KNIGHT PROGRAM IN COMMUNITY BUILDING FELLOW CECILIA HOLLOMAN FACILITATES  WEST COCONUT GROVE REVITALIZATION EFFORTS

March 30, 2002—Cecilia (“C.C.”) Holloman, a Knight Fellow in Community Building with an expertise in faith-based community development, has for several months played a major role in the revitalization efforts currently underway in Miami’s West Coconut Grove community.

To date, Holloman has facilitated four well-attended workshops and met with many community members and leaders in an attempt to create a comprehensive plan for the area’s renewal. Her efforts, undertaken as part of her Knight Program fellowship, complements the work of another University of Miami program, the Initiative for Urban and Social Ecology (INUSE), which has been working with the West Coconut Grove community for the past two years on a series of projects ranging from building a student-designed affordable house to documentation through oral history, photography and video.

Several organizations have funded or expressed interest in revitalization efforts in the West Grove, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and representatives from Local Initiatives Support Organization (LISC), the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and United Way have attended the workshops Holloman has led, as has University of Miami President Donna Shalala and Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton, who pledged his full support to the revitalization efforts.

In commenting on the situation in the community, Holloman noted: “There are a lot of committed people who are willing to work at community building. But, as in a lot of communities of this type, people have been trying to do things for years and they haven’t been able to really move their plans forward.”

After analyzing the situation, Holloman concluded that a fundamental obstacle was the degree of fragmentation in the community. “There were a lot of different small groups, more than 25 in all, but there was no comprehensive strategy. Everyone wanted to revitalize, but they all had different approaches and there were problems with miscommunication and trust,” she said. To address this issue, Holloman has met with many individuals in the community to discuss the benefits of collaboration, a process that is ongoing. “I am helping them see that they won’t lose anything by working together,” she explained.

Holloman has also spearheaded the series of workshops, in which her objective is to facilitate communication and build trust among the factions and to help them arrive at a common vision and a comprehensive plan. She noted that past efforts to do exactly this had not been successful, in part because the motivators had always been local people. “As an outsider I have an advantage,” she explained. “I represent someone who knows the field of community building, and I’m a neutral party. I don’t have any past baggage to bring to this issue.” In addition, she said that her professional qualifications are a major advantage.  “I’ve been working with community groups all my life, and I speak their language. But I also speak the language of the community funders. I am helping to link the community to resources that they don’t even know about. So I’m like a bridge. It’s almost like being a translator,” she said.

“C.C. Holloman has been very effective in unifying the vision and factions like no one has before in the 16 years I have been in Coconut Grove,” noted J. S. Rashid, a local business person.

One of the outgrowths of the workshops has been the development of a collaborative, or core planning group, and the selection of a board of directors. Holloman helped the group draw up its bylaws and expects that she will continue to be involved in the community building efforts. “I hope to facilitate the process until they get on their feet, build trust and establish more open communication,” she said.

There are challenges ahead for the collaborative, as Holloman is well aware. “It will not be easy to keep the momentum going, since there are a lot of conflicting agendas,” she said. “But this is the kind of thing I do all the time, and I very much enjoy it.” Her long-range goal is to train someone from the community to eventually serve as director of the collaborative.

Holloman assumed a similar role in the Knight Program’s annual charrette in Macon, Georgia in November 2001. Prior to the charrette, she traveled to Macon to meet with community leaders, and during the charrette she facilitated several workshops and met with church leaders, community members and others.

““It’s so fortunate that C.C. was a Knight Fellow this year, at the same time that this grass-roots renewal effort in Coconut Grove is getting off the ground,” said Charles C. Bohl, Director of the Knight Program in Community Building. “She has a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience, but perhaps more important is her extraordinary level of commitment to addressing the urban renewal problems faced by communities such as West Coconut Grove and Macon’s Beall’s Hill. Not only has she helped these communities, but through her example she’s inspired the other fellows in the Knight Program.”

Holloman is a Community Builder for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) based in Buffalo, NY and has extensive experience in community and economic development, fund development and community organization. Her research during her Knight Fellowship has centered on anti-gentrification practices and the development of a comprehensive, annotated “toolkit” of resources and procedures for combating gentrification and identifying tools for funding affordable and/or low-income housing. Prior to her position as a Community Builder she served for 17 years as Executive Director of the Alternatives Center, an adult community-based alternative to incarceration in Pontiac, MI. She frequently consults and leads workshops on a variety of community development issues.

The Knight Program in Community Building

The Knight Program in Community Building is an interdisciplinary program based at the University of Miami School of Architecture and dedicated to advancing the knowledge and practice of New Urbanism and Smart Growth. The Knight Program addresses today’s urgent issues associated with community building, including the complex problems of suburban sprawl and inner-city disinvestments, through an innovative series of initiatives, including fellowships, scholarships, conferences, and publications. The Program is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities.