IN THIS ISSUE:

 Grantee Spotlight: Mercer University Partners to Revitalize Beall’s Hill Neighborhood
 University of Massachusetts Creates More than Jobs through the Wellspring Collaborative
 Universities Investing in Their Communities: Student- and Administration-Led Approaches
 How to Make Place Matter

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Grantee Spotlight: Mercer University Partners to Revitalize Beall’s Hill Neighborhood

The Beall’s Hill neighborhood in Macon, Georgia, a city of nearly 90,000, is transforming into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood bordering Mercer University. Mercer has contributed to the community’s transition for more than two decades, an effort reinforced by the university’s receipt of two HUD Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) grants in 1999 and 2002. The grants cemented the partnerships among the university, the Macon Housing Authority, the Historic Macon Foundation, the Macon-Bibb County Land Bank, and the neighborhood, which spans about 32 blocks. The grants have also paved the way for the more than $200 million in private, public, foundation, and university investments in Beall’s Hill and the wider College Hill area surrounding Mercer University’s campus.

The Journey to Neighborhood Transformation: One House at a Time

Mercer’s partnership with the Historic Macon Foundation, a nonprofit with a successful track record in neighborhood revitalization, began with housing rehabilitation in Beall’s Hill in 1998. The two organizations created a homeownership program that provided university faculty and staff with downpayment assistance to purchase homes in the neighborhood. The next year, Mercer used a $400,000 COPC grant to establish the university’s Community Outreach Partnership Center, where the school began the predevelopment work necessary to initiate neighborhood-wide recovery, including assessing and cataloging the tax status of blighted and vacant properties.

The Historic Macon Foundation, assisted by Mercer University and other partners, has rehabilitated and sold a number of homes in Beall’s Hill to help revitalize the neighborhood. Credit: Historic Macon Foundation These commitments and the relationships they created inspired momentum that led to a transformative project; the city’s housing authority, using a 2001 HOPE VI grant for $19 million, tore down and replaced Oglethorpe Homes. The 1941 housing project, blighted and known for its high crime rates, was replaced with market-rate and affordable rentals, as well as lease-to-own houses and homes built through private and philanthropic investment. Larry Brumley, chief of staff and senior vice president for marketing communications at Mercer University, says that this project was pivotal to recent neighborhood changes; the neighborhood would have seen little private investment so long as Oglethorpe Homes still stood. Tattnall Place, the 97 mixed-income units that replaced the old housing project, is in keeping with the architectural character of the neighborhood, says Ethiel Garlington, executive director of Historic Macon. Tattnall Place follows New Urbanist design principles such as adding front porches to houses and siting buildings near sidewalks.

Another key to revitalizing Beall’s Hill has been the Macon-Bibb County Land Bank’s use of code enforcement, strategic demolition, and the acquisition of vacant and blighted structures. Following the first COPC grant in 1999, Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law and the Willing Workers Association of Central South joined the Land Bank to catalog blighted properties, tax values, and zoning requirements. Today, the Land Bank works closely with Historic Macon to stabilize Beall’s Hill. The two organizations share a memorandum of understanding regarding properties that Historic Macon wishes the Land Bank to acquire, says Garlington. Once the Land Bank clears a property’s title and back taxes, it often transfers or sells the property to Historic Macon, which then rehabilitates it and puts it on the market.

Philanthropic investments by the Knight Foundation have also transformed the neighborhood’s housing stock. In 2007, the Knight Foundation awarded Historic Macon a $700,000 revolving fund that the organization used to rehabilitate homes, replenishing the fund once the houses sold. In 5 years, the fund paid for the rehabilitation of 22 homes. Most recently, the Knight Foundation presented Historic Macon with a $3 million grant, almost one-third of which is earmarked for rehabilitating 15 to 20 homes in Beall’s Hill over the next 5 years. Another $800,000 will be used for downpayment assistance of up to $20,000 per buyer; Mercer University has matched this investment. “[The pace] is a little more aggressive than what we’ve done in the past,” says Garlington. “But the Knight funding makes it possible.”

Reconnecting Mercer with Downtown Macon

Revitalization efforts in Beall’s Hill by Mercer and its partners provided momentum for the replacement of Oglethorpe Homes with Tattnall Place. Credit: Macon Housing Authority As homes across Beall’s Hill have been revitalized, the surrounding community has begun transforming as well. In 2008, the College Hill Corridor Commission, which includes representatives from the Land Bank, the university, and local business owners, received a $250,000 planning grant from the Knight Foundation to prepare the College Hill Corridor Master Plan, which emphasizes revitalization through multimodal transportation, green space, and economic development in the 2-square-mile area that includes Beall’s Hill. Additional support from the Knight Foundation, including a $5 million grant that the city and Mercer University won in 2009, has helped to execute some of the changes set out by this plan; and another $2.3 million grant in 2012 was used to spur innovation and local entrepreneurship along the College Hill Corridor. Another community initiative inspired by the Beall’s Hill revitalization has been the Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood, which began when Mercer and other partners successfully applied for a $500,000 planning grant in 2011.

In all, nearly $200 million has been invested in the area since 2009. Private investments include mixed-use, retail, housing, and hotel developments. Mercer’s investments have included a collaborative journalism center, much-needed student housing, and a new 10,200-seat stadium, which Peter Brown, professor emeritus at Mercer University, says is the “one place in town everyone feels good about.”

These and other investments have increased the city’s property tax revenues, which rose by 57 percent between 2002 and 2011 to $2.6 million a year. During the same period, home values increased by 34 percent, outpacing gains in other Macon neighborhoods. Residents have also become more involved in the community, for example, forming the Friends of Tattnall Square Park, a volunteer group working to restore the long-neglected city park in the College Hill Corridor.

Mercer University has also reaped the benefits of Beall’s Hill’s revitalization, which has helped the university attract and retain talented faculty and staff. “We had to get involved with these neighborhoods, because they are our front door,” Brumley says. The student body has grown; the school’s freshman class has over 200 more students in fall 2015 than it did 5 years before. Admitted students boast higher standardized test scores and grade point averages. The university has also embraced applied research and applied learning, such as its service learning program, as part of its 10-year strategic plan and its plans for maintaining accreditation — initiatives started as part of the first COPC grant.

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