Community, city look to foster business growth in Nubian Sq. revitalization

For the past decade community and municipal leaders have pushed for new efforts to breathe new life into Nubian Square. That effort has promised large developments with new housing as well as arts and culture and economic development opportunities.

But for a group of community leaders, just as important as the big projects is the need to make sure that existing smaller businesses continue to survive — and that new businesses can fill gaps to bring the neighborhood to its full potential.

“It does matter what is going to go into an area to help it thrive and sustain itself,” said Nicole Obi, president and CEO of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts.

Some of those businesses already exist in the community; others could fill significant needs as leaders aim to reshape the area into a more vibrant and active hub. Obi pointed to businesses like dry cleaners and pharmacies, sit-down restaurants and day care centers.

Filling those gaps isn’t an alternative to big projects coming to the neighborhood, but an important addition, advocates said.

“The vibrancy of a community is contingent on a both-and perspective,” said Aisha Francis, president and CEO of Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, the vocational school that moved to Nubian Square in January.

Devoted business support could also be one way to make sure that longtime community members get to benefit from revitalization efforts.

“Revitalization isn’t just about getting new buildings,” said Rev. Willie Bodrick, senior pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church. “It’s about creating new opportunity.”

To miss the mark could mean “another missed opportunity,” said Bodrick, who is also president and CEO of The American City Coalition, an economic development nonprofit in the neighborhood. Losing out on the moment could damage the community’s “identity and authenticity,” he said.

“I think we don’t want to miss this chance to create because if we don’t do this, we lose more than we can ever regain quickly,” he said.

Addressing business expansion in the neighborhood — what Obi called the “remaining 20%” of vacancies — has been one focus of a new task force assembled by Mayor Michelle Wu in April. That task force includes officials from a handful of city departments as well as nonprofit organizations, business-serving organizations, members of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan and other community leaders, including Obi, Bodrick and Francis.

“We have a broad base of folks who are part of this task force with specific skill sets,” said Donald Wright, Boston’s interim chief of economic opportunity and inclusion.

Over a six-month period, the task force is supporting new and existing businesses. It is also focused on the other facets of the revitalization, like activating the cultural district, spurring construction and development in key parcels, promoting investment and ensuring the area gets all the basic city services it needs, Wright said.

Despite the timeframe, Wright said he thinks the work of the task force will be effective in setting up the area for future success.

“I know six months is not a long period of time, but I think that we’ll have some deliverables at the end that will allow for us to springboard into the next phase of the process,” he said.

At the center of the vision is the long-dreamed-of “18-hour community” that many advocates think Nubian Square could be, a place where someone doesn’t just come to take a bus or sleep at night, but a place where community members can spend a whole day.

“It’s a place that they choose to work and play and to stay and to be entertained, and they feel safe,” Obi said. “That’s what makes a community work.”

Right now, many of the community needs are outside the neighborhood, leading to what Bodrick called “economic leakage.”

“Definitely we want people to experience the beauty of the city of Boston, but we don’t want people to feel like they have to leave their neighborhoods to get their basic necessities,” he said.

For members of the task force, that last wave of business and storefronts will be central to the vision of reducing the leakage and creating an 18-hour community.

“I don’t want this, when it’s all said and done, to just be a place where people get up in the morning, they go to other parts of the city or the area, and they’re really only coming back here to sleep,” Obi said.

Francis said that at Franklin Cumming Tech’s South End campus, faculty, staff and students could walk to a wide range of stores if they had a break to run an errand, including a hardware store, a bike repair shop, a pet supply store, dry cleaners and childcare.

“I think if you’re talking about helping to add to an institution’s ability to market itself as being located and situated in a convenient neighborhood, people need to be able to run practical errands during their lunch breaks, or before work, or after work,” Francis said. “Those types of businesses would certainly add to the fabric of what’s here.” The revitalization of Nubian Square has been a priority in the community for decades.

In the past 10 years, the effort has seen new force as a variety of projects have broken ground or looked to start construction in the area.

“The fact that we’re even having this conversation now is because we stand upon the shoulders of so many others who have been advocating and fighting for generations to get the changes that we do have at this particular juncture,” Bodrick said.

In January, Franklin Cummings Tech officially opened its new campus on the northeast edge of Nubian Square, marking the culmination of an almost six-and-a-half-year move from its former South End home. Other organizations, too, like the Community Music Center of Boston, are moving to the square.

The opening of venues like Jazz Urbane Cafe in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building are taking steps toward that “18-hour community” vision by adding arts offerings to the community. Jazz Urbane held a soft-opening party in June. The Nubian Square Ascends project is slated to bring artists housing, a food market and a life science training center to the neighborhood. And the area is slated to see new housing developments in the square, including a 110-unit building funded in part through city and state investments.

For Bodrick, having the city involved is an important step to properly instigating change.

“It’s important to have the city support behind projects like this and to make sure that the investments that are there cannot only be accelerated, but also what’s needed from the city side can really be bolstered in this community to actually activate the change that we want to see,” he said.

Wright said he sees an important role for the city to play, given city-owned parcels in the area, as well as their role in the development process that would allow officials to engage with developers in fostering a stronger business ecosystem in Nubian Square. The city’s approach to work in Nubian Square hasn’t always been favorably received. In January, the city announced it was pulling the approval for a development project from HYM Investment Group and My City at Peace that was slated to bring housing, lab space and a museum to the long-vacant Parcel 3 at the northwest side of Nubian Square. That decision spurred intense community pushback.

At the time, the Wu administration said of its decision that it was prioritizing first the construction of an updated campus for Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. The remaining space on the parcel would then be reopened for economic development efforts.

Efforts like the task force, Wright said, can be seen as a sign that the city is engaged and listening. The makeup of the task force, he said, points to the city’s willingness to engage with the community in this effort.

“These are folks that have done work in the neighborhood and continue to do work,” Wright said. “You can see their work in our community.”

Obi said that a concerted effort is important to make sure that storefronts don’t end up filled by franchises, which she said could risk “gentrification, in the worst sense.”

“You get places that have no connection to this community — they can be anywhere —that would be a big loss culturally and economically for entrepreneurship and ownership,” Obi said.

But members of the task force said they see an opportunity to bring new growth to the area without displacement.

“We know a lot more at the urban development level and at the level of city management than we did 60 years ago about how to strike that balance,” Francis said.

Wright, too, said he thinks there are ways to grow the economic vitality of the neighborhood without displacing residents, including by incorporating language that would foster development without displacement into proposals and bringing building owners into the process.

For Bodrick, it’s important that the business support can be another way that the revitalization of Nubian Square can serve the residents who have stayed in the area through its highs and lows.

“If we get this right, revitalization will not replace the community that built Nubian Square,” Bodrick said. “It’s going to strengthen the community and the people that built Nubian Square.”