Alliance urged to Meet Revitalization Challenge

Community leader lauds renewal efforts, pushes for school reform

Alliance urged to meet revitalization challenge

Listeners encouraged to raise up city's poor

By Betty Lin-Fisher
Beacon Journal business writer

Published on Tuesday, May 11, 2010

The University Park Alliance has ''forged an extraordinary partnership'' within the city of Akron, a leader in urban revitalization told a crowd of 500 people at the University of Akron's Student Union ballroom on Monday.

''This is a real direction finder for cities,'' Paul S. Grogan, president and chief executive of the Boston Foundation said during the seventh annual University Park Alliance Awards Luncheon.

Grogan was the keynote speaker to the group, whose mission is to revitalize the 50-block area around the University of Akron. Grogan is also a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which provides major funding for the alliance.

Monday's luncheon was an opportunity for the organization and its partners, who include individuals, private and public entities and nonprofit groups, to reflect on the last year and honor award recipients who have made a difference in the community.

But it was also the official kickoff of the newly merged and two-week-old UPA, which has combined with the University Park Development Corp., a grass-roots community group with similar goals. New UPA Board President Tony O'Leary, executive director of the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority and a longtime UPA partner, was among those to address the group with highlights from the year.

In his speech, Grogan lauded the UPA for its work in revitalizing the area.

''A very significant urban renaissance has occurred, is occurring'' in cities like Akron, Chicago and Boston, he said. That renaissance ''has legs.''

But Grogan challenged the group, university and city to use the momentum to move forward in other ways. Grogan outlined three ways that university-community partnerships could benefit. They are:

• Intellectual fire power, bringing the university and community together for research about what's happening in the area.

• Building up the low-wage work force to help rebuild the middle class. Grogan said there's a tremendous divide between the haves and have-nots and that universities and hospitals should lead the way with a focus on educating their lowest-paid employees to help them rise to the middle class.

• Improving public education. Grogan said urban public education is ''a tremendous disaster'' across the nation, turning ''whole cohorts of mostly minority, low-income children out into the world with no shot — no shot of entering a middle class and truly becoming productive citizens.''

Grogan mentioned the successes of charter schools and said public schools could build on those successes.

''You're going to have to use the clout of the university and other major players to turn up the dial on public-education reform,'' he said.

Grogan said that in cities that have revitalized their urban core, ''we call education the final frontier of urban revitalization.''

''There is a tremendous opportunity here to extend the great beginning you have made in this partnership focused on a specific activity — keeping those interests aligned, celebrating the victories that you've won, the jobs, the housing, the private, the public investment that has been generated by the extraordinary consortium that you have formed,'' he said.

''That is the only way to attack problems like this. We can't wait for the nation to come to our rescue. It is local initiatives like these that will create the agenda for the next wave of urban renaissance.''

In his comments to the crowd, University of Akron President Luis Proenza said the university ''recognizes that its own competitiveness and comparative advantage lies inextricably linked to the vitality and sustainability of its surrounding Greater Akron community.''

''We are committed to optimizing our impact on these communities in which we reside, in the neighborhood and local and regional level, and this importance of sustainable and innovative university community partnerships is stronger than ever, and we are committed to remaining a leader and partner in community and economic transformation.''

Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at
330-996-3724 or blinfisher@
thebeaconjournal.com.