Urban Districts Alliance restructures

Amid a backdrop of tens of millions of dollars in downtown investments in recent years – and following a leadership trip to Omaha, Neb., in the fall – the nonprofit Urban Districts Alliance Inc. is restructuring to better support the 50-year-old Downtown Springfield Association.

Longtime UDA Executive Director Rusty Worley is now executive director of the Downtown Springfield Association following a quiet transition of eight UDA staff to the DSA on Jan. 1. The move is designed to make DSA the umbrella organization for all things downtown, Worley said, and it ushers in an era where UDA will operate without a staff but under a new paying board-member model dubbed the Downtown Council of Champions.

UDA phased out
Organized in 1997, the UDA originally was established to support operations of three downtown groups: the DSA, Commercial Club and the Walnut Street Merchants Association. It would grow to take on management of the Downtown Springfield Community Improvement District and serves as an umbrella organization for civic groups including the Springfield Finance and Development Corp. Now, its mission is changing to more of a visionary group where business leaders pay to play, and the DSA takes on management and service duties.

“We are working with the Council of Champions to have a management contract in place with the DSA,” said Worley, who leads CID Manager Barb Baker and a team of professionals and maintenance staff. “That’s part of this transition, but we will have a contract in place and it’ll be (DSA) staff providing the support for Council of Champions.

“This is a fairly common model where you have a downtown group that has the staff to provide services to a variety of downtown groups. It’s similar to models in Kansas City, St. Louis – virtually any major downtown organization will have economic development tools in place to move their missions forward.”

Allen Kunkel, who represents Missouri State University on the downtown CID board, said he supports the restructuring to DSA.

“The CID has no staff, so we contracted with the UDA, now with the DSA, for staff support,” said Kunkel, the school’s associate vice president of research and economic development. “(UDA) has outlived what it was designed to do. Now, the DSA is doing more of the management, and the Council [members] are really the visionaries.”

The intent is for the DSA and the downtown CID to serve as the primary organizations devoted to enhancing and developing downtown, Worley said.

He began talks about changes last year with downtown and community development consultant Brad Segal of Denver-based Progressive Urban Management Associates. Segal recommended the changes to Worley and UDA board members, following up on work from 2003, when he recommended the UDA revert to more of an advocacy group for downtown development, according to Springfield Business Journal archives. After not having visited the Queen City for over a decade, and with a CID renewal looming (see “Organizers seek to expand downtown CID” on p. 3), Worley said Segal was impressed with activity he’d seen downtown while on a visit early last year.

“Part of his recommendations were that we had a set of downtown organizations that were established for a downtown that no longer existed and that we needed to update our alignment to better reflect where we are,” Worley said.

Downtown Council of Champions
As for the Downtown Council of Champions, board members pay introductory dues of $4,000 to join.

“That’s a way for our private and public CEOs to be a part of downtown’s revitalization,” Worley said, adding monthly meetings would cease in favor of three or four visits a year. “It’s a model that is very similar to the Heritage Services group that we saw in Omaha with the chamber of commerce trip in the fall.”

Worley declined to name the new board members but said Council of Champions’ leaders include John Wanamaker, a managing partner for BKD LLP, and Greg Burris, Springfield city manager. At least a dozen members held an informal meeting earlier this month, said group member Brad Crain, the regional president for Arvest Bank.

Others at the first meeting were Jack Stack of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp., Joe Turner of Great Southern Bank, and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Hospitality Management. The next meeting is planned in October.

Following the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual leadership visit to Omaha, Neb., Worley wrote an opinion column published late last year in Springfield Business Journal suggesting business leaders there have taken a more active role in shaping the city’s urban core. That’s a model Worley wants to replicate in the Queen City.

Some of Omaha’s most affluent leaders – including Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK) – joined forces to create nonprofit Heritage Services and raised over $500 million for signature community projects including a massive riverfront cleanup to make way for new civic cultural facilities.

Under the local restructuring, Worley said UDA’s 501(c)3 nonprofit status would not change.    

“Day-to-day operations for downtown revitalization would be shared between the DSA and CID,” Worley said. “The Council of Champions will be looking at bigger projects that would be difficult for any other entities to take on and would need the support of a group like that.”[[In-content Ad]]