Monday Mailing
Year 25 • Issue 11 19 NOVEMBER 2018 1. California Wildfires Weren’t Always this Destructive 2. Some of Nashville's largest trees in path of development for Cayce Homes affordable housing 3. A Neglected Art Deco Gem in Puerto Rico Becomes a Community Staple 4. A Root Awakening: Foodie Business Takes on Food Insecurity in Tuttle, ND (Sarah Moehrke) 5. Rural County Stakes Future on Renewable Energy 6. Despite contribution to local economy, parks struggle to maintain basic infrastructure 7. Inside Buxton Food & Feed, a community gathering place 8. CONFERENCE – Oregon Mass Timber Development Summit (Jan. 15) (Aniko Drlik-Muehleck) 9. WEBINAR – The Future of Food: Leadership Development for Our Movement (Dec. 4 @ 11:15am PST) 10. EBOOK – Experiments 11. PODCAST – Can Walmart Restore the Town Centers it Helped to Kill? Quote of the Week: If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito. – Betty Reese
Oregon Fast Fact #34: The Carousel Museum contains the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of carousel horses
1. California Wildfires Weren’t Always this Destructive Alice Lincoln-Cook understands why burning is preferable to huge fires. She and her family survived the Fire Siege of 1987, which ravaged a large swath of Northwestern California. “They took out half the country here; I mean, it was a huge fire,” she says. “It was really scary for (us) because all our family down there and many other families had their homes and stuff burnt down.” That harrowing time led Lincoln-Cook’s her family to action. They clear the land around their homes every year, and sprinklers are placed to wet the ground in case of another fire. It’s also made her cognizant of what cultural burn managers are working to accomplish. To access the full story, click here. 2. Some of Nashville's largest trees in path of development for Cayce Homes affordable housing Every year the Nashville Tree Foundation awards the "Big Old Tree" prize for the largest tree nominated in Davidson County. This year's winner sits in the path of a major construction project. The 92-foot tall cherrybark oak towers over the James Cayce public housing complex, much of which is being demolished to make way for modern affordable apartments. To access the full story, click here.
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3. A Neglected Art Deco Gem in Puerto Rico Becomes a Community Staple For Carlos Colón and his family, rehabilitating a former Art Deco theater building in downtown Ponce, Puerto Rico, has been the very definition of a labor of love. Committed to revitalizing their hometown by restoring its beautiful historic buildings, the Colóns spent four years and $400,000 of their own money transforming the vacant building into an airy community bakery that pays homage to its past. Since the building’s genesis in 1940 as El Teatro Argel, it had been used as a movie theater, a disco, a storage space, and a church. The artful structure was the work of Pedro Mendez Mercado, a native of Ponce who received his B.A. in architecture from Syracuse University in 1926 and went on to design many of the Art Deco-style theaters around Ponce, in addition to his most famous work, the Miami Building in Condado. However, in 1990, a powerful fire melted some of the iron beams that held up the ceiling, leaving the grand theater vacant for two decades until Ponce businessman Carlos Colón moved in across the street. To access the full story, click here. 4. A Root Awakening: Foodie Business Takes on Food Insecurity in Tuttle, ND Surprisingly, food deserts in the United States often exist in regions of high-volume agricultural production. In the 80-person town of Tuttle, ND, – one of this year’s Citizens’ Institute on Rural DesignTM (CIRD) host communities – there is a rich history of family farmsteads, nationally renowned game hunting, and an economy dominated by cattle ranching and agriculture. Yet, residents of this fertile region don’t have many options to shop local, except for a number of cooperative community groceries in towns like Tuttle, Harvey, and Bowdon that struggle to compete with big box stores. With deliberate investments that nurture local initiatives, alongside the organization of economies of scale, local producers and small businesses can plant the seed for a healthier and more equitable food -based economy to take root in Central North Dakota and beyond, throughout the agricultural heartland of America. To access the full story, click here. 5. Rural County Stakes Future on Renewable Energy The lake by Lakeview disappeared long ago, and so did the timber jobs. For years the seat of Southern Oregon’s Lake County wrestled with declining public services and economic stagnation. Now a set of renewable energy projects offers hope. Colorado-based Red Rock Biofuels broke ground in July on a plant in Lakeview that officials hope will lead to jobs, improved forest management and natural gas. Elsewhere in the county, solar is brightening the horizon. Clean energy developer Obsidian Renewables is planning a large array, and a nonprofit is undertaking an innovative retrofitting project for small businesses. To access the full story, click here. 6. Despite contribution to local economy, parks struggle to maintain basic infrastructure. National parks like Crater Lake and the Oregon Caves are major attractions for travel in southern Oregon. And while they see millions of visitors a year, they're struggling to generate enough revenue for basic repairs. The issue hinges on a topic called deferred maintenance. That's when parks wait to more than one year to repair trails, roads, bridges, and buildings because of budget limitations. But for some parks, it's not years but decades that problems go unaddressed. To access the full story, click here.
