Neil Fraser
May 12, 2003
LOURDES Zapata-Perez is a lovely lady, both in looks and personality. She was born in the South Bronx, left for a short time to obtain a university degree and then returned to her birthplace to plough her energy and talents into its upliftment and revitalisation.
Now the Assistant Vice President of Industrial and Business Development of SoBRO - the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation - and one only has to spend a short time with Lourdes to catch her passion for her job and for the Bronx.
The Bronx of the late '60s early '70s appears to have been much like the Johannesburg inner city of the late'80s early '90s. Business had fled the area taking employment opportunities with them leaving the local community fractured and distressed - sound familiar?
Amongst the early deserters were a number of banks - that sounds familiar too!
The area had the highest poverty rate in the United States and the largest number of New York residents receiving public assistance. In 1972 Senator Jacob Javits and the then Bronx Borough President, Robert Abrams, put together a consortium of other banks and businesses and together they established SoBRO.
SoBRO's focus, then and now, deserves that overworked adjective, holistic which can best be illustrated by quoting their mission: "To enhancing the quality of life in the South Bronx by strengthening businesses and creating and implementing innovative economic, housing, educational and career development programmes for youth and adults."
Not just empty words for SoBRO has produced! It has brought $120 million in capital to the area; created and retained more than 35 000 jobs for area residents; completed more than $20 million in reconstruction projects; helped 24 000 South Bronx residents enter the New York City workforce through career development programmes and developed and manages low income and special needs housing. It provides career assessment and job placement, training in computer technology, telecommunications and customer service.
Its Youth Centre provides career counselling to school leavers and facilities for drop-outs to complete high-school education to enable them to enrol at college or to enter the workforce. Home ownership in low cost housing is provided for those with special needs.
I visited their new Centre which brings together its many and diverse and previously scattered programmes under one roof. It is in a former department store building which has been vacant for 20 years.
After a briefing, Lourdes, together with my hosts from New York City's Department of Business Services, took me on a whistle-stop tour of the area and some of the SoBRO projects. A small-business incubator, also housed in a previously derelict building; low cost residential developments and, on the southern edge of the South Bronx, an area that is being revitalised and proving to have a huge attraction for antique dealers and artists.
In 1994 SoBRO established a financial services arm to provide loans to small businesses in the Bronx that had difficulty finding financing through more traditional channels. It also provides technical assistance in the form of marketing, financial and business management services as well as business plan preparation.
I asked Lourdes to list the three biggest problems in the South Bronx today - perceptions, unemployment and quality of life was her quick response. Isn't it a pleasure when the first answer isn't crime but we certainly share all these.
So how do they do what we all dream about doing in our similar areas? Only a small proportion of their funding is from donors. They obtain a large amount of their funds by providing community programmes that are recognised and thus funded by all levels of government as essential ingredients for rebuilding a community.
The funding has been on a sustained basis for quite how to access the literally dozens of other incentives that are available and which I mentioned in Citichat a few weeks ago. AND they have two "Empire Zones" within the South Bronx at Hunt's Point and Port Morris, which offer an even wider array of incentives including tax credits and discount rates on utilities.
SoBRO offers us an appropriate model to study both in its broad vision and its focused implementation. And yes, I know we don't have the wide range and types of incentives they enjoy.
Whilst not wanting to appear ungrateful, all we have currently is the announcement by the Mister of Finance that certain tax-write-offs will be introduced - refurb costs of obsolete buildings written off over five years and development costs of new properties over seventeen. But I understand that the enabling legislation is not only not yet legislated but doesn't appear to have been started.
I agree only in part with the sentiments of a local director of a property strategy company in a recent article entitled "Inner Cities need more than just tax breaks" when he states that "Tax incentives are not enough to draw developers into the nodes that the government is targeting. Their bravery needs to be supported by the other state functions, so that money, time and effort invested is not subjected to the same write-offs that occurred in the Eighties and Nineties."
I certainly wouldn't have used the word 'bravery' for a sector that traditionally and increasingly looks to belt, braces and an Old Boys tie before it embarks on any development. His suggestion that 'many property owners (were) bruised by nodal decay in the past decade" ignores the fact that most of those investments were paid for many times over before they reached any stage of inflicting bruising!
As for waiting for "support from other state functions", such formal property development industry thinking is what makes a SoBRO so attractive at this stage of the city's rebirth. We need a JoBRO that brings together economic development and community empowerment through a more attractive and comprehensive basket of incentives rather than support from State functions - those we need to provide ourselves lest we wait forever.
The usual reaction of all levels of government in this country is to blanche at the very thought of incentives lest they deplete their already stressed and stretched revenue bases (and dare we say it, the concern that someone may benefit personally from such instruments).
Incentives can however be structured in different ways. What we need to do is to develop a set of practical incentives that are self-liquidating and here we can learn again from other cities and countries adapting their successful applications to our needs.
