While attending the JPMorgan Chase & Co. PRO Neighborhood $100,000 grant award ceremony that Community Builders of Kansas City was awarded last year, CBKC participated in the October PRO Neighborhood Peer Learning Session in Washington D.C. CBKC’s Emmet Pierson, Jr., president and CEO and Shannon Hesterberg, director of real estate development, attended, taking from the session best practices for building collaborative partnerships and advancing our work.
While in DC, CBKC took the opportunity to learn first-hand practices from two of the largest community development corporations in the country. Pierson and Hesterberg toured the Residences at St. Elizabeth’s East, a 252-unit, affordable housing redevelopment project with tiered pricing based on annual income. This large-scale redevelopment project far exceeds the typical number of affordable housing units constructed in a single project in Kansas City.
Joined by Stanley Jackson, president and CEO of Anacostia Economic Development Corporation (AEDC), and John LaPorta, Flaherty and Collins project executive. The team toured the site just days before it was set to be complete, gaining cutting edge insights on new models in urban development.
Pierson and Hesterberg also toured Columbia Heights, a community development project by the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights that created 1,000 affordable housing units and replaced an empty parking lot and dilapidated building with businesses such as Target, Best Buy and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
“In touring these massive projects and talking with prominent organizations, we were able to gain an understanding of how CBKC can become a significant participant in large-scale projects,” said Pierson. “In addition, we studied how to develop projects that generate sustained income and ensure that income stays within our community, keeping the spin within. We plan to implement these concepts in future projects.”