President's Annual Report, April 19, 2022

Clarksville Community Development Annual Report

Mary Reed, President

April 17, 2022

 Challenging is the word that best describes last year for the CCDC. Almost nothing was quick or easy.

There were many reasons why. For starters, COVID continued to be an issue, which meant that we could not have in-person board meetings, we could not open the Haskell House to the public, nor could we have any neighborhood events. Everything was somewhat impersonal and from a neighborhood visibility perspective, it was almost like the CCDC did not exist.

Another major reason is that our relationship with our property manager went south and things got very difficult. We ended up parting company in June, which meant we had to find a new property manager. Thankfully, Mark Rogers with the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation, referred us to Prak Property Management and after meeting with Brad, the board decided to hire his company to manage our properties and handle our bookkeeping. Although we all breathed a big initial sigh of relief after that decision, Brad soon gave us some painful reality checks. We learned among other things, that our finances were not as solid as we had thought they were and that many maintenance and repair issues at our properties had been ignored or not addressed appropriately. Therefore, the CCDC was looking at several challenging and expensive years ahead.

Big delays and cost over-runs on all of our projects because of COVID and supply chain issues were also responsible for making last year difficult. For example, pretty much as soon as construction of our new affordable and green rental property at 1611 West 10th finally got underway, we realized that the project would exceed the funding we had for it given that we were working with a 2 year-old budget and building costs were escalating. However, our contractor, American Youth Works, promised to save money where ever it could.

And the Haskell House project posed a myriad number of challenges, especially because the project had stalled while our former property manager was in charge of it and Kim McKnight, PARD’s Program Manager for Historic Preservation, Tourism and Wayfinding, was very frustrated with the CCDC. However, once I took over as project manager, we were able to get things back on track. We identified potential contractors, drew up specs, solicited bids and ended up hiring Phoenix 1 Restoration and Construction out of Dallas. However, their bid exceeded the amount of the Heritage Tourism Grant we had received from the City’s Economic Development Department to fund the project. Luckily, given that the CCDC could not afford to kick in any of its own money, PARD agreed to pay for the cost of the window work and assumed responsibility for installing a new roof and gutters on the House. And then, once work began on the HH and Phoenix told us that the project was going to cost an additional $9K because of the amount of rotten wood involved, PARD agreed to pick up that cost as well. Although getting the project launched and completed required 14 different meetings between me and PARD staff between mid-June and mid-December, in the end, everyone involved was thrilled with the outcome. Case in point, two weeks ago Kim sent me and everyone on her team who helped make the project happen the following email: “This has not been an easy project, but we all pitched in and did what was needed to preserve this special and significant historic building for years to come. This is what a true partnership is all about. Many thanks, Mary, for your work. And Ellen and Albert: I am beyond grateful for your oversight and assistance.”

Speaking of PARD, we also entered into a new Haskell House Use Agreement with that department. The agreement is much, much more detailed than our previous ones and requires that the CCDC do a lot more including submitting an annual report to Kim. I submitted our first such report last December and it included 13 different required attachments, including a volunteer training plan, all of which to be written from scratch. Also, I had to submit background checks for all board members as well as for everyone who had volunteered to be a Haskell House docent.

Last but not least, we made progress in baby steps on the 1011 Charlotte second egress project, which is being funded with OWANA $. Hopefully, this time next year, I will be able to report that it was completed.