Placemaking Rural Texas

While still at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP ([bc]), I wrote a grant application for a new USDA funding opportunity, the Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge. [bc] received the funding to work with three rural communities - Port Lavaca, Denison, and Starr County - in Texas to create placemaking plans that focused on site specific opportunities and challenges. I served as a contracted project manager for the first year of the two year grant and led the in-person workshops in Port Lavaca.

With each project place partner we selected topic areas to focus on. For example, in Port Lavaca, our project partners wanted to focus on the Wilkins School which had been the school for Black students in Port Lavaca before the integration of Texas public schools and had sat empty for decades, a lack of affordable housing options, and challenges with home repair. These topics were vetted and refined during the first in-person workshop. The planning team developed potential strategies for addressing the challenges and opportunities that came up in workshop one, and these strategies were presented and further developed during workshop two. Experts in rural housing development, rural broadband access, and rural housing financing were brought in as additional resources. During the third workshop, we identified potential partners, funders, first steps, and desired outcomes for the selected strategies. The final plan for each geography was completed in January, 2025.

Funder: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); City of Denison; come dream, come build (cdcb)

Partners: buildingcommunityWORKSHOP; City of Denison; come dream, come build (cdcb); City of Port Lavaca; Wilkins Alumni, Inc.

Role: Project Manager for year one. Work included: grant writing and serving as point-of-contact with the USDA; coordination with project place partners; development and maintenance of project scope and schedule; oversite of workshop agendas and development of workshop materials; led research on housing needs, demographics, and history of the three focus geographies; led research and development of placemaking strategies for three geographies; coordinated with [bc] staff on-the-ground work and staffing of workshops in Starr County and Denison; developed outline of final plans