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7. Inside Buxton Food & Feed, a Community Gathering Place Buxton – For ten years, the old Buxton Food and Feed store has been home to a community gathering place, serving up free coffee and companionship to Buxton community residents and the occasional visitor to the Buxton Trailhead of the Banks-Vernonia State Trail. Located on the corner of McPherson and Fisher Roads, the building, built in 1890, has been host to a variety of businesses and enterprises throughout Buxton’s history. To access the full story, click here. 8. CONFERENCE – Oregon Mass Timber Development Summit How can growing the domestic production and use of mass timber create opportunities for Oregon's rural, small and urban communities? Hosted by the TallWood Design Institute and Business Oregon, the Oregon Mass Timber Development Summit is uniquely designed for public officials, economic development personnel, investors and manufacturers to learn about and discuss tools, strategies, and potential partners available to them to support sector development for the use or production of mass timber in Oregon counties and municipalities. To register for the conference, click here. 9. WEBINAR – The Future of Food: Leadership Development for Our Movement Join Castanea Fellowship, HEAL Food Alliance’s School of Political Leadership, and Wallace Center’s National Food Systems Leadership Network for a conversation about upcoming leadership opportunities! Learn about exciting opportunities from three distinct, but coordinated national efforts to support leaders who want to strengthen their leadership skills, grow a community support, or apply to take part in fellowship programs. We’ll provide an overview, share how each program is unique and will reserve the majority of time to answer your questions. Come prepared for a lively and fruitful conversation! To register for this webinar, click here. 10. EBOOK - Experiments This summer, the experimental town of Columbia, Maryland, turned 50. It was a test of developer James Rouse's theory that a more equitable suburb, designed according to now -mainstream planning tenets of diversity, inclusion and increased walkability, could thrive in the post-civil rights era. Rouse’s theory was largely proven correct, though market forces have done more to shape the place than perhaps the now deceased developer would have liked to admit. After publishing “A Suburb Designed to End Redlining Is Fighting Luxury Condofication” (included in this ebook), we began thinking about other places that began as a response to a theory waiting to be proven — places like Techwood Homes, the first U.S. public housing development, built in Atlanta in 1936, The Highline in New York, and the Ile Ife Black Humanitarian Center that choreographer and civil rights activist Arthur Hall opened in an old North Philadelphia house. All of these places today remain sites of iteration and change. To access this ebook, click here. 11. PODCAST – Can Walmart Restore the Town Centers it Helped to Kill? Ask many of your neighbors, and they’ll tell you no one is more responsible for the demise of Main Street businesses than the big box stores that undercut them on price and buy-it-all-in-one-place convenience. But now, one supercenter seems to miss the mom-and-pops they arguably helped to make extinct—or at least, they miss the kind of town centers that those small businesses used to anchor. And
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they’ve announced plans to help bring the cozy town square back in a bold new form. To listen to this podcast, click here.
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