Opinion: Durham visit highlights keys to downtown revitalization

Rusty Worley

As a veteran of many Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Community Leadership Visits over the past 20 years, I’m always eager to find out what makes each city tick. What is their unique story and how have they charted a course to generate significant positive momentum?

The latest trip to Durham, North Carolina, underscored there are four common ingredients to downtown revitalization.

Downtown living room
Michael Goodmon, executive vice president of Capitol Broadcasting Co., described his family’s long-term investments in making downtown Durham the living room for the region. Through public-private partnerships, they created the American Tobacco Campus with its triple-A baseball park as the nucleus for a mixed-use magnet of the arts, restaurants, office, high school and hotel.

Springfield has many comparable pieces: Hammons Field, Jordan Valley Park, Great Southern Bank Arena, Juanita K. Hammons Hall, Springfield Little Theatre, Gillioz Theatre, the History Museum on the Square, two boutique hotels, 60 restaurants and 20 retailers. The difference is Springfield’s cultural attractions are spread out. The challenge for the Queen City is filling in the gaps of asphalt parking lots to strengthen the downtown core and enhance walkability.

Universities as catalysts
Durham’s Research Triangle Park was created in the late 1950s and is known throughout the world as a hub for innovation and technology. Visionary community leaders nurtured a vibrant ecosystem producing numerous high-tech firms and startups. Anchored by Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, they are joined by numerous universities and community colleges to attract some of the brightest minds in the world, retain more of their own graduates and produce a high-performing workforce.

The IDEA Commons (Missouri State University), Plaster Center for Advanced Manufacturing (Ozarks Tech), and O’Reilly Enterprise Center (Drury) are major civic investments designed to lay a similar foundation for southwest Missouri. Renew Jordan Creek will provide new incentives for private companies to co-locate to create opportunities for thought-provoking interactions.

Housing laboratory
The Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan area grew by 88% over the past 23 years, compared with Springfield’s 33%. Durham’s dramatic growth has led to significant housing challenges, especially for low-income residents. For example, only 2.6% of their homes are valued at under $150,000 (compared with Springfield’s 22.6%).

Springfield has made impressive strides in lofts and student housing. But it must act now to creatively address its own affordable and workforce housing shortages before they reach Durham’s epidemic levels. Restore SGF is an important step in that direction to invest in historic neighborhoods and homeownership.

Bold leadership
Durham residents voted down a bond issue to build a new minor league baseball stadium in the early 1990s. The City Council courageously voted to move ahead with the project – an act that cost many of the elected officials their seats in the next election. However, time would reveal the wisdom of that vote.

Springfield will have its own historic opportunity to invest in its future with the three-quarter-cent sales tax vote in November. If passed, it will generate $45 million a year for paying off the police-fire pension, public safety initiatives, and priorities outlined in the Forward SGF comprehensive plan. If it fails, the city will be forced to cut approximately $8 million a year from its general fund to meet the remaining pension obligations and the resulting decrease in use taxes. Passage of the new sales tax will produce remarkable dividends over the next decade.

As much as I love to explore new places, it’s always good to come home. I return with a fresh set of ideas and a renewed appreciation for the good work of our predecessors. The building blocks are within reach if we will act collaboratively and boldly to write the next chapter of our own story.

Rusty Worley is the executive director of the Downtown Springfield Association. He can be reached
at rusty@itsalldowntown.com.