Economic Development
5-14-2007
Hand to Hand Money
There is a Black Business Expo that is going to be held on 24th & Lake, Saturday, June 2nd at the Family Housing Building. This event will showcase community owned businesses and give you, the community, an opportunity to come and show support. Why is this important? It is important because in some communities money exchanges hands seven times. In our community money changes hands once. What this means is that when we get paid we spend our money almost immediately on shops and stores outside of our community. Basically, we are making other people rich and providing other people with jobs as opposed to spending money in the community and building wealth and creating jobs for ourselves.
When I talk to high school students on the topic of money changing hands I take them through a simple exercise. I provide the first student $500 of monopoly money and give four other students anything I can find in the room ranging from soap, napkins, pens, etc. I have the first student spend his $500 on what the second student has, the second student on what the third student has and so forth until the fifth student gives me back the money. Each of the five students at some point has that $500 of monopoly money in their hands. After I take them through that exercise, I take them through a second exercise. Instead of having the first student with the money buy from another student, I have the first student buy something I have, and then I walk away. In the second exercise only one student has $500 and then it is gone from the group.
What this means is that there are fewer job opportunities available in North Omaha, individuals have to travel further to buy the things they need, meaning increased gas cost and loss of time, and it also means that opportunities for business and wealth are occurring in other communities at the expense of ours. That is what $70 Million dollars worth of leakage means.
Amazingly, and instantaneously the high school students understand what is happening. In the first exercise that $500 became $2500 of spending power (5 students times $500). In the second exercise that $500 remained just that, $500 dollars and then it walked away. What these students understand seems so difficult for us as a community to understand. We so often behave like what occurred in the second exercise, we get paid, and then we spend the majority of our income outside of the community. We forget the principle that money changing hands in the community builds community wealth as that money goes from hand to hand.
So I return to the Black Business Expo. This event will have over thirty plus vendors, the majority of them directly from the North Omaha community. This is a prime opportunity for us to learn about, and buy from businesses that exchange money hand to hand in our community. We will never go from being one of the most impoverished communities in the city to being where we should be as community unless we change the way we use MONEY!
High School students get the concept, will we?
5-7-2008 Help Our Community is Leaking Money!
When I was young we lived in an old house off 40th & Ames. We had a roof problem. I remember waking up one morning after a heavy rain, similar to the ones we had recently, walking into the living room and seeing puddles and pools of rain on the carpet, the furniture and everywhere else. It was damaging. Because we were broke at the time we had to live with a spotted brown ceiling, dirty brown blotches on the carpet, and slightly damaged furniture.
Similar to that roof leaking, our community is leaking as well and causing economic damage. Instead of leaking dirty rain water however we are leaking money. According to research conducted by RDG Planning & Design, within the North Omaha study area approximately $70 Million dollars of retail money is leaking out of our community.
What does this mean?
What this means is that there are fewer job opportunities available in North Omaha, individuals have to travel further to buy the things they need, meaning increased gas cost and loss of time, and it also means that opportunities for business and wealth are occurring in other communities at the expense of ours. That is what $70 Million dollars worth of leakage means.
There is opportunity however.
That $70 Million dollars of leakage represents potential opportunity for new business ownership and job creation in North Omaha. One of the reasons that there is so much leakage occurring is that there often aren’t businesses with the sufficient capacity to serve our community. This means that in many cases if we want an item we have no choice but to go outside of the community to make our purchases. What would occur however if we began to strategically create, help grow and recruit businesses in these large areas of leakage (see chart) such as grocery, furniture, electronics and clothes?
Could we help capitalize a LeFlore’s New Look Fashion so that he could expand and capture some of that $9 Million dollars a year that is spent on clothes outside of the community?
Could someone with foresight and business savvy from our community start up an electronics and appliance store and capture some of that $10 million dollars that is being spent outside of our community on those items?
We have $70 Million dollars worth of opportunity, the questions becomes at this stage of the game one of how we strategically work to capture it. There is opportunity here, so we must position ourselves to take advantage.
Together we can do this!
