How teaching would-be developers in Charlotte the basics helps their community too
KaTonya Wilson has always been drawn to homes that need love.
The Augusta, Georgia, native was 22 when she first got into real estate, buying her first house in her hometown, renovating it and eventually selling it.
She was hooked. By the time she got to her second home, she was a bit more practiced at the basics: refinishing floors, putting in new cabinets and doing electrical work. She decided to keep going, especially as a way to build wealth for herself and her family.
Wilson, now 40 and a Charlotte transplant living in Wesley Heights, took that next step recently during a two-hour class hosted by the national nonprofit Incremental Development Alliance.
The nonprofit seeks to teach people like Wilson the skills needed to run small-scale development projects. That, in turn, will improve neighborhoods by building wealth from within and, ideally, bringing needed services.
In her class, Wilson heard from Bernice Radle, a senior faculty member with the nonprofit who runs a real estate company in Buffalo, New York. Radle focuses on reviving vacant and underutilized buildings and other places in her city.
That’s exactly what the alliance seeks to do. The group’s staff train would-be developers, aiming to lower the barrier to entry into the business. It’s a way to foster local development rather than waiting for a large, outside developer to come in.
The recent virtual class was the first one hosted in Charlotte aimed at helping local residents redevelop the west side of the city.
Having ‘a stake in your neighborhoods’
The class kicked off a series of lectures that will dive into the complexities of how to make money off of a building, secure funding and navigate the ins and outs of city zoning ordinances.
It’s the alliance’s philosophy that when local people invest in their own neighborhoods, they create new life that benefits their community.
The series will culminate in a four-week boot camp this spring for people who have a project idea or property they are ready to develop. The alliance staff will help participants have a pitch ready for investors.
“This is a way that you can have a stake in your neighborhoods and in your communities, and not only be at that discussion table but take back the development,” Radle told the participants.
Keeping communities intact
Last year, Charlotte leaders identified six key areas across the city as “corridors of opportunity,” an initiative that has $38.5 million earmarked for revitalization efforts.
The Beatties Ford Road corridor was one of them, and was highlighted as an historic hub of the Black community that’s also lacked investment for decades. The corridor runs from Interstate 85 to Five Points by Johnson C. Smith University.
Under the umbrella of that corridor investment falls a city partnership with the National Main Street Center and its UrbanMain program. The idea is to establish a business district centered around Beatties Ford Road and Lasalle Street.
To support that district, the UrbanMain program brought in Incremental Development Alliance to train people in and around the corridor on how to run small-scale projects. The program already had a good relationship with the city thanks to J’Tanya Adams, who founded Historic West End Partners, which advocates for businesses and residents.
For the past several years, Adams has focused on changing blight to meaningful places, starting off with pocket parks and putting art on building facades.
She pointed to the small-scale development led by Dianna Ward, who purchased a building near Five Points, fixed it up and is now renting it out to a handful of small businesses.
Through the alliance’s class, Adams hopes that property owners — both on the residential and commercial side — realize they can use their spaces in different ways. Maybe fit in a small business or convert a basement into a livable, rentable place to earn more income.
“You can be surprised what you can launch in a small space,” Adams said.
Plus, there are advantages to working with local developers.
The West End has a lot of small parcels, Adams said. If those were bought by a large developer, it could change the makeup of the community. A local resident could instead choose to convert a vacant spot into a place that offers a service the community needs, like a restaurant.
“We want to keep the community intact,” Adams said.
Building wealth, one small project at a time
As president of the Prosperity Village Area Association in northeast Charlotte, Wil Russell has seen the growth that’s come to his neighborhood firsthand.
The area was mostly single-family homes and farmland when he first moved there six years ago.
After Charlotte’s Interstate 485 outerbelt opened its final segment to traffic in 2015, the area saw a flurry of development and construction.
That’s when Russell got interested in development and working with his community. Around 2016, he heard about an Incremental Development Alliance class. He said the lecture spoke to the issues not only his community was experiencing around equity and economic access but those across Charlotte as well.
“I felt for the first time in a longtime this could really help a lot of people,” Russell said. He listened in on last Thursday’s session, too.
Radle’s presentation drove home for him how, at some point, Charlotte will become close to or fully developed, and the focus will need to shift to rebuilding and redeveloping what’s already here.
“We as a city are enamored with the big skyscrapers and shiny buildings,” Russell told the Observer. “Those things are great but I think we miss out on the incremental, nuts and bolts stuff that nobody’s interested in.”
He believes the incremental development approach can change the dynamic of the city for a lot less money.
Russell also hopes there’s a shift for people with properties that increased in value in recent years. He hopes that instead of selling because they might not be able to afford to stay, those property owners can learn how to reimagine their space into something that brings them additional income and benefit the community.
In turn, if people start developing within the community, they can hire local contractors and architects.
“If enough people did that in a small enough way, all of a sudden you’ve grown these jobs and wealth for these companies who probably wouldn’t have had the chance otherwise,” Russell said.
Creating upward mobility
That type of local activity is already happening along Beatties Ford Road.
Christopher Dennis, a Charlotte developer who leads E-Fix Development, has two projects along the Beatties Ford Road corridor. Both sites are coming online soon and one will include a bakery and small coffee shop.
Dennis heard about the Incremental Development Alliance and while he wasn’t able to attend the first session, believes in its mission. And he hired DKI Plumbing and International Electrical Solutions, both minority-owned companies in Charlotte, to work on his projects.
Like Dennis, Wilson, the Wesley Heights resident who attended the alliance class, is interested in commercial development as well as residential.
She runs her own company with her husband called Prince Wilson Properties. While she feels like Charlotte has become much less affordable when it comes to redevelopment, Radle’s lecture made it feel like her goals were more attainable.
She doesn’t think all development is bad: sometimes it’s worth having a fresh set of ideas and perspectives come in. On the other hand, local developers have more of a connection and want to get a project right, she said.
The decisions that someone local makes end up benefiting not just themselves, she said, but the whole community.
Coming up
The alliance’s next seminar will be held on Dec. 7 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
You can sign up on its website. The seminar will be a prerequisite to attend the Small Developer Boot Camp and $89 to register ($69 if you register before Nov. 22).
Erin Gillespie, Charlotte’s corridor revitalization coordinator, said there’s a scholarship that covers 100% of the class fees for people who live or own property in the Beatties Ford Road corridor. The city is exploring opening the scholarship up to all six of the city’s corridors of opportunity, Gillespie said.
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
