New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) is a community-driven, trauma-informed, and equity-focused nonprofit. They provide real estate development, housing counseling, small business assistance, corridor cleaning, workforce development, nutrition education, and community health resources to residents and businesses across the Kensington, Port Richmond, and Fishtown neighborhoods of Philadelphia, PA. NKCDC is an influential organization with a long tenure of activity and a strong voice in advocating to political leaders for resources and opportunities and in seeking funding from philanthropies. Their mission is to advance social equity & economic empowerment by nurturing and creating opportunities for residents to live in, and actively shape, their neighborhoods of choice.
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Tess Watts, NKCDC’s Communications Manager, about the Kensington Avenue Redevelopment project and their partnership with NeighborWorks Capital.
In collaboration with other long-established community organizations in the neighborhood, NKCDC has developed a comprehensive plan for reversing severe distress in the Kensington community by stabilizing key properties along Kensington Avenue, the main commercial street in the neighborhood. They are developing multiple properties in the area to eliminate blight and vacancy, provide goods and services needed by residents, and restore some degree of normalcy to a neighborhood that for years has endured the violence and trauma that come with declining employment, disinvestment, poverty, the drug trade, and a large population of unhoused individuals suffering from substance abuse disorder.
The Kensington Avenue Redevelopment: Health, Wellness and Healing plan includes strategies for increased community participation in decision-making; acquiring properties that are vacant, underused, and blighted and are convenient for the drug trade and attendant crimes; securing control of “anchor” properties and rapidly redeveloping them into community assets; and identifying and securing resources that can be invested quickly.
The history of disinvestment and departure of industry in Kensington have led to intersecting crisis in the neighborhood, and the opportunity for the drug trade to supplant what industry used to exist. Residents are isolated and experiencing violence, poverty, blighted properties, drug use, and lack of access to healthy foods and health services. There is a great deal of suffering in the neighborhood, but NKCDC also sees that it is a neighborhood full of assets.
By centering community voices, new conditions can be created for residents and community members to focus on their strengths and thrive. This project focuses on re-taking and stabilizing key anchor properties along the commercial corridor so that residents have access to health resources, engagement opportunities, safe passage, and places to push forward a resident-driven plan for development.
NKCDC’s real estate development strategy feeds all of their wrap-around services work to fight displacement. This strategy is especially critical for pushing forward the Kensington planning process, which is ongoing, flexible, and participatory. One of the first key anchor properties to be redeveloped, 3000 Kensington Ave, will be developed as a space for community members to safely come together and build capacity so that they can actively shape their neighborhood.
NeighborWorks Capital extended a $1.5 million pre-development construction line of credit to NKCDC to support the significant impact of this project. Kensington experiences peaks and valleys with investments and resources from the public sector, and NKCDC has a goal to stabilize the flow of investment and resources in the long-term. According to Tess, this NeighborWorks Capital line of credit is key to allowing them to act quickly in what is becoming an emergency situation. It allows them to be responsive to neighborhood needs now, rather than delay and wait for additional crises to emerge.
This funding allows NKCDC to be nimble and to secure more grant funding with this financial leverage in place. According to Tess, “It is transformative for us as an organization and allows us to increase impact and outcomes in the immediate short-term and the long-term. The properties we are able to rapidly develop are essential resources for residents. They change people’s lives by providing services, and resources and opportunities. This line of credit allows us to be responsive in ways that organizations usually can’t be.”
Tess credits the willingness of NeighborWorks Capital to support and advocate for NKCDCs work for expediting their ability to raise additional funds and begin development work that otherwise might have taken years to accomplish. NeighborWorks Capital’s investment in NKCDC stretches far beyond financial, and by truly getting to know the organization and spending time on the ground in Kensington, they have become fully invested in the outcomes of this work. Tess finds it to be rare that a lender is so invested in the health and well-being of the community and cites that as one of the most important aspect of NKCDCs relationship with NeighborWorks Capital.
In addition to being able to procure funds quickly and use those funds flexibly, the extended term of the line of credit is of particular benefit to NKCDC as they develop strategies for future development. Knowing they have longer-term access to these funds allows them to strategically plan in a way that they wouldn’t be able to with shorter-term resources.
NKCDC is publishing a series of reports about this work, the first of which was released in December 2023, Kensington Planning Process: History, Context, Voices. The report outlines Kensington’s history of disinvestment and imposed strategies, data on the current conditions of the community, and the first results of an ongoing, flexible, and participatory engagement process that centers the Kensington community’s voice. The second report, Kensington Planning Process: Alignment, will be released later in the winter of 2024, and the third report, Kensington Planning Process: Implementation, will be released in the summer/fall of 2024.
