Concentrating on neighborhood areas of blight

Mayor Tom Arceneaux has assembled a team to tackle blight in the city of Shreveport, and team members are rolling up their sleeves to get the job done.

Last week, Arceneaux launched Block by Block, a neighborhood-based initiative against blight across Shreveport, during a news conference at Government Plaza.

“We’re very excited about it,” Arceneaux said the day after the announcement. “Yesterday was the beginning of a conversation about it, not the end of a conversation.”

Block by Block will target resources in high-need areas one block at a time rather than spreading efforts thinly across the city.

Plans will be tailored to each neighborhood, featuring a comprehensive lifecycle tracking system that monitors violations, abatements, legal actions, demolitions and redevelopment status, according to a news release.

“We will do 11 sweeps between now and the end of the summer to provide some immediate relief and give some person-to-person contact with people,” Arceneaux said. “We are asking people to fill out surveys on their neighborhoods so we can develop a plan.”

The following neighborhood sweeps are scheduled:

• June 28 – Highland
• July 12 – Queensborough
• July 26 – MLK
• Aug. 2 – Cedar Grove
• Aug. 9 – Allendale
• Aug. 16 – Pines Road
• Aug. 23 – Stoner Hill
• Sept. 6 – Southern Hills
• Sept. 13 – Mooretown
• Sept. 20 – Broadmoor

It’s all about making an impact, the mayor said.

“Some things we are going to do city-wide, and some we are going to concentrate on a couple of small areas in two different neighborhoods to have an impact there,” he said. “We are going to learn from our successes and failures there, so we can scale it up for more neighborhoods and encourage some private development as well.”

Arceneaux said collaboration between all sectors of Shreveport will be critical to the program’s success. Residents will play an essential role in helping to identify priorities, report issues and support neighborhood transformation.

“Government can’t do it all by itself,” he said. “It requires the faith community, the business community and the philanthropic community to put our focus on redeveloping the inner core of Shreveport.”

The Block by Block initiative grew out of Arceneaux’s participation in the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. The mayor selected a leadership team of seven people, who, like the mayor, spent a week in Cambridge, Mass., studying the issue. A full committee of 25 people is leading the effort.

“This is the culmination of, for me, a year’s work, and for the people who are working on it, seven or eight months of work,” Arceneaux said. “The executive team went to Cambridge back in March, and the goal was to come back with the rudiments of a plan. They have been refining that since they got back. They have met with the larger group of 25, of which they are a part, to roll out ideas and get feedback from people in the community.”

The Bloomberg Harvard experience provided Arceneaux and the team with access to valuable insights and experts, enabling them to develop the program effectively. Block by Block is based on a case study that the team examined at Cambridge. The city is also assisted by Harvard Fellow Rachel Fischer and staffer Snapper Poche with the program.

That is in addition to the local expertise Arceneaux has brought to the project.

“We have some pretty good expertise in Shreveport,” Arceneaux said. “Terrance Green knows property standards and can be very innovative. And Verni Howard. I chose her because of her involvement with Providence House, and then we hired her. They have been a really good cross-section to apply a lot of brain power to this issue.”

And while Arceneaux is happy to have Block by Block off the ground, it is just the first step in a longer journey.

“We think there will be continued research and refinement of a more permanent plan, but we wanted to unveil the Block by Block,” he said.