Socially Conscious Development

I promised sabotabby that I'd post this, so that she could read it: The Last Townie, from the New York Times, about Greg O'Connell, a cop turned socially-conscious real-estate developer, who has taken Jane Jacobs's principles to heart, and applied them in the upstate New York town of Mount Morris.

Mount Morris needed a hero. Greg O’Connell was available. Like so many small upstate rust-belt towns, it was not prepared for the final quarter of the 20th century. Its manufacturing jobs evaporated. A new Interstate, I-390, bypassed it. Its ambitious kids went away to college and didn’t look back. Its downtown became empty and funereal, thanks to the fluorescent allure of big-box stores like Wal-Mart not far away.

Things began to change in Mount Morris in 2007. That was when O’Connell quietly began buying up buildings — he now owns 20 — on Main Street. For some he paid as much as $140,000. Others he snatched up for $4,000 at tax-lien sales. Then he went to work. He restored the historic storefronts and interiors, cleaning the tin ceilings. He renovated the apartments on the second floors, bringing in fresh paint, oak and maple floors, new windows, nice bathrooms. He spent about $1 million on the properties, he says, and he expects, when all is said and done, to spend another million on renovations.

The results aren’t hard to spot. In 2011 Mount Morris is, tentatively, blossoming. A roomy coffee shop, the Rainy Days Café and Bakery, with gleaming espresso machines, just opened in one of O’Connell’s buildings. (“It kills me that the old guys in town meet to drink their coffee at McDonald’s,” he says.) So has a barbershop, an antiques store and a gourmet food shop that specializes in products from New York State. A deli is scheduled to open soon. Arts groups, he hopes, are on the way.

Mixed-use buildings and neighbourhoods. Storefront businesses. People living where they work and working where they live. It almost sounds like a place one could live.