‘Invest In Your Communities’: Co-Founder & CEO of Chicago TREND

By Kekeletso Nkele, small. Assistant

Q: Can you tell everyone a bit more about TREND?

A: Initially, this started as a research project around how important commercial corridors and commercial properties are in urban neighborhoods. In theory, when you drive into a neighborhood, your first impression is the small business community.

If it’s blighted or disinvested, it’s only boarded-up storefronts; even if the housing is strong, it becomes a liability. It tracks crime, lowers property values. After two years of research, we came up with several theories about how to get more small businesses to open, how to help local entrepreneurs become franchisors, and then ultimately how to get national retailers to see opportunity in revitalized commercial properties.

At the end of the research, the MacArthur Foundation, which was really funding the initial analysis and thought process, said, “Why don’t you do it?”

Fast forward, and we own six shopping centers. We sold one, and we’re about to buy our seventh, and we have our eighth under contract. The innovation of the work is not that we own shopping centers in these urban areas.

We’ve been able to get now over 400 individuals who are diverse, low-income, and reside in these neighborhoods to invest alongside us, we call them co-owners. We created a structure that allows us to use FinTech tools plus old-school community organizing to knock on doors and tell people about the opportunity to own something in their neighborhoods. And the priority is now closer to a million bucks.

We have over 400 people invested now. We’re revitalizing properties, strengthening neighborhoods, and creating opportunities for small businesses to be tenants, but also professional service providers to architects, environmental reports, lawyers, brokers, and property managers, those types of things. Ideally, we can grow it to have proof of concept; now we’re trying to scale it.

Q: I’ve learned a lot from you that property ownership is significant. I learned so much from the team in Crenshaw in downtown Los Angeles. They are so committed to the idea that if their community, the original community, the community that’s been in downtown Crenshaw forever, can own the assets in Crenshaw, you prevent gentrification.

A: So I have two initial thoughts that I share all the time. Wealth is created by owning assets, assets that generate revenue and appreciate over time. In America, that’s been homes, that’s been businesses, that’s been commercial property.

Our effort to democratize ownership is that if more people have a little investment, they’ll patronize and protect, and respect it. They get an opportunity to benefit from their appreciation and value creation in the neighborhood, and they’re part of a movement and building community cohesion. There are so many ownership models.

Some are about preserving affordability, some are about community governance and control, and some are about creating space for art and art entrepreneurs. Ours is about can we show that we can create a financially viable product, project, and then ultimately have local individuals participate in it and earn a financial return. We started this work. It was research at Rutgers, and then there was a program we ran.

Q: This year has been a tough year for a lot of people thinking about community ownership, small business, and how we create a resilient economy that works for everybody. And it feels like there are a lot of forces that are working against those ideas right now, especially in the American context. We’ve got this context to think about how we do it together. We don’t all have to solve all these problems. How do we all solve a specific problem and then work together to solve it?

A: I agree with you a hundred percent. I’ve been thinking lately about two avenues.

One is, how do we create things that can be replicated? So small initiatives, sharing playbooks, sharing the research, sharing case studies, so that other people can replicate what we’re doing in other communities in other contexts.

Then there’s another avenue that’s around scaling. So how do we take something that works and get enough resources behind it so it’s not just a cute little initiative or doesn’t have maximum impact?

So while we’re now replicating and sharing stuff, we own shops, have shopping centers, we’ve done the community investment vehicles, here’s how you do the work. Now, can you really scale? Can you raise a hundred million dollars and have a half billion, a billion dollars of impact in a different way that normally doesn’t happen in this community impact, small business context?

We want to continue to incubate and catalyze new ideas and partner with folks.

Q: We need to stay innovative… At the end of the day, all of us are doing pilots of small things individually, but it’s not adding up to the collective change we need. And so what is it to your exact point? How do we as an industry get better at noting, this is a new idea, but this is a real thing? Where do we work together to really do the things that are proven at a big enough level that it makes the real change we all desire?

A: You can pick any of these innovative initiatives that have now gotten beyond the fledgling pilot stage and could scale, pick one, turn it back, and provide feedback.

I could find folks who are saying, I can give you your money back and have this impact and get a little return and have more economic vitality, less crime, better health outcomes, stronger neighborhoods, more entrepreneurs, and I have 10 other friends.

I want to just see someone really get the investment to scale a community-oriented, impact-oriented, small business-oriented set of systemic change ideas.

Q: If you could wave a Magic Silver Wand one year, it has to be silver and it has to be magic. And you could use it to do one thing right now in this exact moment that you think would have the most impact on small businesses. What would you use your wand for?

A: I would use my wand to create additional tools for low-cost, flexible, early-stage catalytic capital. There are trillions of dollars on the sidelines, trillions of dollars in donor-advised funds, and big foundations are winding down, with corporate commitments of billions of dollars.

I would use my magic wand to have a billion dollars and use that magic wand to make investments, expecting that I’ll get it back. It’s not as if all of it needs to be grant capital, but I expect that I can invest in innovators that will help grow small businesses, help drive economic development.

Q: How do we support you?

A: Follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot about our projects. I’m always trying to create new programs and tools for small business owners at Rutgers.

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