A group of people had a dream five years ago: Make the quality of life in Austin better.
Five years and $100 million later, the groups’ projects are nearly half-way to that goal.
The group, a community organization called Austin Coming Together, first published its quality-of-life plan called Austin Forward Together in 2018. The plan outlined a five-year effort, from 2019 to 2024, toward economic and community development for a Chicago neighborhood that has long faced racial disparities and systematic disenfranchisement.
Today, more than 45 volunteers leading seven task forces have received at least $100 million in investments, and ACT has seen 37 of the 85 action items have been completed or initiated.
This year’s annual summit March 9 celebrated five years of the quality-of-life plan with a presentation to about 300 attendees to show past successes and future expectations for the West Side neighborhood.
“We are here to celebrate our plan. We’re here to celebrate our progress. And we are here to celebrate the people who are getting it done, day in, day out, on behalf of the community, for the betterment of the community,” said Darnell Shields, ACT’s executive director and a member of Growing Community Media’s board of directors.
AFT’s development started in 2017, when over 500 people attended three summits to discuss Austin’s needs and prioritize the plan’s goals.
“Very important people, in terms of status and all that, were in the room, but you wouldn’t have known it because they were sitting at the table with grandma,” Shields said. “We had congressmen, childcare providers, everybody just sitting at the tables working it out.”
From there, AFT was formed, outlining 23 strategies and 85 action items in seven issue areas: economic development, civic engagement, community narrative, education, housing, public safety and youth empowerment.
One of the in-progress action items is improving Austin’s Chicago Avenue and Central Avenue corridors. Updates to the two main commercial stretches will enhance public spaces and infrastructure to attract businesses to the area.
On Chicago Avenue, the POPCourts! Community Plaza was completed in 2021. Planning is underway for the $51 million project to repurpose the former Laramie State Bank. Inside the new building will be a cafe, a business incubator for emerging entrepreneurs and a bank branch. The 20,000-square-foot plot of land next to the building will become a multi-story, mixed-income building with 51 units of affordable housing and 27 units of market-rate housing.The Laramie State Bank project is expected to generate around 22 jobs, plus 150 more during construction.
In 2019, the Kehrein Center for the Arts opened just off Central Avenue. On the Central Avenue corridor proper, the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation broke ground last May, repurposing the former Emmet Elementary School into a space for workforce training. The project will be completed by November.
When it was introduced, AFT was called a five-year plan, but it was always intended to span longer.
“We believe it is essential that the Austin Forward Together quality-of-life plan continues to exist and progress as we enter into a new phase,” said Ethan Ramsay, Austin Coming Together’s planning and investment manager. “In this new phase, we want to sustain and deepen community ownership of the plan and amplify its impact,” as well as conduct research to discover what parts of the plan are working and which need improvement, he said.
At the summit, Ramsay and Fanya Burford-Berry, a strategy lead for AFT’s economic development task force, presented a highlighted agenda that focuses on a few items on AFT’s current and upcoming efforts. The agenda — which includes building out the Chicago Avenue and Central Avenue corridors, and the Aspire Center — will sustain at least 32 of the 37 active action items, and potentially move another 30 action items forward.
The highlighted agenda includes:
- Expanding mental health services, trauma-informed programs and training, and connecting such offerings to food access, workforce education and housing initiatives.
- Weaving restorative justice practices into schools and increasing related activities in the community by creating a restorative justice community court. Restorative justice “is an understanding of life that focuses on building community healing and accountability, and it seeks long term solutions to conflict,” said Burford-Berry who is also director of the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force.
- Advocating for housing policies that increase local home ownership and affordable housing. “Eviction rates in Austin are double the rates compared to the city on average,” Ramsay said. “These problems are systemic, and they require policy change.”
- Continuing the Austin Eats initiative to fight food insecurity by offering high-quality, healthy foods and access to nutritional information through grocery stores, gardens and farms, emergency food access, food education and collaborative marketing.
- Creating living wage careers with job training organizations, workforce and entrepreneurship programs through the ongoing Austin Workforce Collaborative.
- Campaigning for early childhood education by increasing special needs programs and educator salaries with training and accreditation opportunities. The continuing Childcare 2 Kindergarten initiative offers early education professionals year-long coaching, and the Austin Childcare Providers Network trains around 10 early childhood educators yearly but aims to grow with AFT’s help.
- Improving parks and vacant lots, plus launching peer support groups to encourage young people through organizations like Territory, BUILD, Root 2 Fruit and YourPassion1st. A youth job fair will also take place this summer to offer exposure for young people to professionals and potential employers, along with tips for resumes and job applications.
- Creating an authentic storytelling campaign about Austin by amplifying local voices, bridging the gap between residents and how they’re reflected by the media. “For every one positive story about Austin in 2017, there were three negative stories,” Ramsay said, mostly about crime and violence.
“I believe we can own this transformation of our community into the community that, not only we’ll be proud of, but generations beyond us and to come will always be proud of,” Shields said. “Everybody told us, ‘Your plan is too ambitious.’ And I said, ‘How many people know that Austin only does amazing?’”
He added, “I’m glad that we didn’t give into that. I’m glad that you were all willing to dream big together.”