Creating Ownership
Strategies for building trust and confidence in a community’s capital projects
By John Dzarnowski
Photos: FGM Architects
Before a community-center project begins, the most important foundational effort is to develop trust among residents. This can be very easy or more challenging depending on the nuances of the particular community and its history. The best way to develop trust is to be open and honest about the needs of the organization and how those needs will be addressed over time.
However, when trust has eroded in a community, rebuilding that trust is critical. This requires a project team to demonstrate good stewardship of public funds while also meeting the needs of the community. In this way project officials can prove they have the community’s best interests at heart. Listening is also important, whether that takes the form of surveys, simple conversations with business leaders, or other means of gathering input. Open, honest communication leads to positive outcomes, buy-in, transparency, and a sense of ownership from the general population. Done right, members of the community will support the overarching vision and become vested in the new facility.
Building Trust
For example, a community with which a project team had worked previously was trying to pass a referendum to upgrade an outdoor pool. The referendum, which included capital costs for general maintenance items for the existing pool, failed to pass because some citizens felt their money had not been spent wisely in the initial pool project, and that the additional referendum was a way to correct fiscal mismanagement of the original project.
Recognizing there was a disconnect, the team put assumptions aside and tried a different approach the second time around, forming a task force of influential members of the community that highlighted and examined the struggles that the organization was facing. The task force worked together to come up with many, good fiscal solutions and wrote a new referendum that addressed immediate needs and included a reworked outdoor pool. The new referendum passed with flying colors. The team rekindled a sense of trust within the community by enlisting people’s help to solve the problem.
During the same referendum initiative, elected officials were concerned that residents would think officials’ previous efforts had fallen short or they weren’t doing a good job in their offices and might face competition in upcoming elections. Especially given the past experience, officials worried that the dissenters would be the loudest voices in the group.
To combat the problem of minority opinions being the only ones heard, the team used a variety of public-input platforms, such as surveys and focus groups, where people could speak more freely. The team found that decisions based on data gathered from multiple sources were more representative of residents’ opinions.
Creating Input Opportunities
So what are the best ways to ensure the public has a say in a project and feels like members are being heard?
After initial plans are crafted and a tangible plan is shared with regular users, a project team can start to gauge public opinion by sharing options and solicit more detailed feedback.
For example, with changes to the layout of a community center, there may be mixed messages about what to change and how to implement those changes. The team can gather input on how an amenity is currently used to inform the planning or the future project. The team can ask questions that address the root problem:
Is the issue traffic flow?
Are small children near bodies of water?
Are amenities located correctly from a usability standpoint?
The answers to these questions may reveal that the users have different solutions for the same issues. Project officials can talk to users and share options to find a solution that works well for everyone, while preserving what current users love about the facility. While the final solution may not be exactly what each individual envisioned, the team can cite community involvement in decision-making where all opinions were considered.
Finding Funding
Creating a plan for a new facility is only one part of the process. The other key element is obtaining funding. For this, a project team must go into listening mode, meeting with certain community members and using their responses as a test case for a broader public introduction. The goal of these efforts is to demonstrate a need and show how the project addresses that need. Based on feedback, the team can communicate its justifications for the project and obtain feedback on the viability of funding. Open communication will provide local stakeholders the talking points they need to get their message out to the community.
Defining The Details
One of the most important factors in building community support is to explain clearly the details of the project. People need to understand why a recreation center is needed, how many people will use it, whether the amenity is something only the public sector can provide and, if there is private-sector competition, how the project sets itself apart in a way that justifies public funding.
Demonstrating affordability as well as the value the project will bring is crucial to pass a ballot issue. One way to show a good return on investment is to highlight the effect on property values. Even for people who don’t plan to use the recreation center regularly, the increased property values that come from having a community amenity—and decreased property values that could result from not having it—can make a strong case for approving the issue.
Revisiting past successes is another tried-and-true way to make the case for supporting a community center. Reminding the community of previous projects that enhanced the quality of life for average citizen, raised property values, and created revenue for the city demonstrates good stewardship of public funds and creates public trust.
Whichever approach the team takes to engender trust and promote a project, alignment is the key. Many park districts and recreation departments have existing master plans that seek to gratify the established priorities of the community. These help define what the focus areas are for new projects and what needs the community has already expressed. Once these are clearly laid out, it is much easier to align the project plan or vision with the expressed values of the community, ensuring support and promoting project success.
John C. Dzarnowski, AIA, is CEO with FGM Architects. Reach him at johndzarnowski@fgmarchitects.com.