5-1-2007
Healthy Skepticism is Normal but Change Also Must Happen
By Dell Gines
By now everyone is familiar with the Omaha World Herald research article that pointed out how the African-Americans in Omaha were the third poorest in the nation, and that our black children were the poorest black children in the nation. None of us doubt the critical need for economic development in North Omaha, jobs, businesses and housing, but many of us question the how.
This past Monday, the 23rd of April, the first Chamber of Commerce North Omaha economic development community session was held at Salem Baptist Church. The consultants presented various statistics on North Omaha and the potential here for creating economic change. Presenting a wide range of opportunities and also challenges, the researchers encouraged participation from the community to help guide the study, and ultimately the outcome of the study. Many of the questions that followed the presentation from the audience were based upon a healthy skepticism of the plan, and also of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce.
Charles Parks asked the question, “How can we trust the Chamber now, when for the past 30 years we have seen a deterioration of North Omaha without Chamber help (paraphrased)?”
Others asked the question, “You have done over 30 studies in the past twenty plus years on North Omaha with nothing coming from them, what makes this any different from the past?”
These are legitimate questions and questions that need legitimate answers and since I am one of the members of the steering committee I would like to answer them. First of all, many of you know me and you know that my single minded obsession is the development economically, socially and consciously of North Omaha. Being born and raised here, going to school here, and living here now with my wife and five children, I have a vested interest in seeing change occur. I want clean and safe neighborhoods, and want our young brothers and sisters to feel safe, wanted, and have positive options for their children. I want jobs, business ownership, homeownership and more for our community. I know however that that can not occur without a dramatic change in our economic conditions.
As president of North Omaha Community in Action, we are working to improve the neighborhoods at a grassroots level. You have the African-American Empowerment Network working on a holistic strategy for improvement of the African-American community in Omaha, the majority of which reside up North. You have Senator Chambers, and the African-American Achievement Counsel working to improve the education gap between our black children and the rest of Omaha in their own unique ways. But the foundation of any community growth in a capitalistic America always comes down to one thing…MONEY.
To acquire money, a system of jobs, business ownership, community support, and economic education must be in place. We have heard the old mantra, “It takes money to make money” and the same goes for economically developing a whole community. So here is my answer to the questions that were posed at the last community meeting.
First to answer the question of Chamber trust. We can only trust the Chamber of Commerce by seeing that they are worthy of our trust. I personally know David Brown the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce and I personally trust him, but I also understand that that is different than the Chamber acquiring community trust. One thing I can say however is that in his short two years of running the Chamber he has requested more African American support and opportunities for leadership than the chamber ever has. In fact, on our steering committee alone, two of the Executive Committee leaders out of the three are African American, Councilman Frank Brown and Dr. Dick Davis. Over half of the total steering committee is composed of black business owners and black leaders, and other African American representation. Could we have more grassroots leadership, however? Yes.
Second to answer the question as to why this study will succeed where others have failed. I will answer that question with two phrases, private money, and implementation strategy. All of the previous studies had as a fatal flaw, the fact that they were not based upon private money, and therefore there was no true incentive other than political purposes to do anything here up North. This study is different as corporations, black business owners and others have put up their money to make this happen. If you know corporations you know they don’t like to waste money. Also, half of the money raised is to create a staff position to make sure the study actually happens! This is similar to Destination Midtown and Tawanna Black, and we all know the successful development they are doing down in Midtown.
In the end though it still comes back to us, our participation, our determination to make the plan something we want to see happen and that benefits us the most. That is why I need you to participate in the community informational gathering sessions. Let me know what you questions and concerns are and what you want to see on your blocks and in your neighborhoods. Our voice should reign supreme, but it has to be balanced with sensible economic development strategy.
In fact, I went so far as to say on my television show on Cox 22 that if this fails then you can come and picket my house and blame me. And believe me this friends, I don’t like to fail.
So skepticism is healthy and rational, and Charles Parks and others asked the RIGHT questions. They asked the same questions that I asked when first approached by David Brown as I had the same skepticism. But what I realized was this, to much skepticism about what hasn’t happened in the past leads to taking no chances in the future, which means things will never change. Together we can do this.
If you have any questions on the North Omaha economic development project, please feel free to email at Northaction@yahoo.com or call me direct at 612-8228.
Dell Gines
President of North Omaha Community in Action