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Gentrification is a Policy Choice
By Teasha Cable
Cornell Wesley of Prosper Portland explains why the development agreement is a city's greatest tool, and how codifying hiring, wages, and anti-displacement protections turns promises into outcomes.
Every city has a photo from a ribbon cutting. Oversized scissors, a line of officials, a press release promising jobs. Far fewer cities can tell you what happened to that business three years later, who got hired, or whether the neighborhood around it is still home to the people who lived there before.
Cornell Wesley thinks that gap is where economic development succeeds or fails.
As Executive Director of Prosper Portland, Cornell oversees a $200 million annual budget and 11 urban renewal districts. Before that, he led economic development in #BirminghamAlabama, and in federal economic development at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
He came to economic development from a banking background, in search of work that was measured by something other than profit. His first role was at a council of government in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where he turned a $2 million capital base into $30 million of economic activity in 11 months.
That result got the attention of federal officials, and it launched a career that has moved between public, private, and federal systems.
The Capital Stack Is Bigger Than the Cash
Ask most people what goes into a capital stack and they will name debt, equity, and grants. Cornell's definition is wider. A tax abatement has monetary value. So does a city fronting the cost of water, sewer, and connectivity. So does a community benefits agreement that requires local hiring and a living wage, because the private partner has to account for that cost.
He pointed to the new The Coca-Cola Company bottling facility in Birmingham, built on a brownfield that required millions of dollars in remediation before it could be developed. The city did not own the land, but it wanted the jobs. Abatements helped unlock better terms on the debt. Infrastructure investment made the site workable. Community commitments made the deal worth doing for the public.
The lesson for practitioners is simple: if an inducement has value, it belongs on the table, priced and negotiated like everything else.
Codify It, or It Didn't Happen
Cornell says he measures success in storefronts, paychecks, and neighborhoods, not press releases. In practice, that means refusing to treat the ribbon cutting as the end of a deal.
The win comes when customers walk through the door and the promised jobs show up. He says the only way to guarantee that is to write it down.
He calls the development agreement the greatest tool a city has. If a company asks for public support, the agreement spells out local hiring, minority participation, wage standards, and yearly check-ins, with clawbacks if targets are missed.
He does not count temporary construction jobs toward job totals. And he does not renegotiate at the edges. If the agreement says 22% minority participation, a developer at 19% cannot call the mayor and make up the difference with a handshake.
That kind of discipline only works with executive support, he noted. When a mayor backs the standard, developers learn to underwrite community commitments before they ever walk into City Hall. It becomes culture.
Community With, Not On Top Of
Cornell was candid about the history of his own agency. He described gentrification as a policy choice, one that requires a municipality to be complicit. Organizations like Albina Vision Trust exist, he said, because of disinvestment that public agencies allowed to happen.
Prosper Portland's response has been structural.
Community leadership committees, made up of residents from each district, now set the vision for what their neighborhoods want to become. The agency's job is to guide that conversation with what is realistic and then act as what Cornell calls "another tool in the toolbox."
Faced with a big project that could cause displacement, he would pause to understand residents' concerns. Asked whether to speed up a slow project by cutting engagement, he refused the trade-off entirely.
And when new development pushes up property values, he wants long-time residents, especially those 65 and older, protected through fixed property taxes so they benefit from the rise instead of being priced out.
The Takeaway
"Feelings aren't facts. They point toward a truth, and data has to confirm it."
That may be the best summary of his approach. Lead with values, plan for the long term, and then prove it with outcomes you wrote down in advance.
His advice for the next generation of economic developers was just as direct: "Never forget your why." And for elected leaders, get out of the office, get into the community, and listen more than you talk.
Listen to the full episode of the Dynamic Decisions Podcast with Cornell Wesley, then take a hard look at your last development agreement. What did you codify, and what did you leave to a handshake?