Kenosha Innovation Neighborhood (KIN) located on the 107-acre former Chrysler Engine Plant site, has a specific focus on fostering neighborhood opportunities in education, workforce training, entrepreneurial development, and job placement. KIN will be centered around connecting Kenosha residents to opportunities in high-growth digital, and science technology, engineering, and math (STEM) occupations.

“For more than 100 years, we have aspired to empower our neighbors to build a more promising tomorrow for themselves and their families. This aspiration is at the heart of our purpose and work. As a community development organization, embraces the fact that everyone shares the same aspirations. Through the use of our programs, partnerships, and interventions, we provide the opportunity to optimize every Neighbor’s earning potential, learning opportunities, sense of belonging, and health and well being.” - BakerRipley website

Every neighborhood has the opportunity to be unique and prosper. Thus, each neighborhood will have different metrics for success. Here are some metrics that could be prioritized for neighborhood design and improvement.

Written by Mike Higbee

Serious social problems such as poverty, low education levels, crime, and a host of health issues are often interrelated. They frequently reinforce and compound each other.  Many organizations are addressing one or more of those issues, but typically each organization is focused on only a piece of a more complex set of problems. The public sector tends to do this through large, bureaucratic silos, while the not-for-profit sector is incredibly fragmented.  Many organizations do good work. Unfortunately, though, fragmented and siloed approaches to complex problems seldom lead to lasting impacts.

For over twenty years, we have have used Kolbe Wisdom™ to identify instincts among leaders and their teams. The Kolbe Indexes™ are the only assessment tools available to purely measure conation or instinct.

The vision is not just to increase services for Poughkeepsie youth - the vision is to build a new, state-of-the-art Youth Opportunity Center that will set a standard for youth empowerment and create a model for a homegrown approach to workforce development as a means of supporting increased economic activity.

The John Marshall Neighborhood Opportunity Hub on the far eastside of Indianapolis solves a list of community needs with private-public collaboration at an abandoned high school in one of the city’s most highly populated distressed neighborhoods.

Our team has worked with community leaders to build growth plans, message change initiatives, and redevelop neighborhoods for over forty years. Since 2014, we have specifically advanced the concept of Neighborhood Opportunity Hubs.

In 2017, the City of Elkhart adopted the River District Revitalization Master Plan. Developed with broad community stakeholder involvement, the plan was built on the previous decades of investment in Elkhart’s struggling Main Street. This effort shared a vision for the River District to be an expansion of downtown, as a walkable, mixed-use neighborhood redeveloped on 100-plus acres of parking lots, out lot retailers, former industrial sites, and auto-repair shops. Over 65% of the $300-plus million mixed-use development has been realized within five-years. The area continues to attract significant new private investment.  

In this new age of a pandemic, racial tension, political divide, global power shifts, redefinition of family and individual identities, and the inequality of accessible and quality educational opportunities leading to prosperity, we are reminded that the quest for freedom and the American Way remains much the same as our forefathers intended to achieve in their early fight for justice and the pursuit of happiness for all. 

Trends for almost two decades now is for most households to prefer to live where they can live, work, shop, recreate and find most of the services they require within a convenient distance – approximately 15 minutes away.  Ideally, we are finding that many residents prefer the car trip to be less, and that they can access these conveniences by foot or bike in 15 minutes or less. Neighborhoods that immediately provide these everyday needed and desired amenities, we call Complete Neighborhoods.

Leadership and team dynamics across enterprises have dramatically changed in the last few years due to multiple aspects, such as hybrid workplace culture, the great resignation, and increasing emphasis on DEI. This raises the need for leaders to adopt a framework that can help them quickly adapt, execute, realign, and consistently foster sound strategies, stability, and sustainability within their organizations.