Youthful businesses crowd-source a nonprofit
Over the years there have been many attempts to revitalize Springfield’s long-dilapidated Southtown neighborhood, including having it designated by the city council “a housing and urban redevelopment area” back in 2006 under Mayor Tim Davlin. But it has taken a gaggle of idealistic youngsters to really start turning the neighborhood around.
Now the owners and operators of such businesses as Skank Skate, Black Sheep Café, Dumb Records and Southtown Recording Studio are officially seeking nonprofit status in order to continue improving the neighborhood while protecting its legacy. They are doing so through a crowd-sourcing campaign called “Project Southtown” via the website kickstarter.com. There, supporters can make donations towards the project, which has a variety of ambitious goals.
“This campaign is really for multiple things,” confirms Brian Galecki, who helps run both Black Sheep Café and Dumb Records. “George [Sinclair, owner of Skank Skates since 1988] wants to preserve a lot of old videotapes that he’s collected over the years,” including rare music footage of local and touring bands as well as skateboard pros such as Tony Hawk and Wee-Man tearing up the ramp at Skank’s. Sinclair would like to see his huge archive converted to digital format and made available for all, whether through online streaming or possibly DVD collections.
From Galecki’s point of view, the archive only represents a fraction of the plan. “It’s a project to help secure our future,” he says. “We’re launching a brand new, nonprofit organization. It’s not going to turn Black Sheep into a nonprofit, it will be a completely new thing that’s going to cover the entire neighborhood.”
Galecki and Southtown Studio ownerengineer Brandon Carnes were inspired by time spent in Peoria. “There’s an organization on one of the main drags of Peoria called the Renaissance Park Community Association and they had undergone kind of similar urban decay and were able to make a lot of changes,” says Carnes.
“Seeing their success was pretty much the reason why we went ahead and decided to go forward with this,” affirms Galecki. Much like Southtown, there were a lot of local businesses inside the area covered by the organization likely to benefit from improved overall neighborhood conditions. “They’ve been able to pick up grants and there’s been a lot of murals and art that they’ve been able to get – community gardening is also big,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of the same things but we’re not officially nonprofit.”
Another advantage of nonprofit status would be the ability to obtain volunteer work beyond the group of passionate, determined friends who currently contribute their time to the neighborhood. With nonprofit status college students from Lincoln Land and UIS will be able to get school credit for time spent working in Southtown. This increased opportunity is especially fortuitous given the impending extension of 11 th Street from South Grand – the current hub of Southtown activity – all the way south, providing a straight shot from Southtown to the campuses of both schools. “This would be perfect,” says Galecki.
The campaign offers several incentives for donors, ranging from custom t-shirts to private parties. “For $200 you can get a customized song recorded at Southtown Studio,” says Carnes.
There will be a benefit concert for the cause consisting of local bands covering more famous ones at Black Sheep on Friday, May 23, almost the direct midpoint of the campaign which expires on June 26. “The goal that we’ve set is the very minimum that we need for the project,” says Galecki. “Any more that we raise will go into the projects of the nonprofit – like neighborhood restoration stuff. We have a long list of little things that all the buildings need. We haven’t been able to keep up with the funds we have been working with,” he sighs. “It catches up with you.”
Currently, Project Southtown has raised $3,753 of its $5,000 goal. To contribute, visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ projectsouthtown/project-southtown.
Contact Scott Faingold at [email protected]
