four different franchises, and all of them have left town. But the last two departures -- and especially the loss of the Rams to Los Angeles in 2016 -- have been gut-wrenching experiences that seem to have broken much of the city’s storied enthusiasm for sports.

In 1987, St. Louis’ NFL team, the Cardinals, skipped town abruptly. Tired of the old Busch Memorial Stadium and increasingly indifferent fans, the team packed up after 27 years and headed for Arizona. The loss was a bitter one for St. Louis. But the city went after another NFL team with zeal. In the early 1990s, local officials had little trouble winning approval of a new downtown stadium funded entirely with taxpayer dollars. The city failed to win one of two NFL expansion teams awarded in 1993, but eventually it lured the Los Angeles Rams, who had their own problems with an ancient facility and a waning fan base. By 1995, the Rams were kicking off in downtown St. Louis.

It was a time when other cities were making similar choices. The Maryland Stadium Authority built a new publicly funded football stadium in 1998 as a prize for the NFL team it had stolen away from Cleveland two years earlier. Cleveland, in response, built a taxpayer-funded stadium and won back an NFL franchise in 1999.

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The City Managers on a Constant Quest for New Places to Fix

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BY  | MAY 2017

 

In the early 2000s, Mark Scott had been working for the city of Beverly Hills for 20 years -- 14 of them as city manager. Thanks to the opulence of the town, it was the kind of place where a budding manager could learn the business minus the typical “city” problems. But eventually the absence of serious issues started to get to Scott. During his tenure, he had watched neighboring Los Angeles endure dramatic civil and social unrest. Meanwhile, in Beverly Hills, luxury merchants and developers were bending over backward to do business. In 2003, the town’s Rodeo Drive Committee announced that the glassware company Baccarat was displaying $1 million worth of crystal chandeliers along the famous road’s median. It all triggered something in Scott, and he decided he needed a change. Or, really, a challenge.

He couldn’t have picked a more opposite place for his next chapter. Scott landed in Spartanburg, S.C., a former mill town divided almost evenly between white and black residents. About one-quarter of the town lived in poverty.

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Fighting Sex Trafficking Is Harder Than It Seems

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More than half the states have passed laws to protect victims, but the laws aren’t always enforced and often produce new challenges.
BY  | JANUARY 2017

When a young teen named Anjelique ran away from her home near San Francisco last summer, her trauma didn’t end when police eventually found her. Instead, while her distraught mother and grandmother posted “missing child” fliers all over the East Bay area, police took Anjelique to an Alameda County social services assessment center in Hayward. Before police take troubled youths home, they often bring them there to receive counseling and services.

But 12-year-old Anjelique only stayed one night. That’s because sex traffickers were using the assessment center as a recruitment base. Anjelique befriended another teenage girl in the center, who convinced her to leave. Together, they walked just a few minutes up the seedy commercial strip in Hayward to a budget motel. Once there, Anjelique was put to work.

As a means of controlling her, her mother said, Anjelique’s traffickers got her hooked on heroin. As part of an investigation into her story, a local news crew visited the motel where Anjelique unwittingly entered the sex trafficking trade. Filmed one night this past summer, the news video shows young women arriving early in the evening while others linger in the doorways of rooms or on the balcony outside. Throughout the night, men come in and out of the rooms; other men whisk the girls away in cars, bringing them back a few hours later.

Anjelique eventually escaped, and at the time of the news story, was spending time in drug rehab for her addiction.

Anjelique’s story may sound sensational, but in the world of child sex trafficking, it’s painfully normal. Traffickers seek out vulnerable, unhappy teens -- like runaways. Juvenile detention facilities or social services centers such as the one in Hayward are prime recruiting grounds. Sometimes, young women already in the trade become recruiters themselves, approaching other vulnerable girls and offering them what seems like an exciting life. The new recruit comprehends the full reality of her new situation too late. Readily available drugs help numb the pain.

Is Kurt Summers the Future of Chicago Politics?

The city’s young treasurer has turned a moribund office into a hive of activity, fueling speculation that he has higher aspirations.
BY  | JULY 2016

On a cool late-spring evening in the Wild 100s of Chicago, an area on the far South Side known for its gang wars, Kurt Summers Jr. is addressing a small crowd gathered inside a once-gleaming 1920s retail building. There used to be a beauty school here; later the building housed a counseling service and a check cashing store. But even those businesses are gone. This community, built by middle- and working-class Dutch families 15 miles from downtown, never recovered from the closing of the South Chicago steel plants in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it’s a symbol of violent crime and urban decay.

But to Summers, who grew up on the South Side, violence is only a symptom of the community’s real dilemma. “We don’t have a violence problem in Chicago, we have an economic problem in Chicago,” he tells the crowd of about two dozen residents, who applaud in agreement.

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The Evolving Job Description (and Requirements) of a CFO

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Chief financial officers used to be concerned with just balancing the books. But today’s CFOs have taken on a higher role.
BY  | FEBRUARY 2016

Kenneth Rust is a key player in redeveloping an old post office in downtown Portland, Ore. Denise Olson is pushing new technology to save Phoenix money on procurement. Jim Beard figured out how to update and expand Atlanta’s water and sewer systems while avoiding a scheduled rate hike.

These tasks require different kinds of know-how, but Rust, Olson and Beard all have the same job title: chief financial officer. It’s a position that has morphed in recent decades. Where CFOs were once primarily in charge of numbers -- making sure the books were balanced, bills paid and audits clean -- they now are called on to be strategists with an eye to developing the city’s economy. And where CFOs came to the job touting experience in a local or state finance department (and perhaps a stint as city controller as well), they now hail from more varied backgrounds. Just as in the private sector, many public enterprises are looking for CFOs with talents that include creative thinking, communication skills and long-range planning -- and for good reason. Today, just about everything a municipality does is either under the CFO’s purview or at least under his or her watchful eye. “Almost every major decision the city makes,” Beard says, “I get to be in the room.”