• Vision Planning and Urban Design
• Physical Development Health and Human Services
• Jobs and Economic Development
• Housing and Home Ownership
• Leadership Development
• Greenway Pedestrian Corridor Commercial Revitalization Community-Organizing
• Mixed-Use, Mixed-Income, Diverse Community Facilities Community-Building

As part of the celebration of its Fiftieth Year Anniversary, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation initiated an extraordinary Community Development - Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative encouraging bold and collaborative program development. There was encouragement to explore significant new and enriched relationships among separate organizations that work with similar objectives in our neighborhoods.

LISC collaborated with twelve CDCs and over fifty community organizations in its initial application. Thereafter LISC agreed to develop a joint proposal with The Collins Center for Public Policy and The Trust for Public Land to focus upon the challenge of transforming Overtown with the following goals:

• To plan, create and sustain a healthy mixed-income, multi-ethnic community and a mixed-use neighborhood with adequate public spaces and parklands;
• To use private, public and community capital to build housing and physical development, create jobs and economic development and contribute to the social and human development of area residents.
• To affirm and build upon the historic and cultural heritage of Overtown;
• To assure maximum possible benefits to the existing residents and businesses from a revitalized Overtown;
• To undertake this neighborhood transformation effort with the significant collaboration and participation of Overtown stakeholders and through a broad program of community participation, community organizing and community-building.

Greater Miami LISC will support the work of local community development corporations and other community-based organizations to transform Overtown from a distressed neighborhood into a healthy community through a comprehensive community development program of physical improvement, economic development and community-building.

• LISC will provide support to BAME Development Corporation, particularly in its work to complete the Miami River Apartments and Bethel Arms providing much needed affordable housing. BAME will also develop 40 units of home ownership housing and seek to develop senior housing adjacent to its work.
• LISC will provide support to assist the Black Archives History and Research Foundation in its effort to expand and adapt the Lyric Theater and in the development of the Folklife Center as an entertainment, restaurant and shopping neighborhood center and urban attraction.
• LISC will provide support to St John CDC to develop St John Village Townhomes as home ownership housing and the rehabilitation of St. John Village Apartments as rental housing as well as the development of commercial and community space.
• LISC will provide capacity-building support to St. Agnes – Rainbow CDC as the community partner that will develop Town Park Plaza in partnership with the Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust. LISC will work collaboratively with the Overtown Advisory Board and Overtown Neighborhood Assembly.

The Collins Center for Public Policy will establish a Civic Partnership and Design Center and a Community Land Trust that will assist residents in South Florida’s urban core neighborhoods to vision, plan and carry out substantial revitalization activities – housing and other physical improvements, economic opportunities, human services and leadership development.

The Trust for Public Land will create the Overtown Greenway as a pedestrian corridor to connect neighborhoods, businesses, people and cultures, while complementing and spurring economic reinvestment and transforming the community into a central destination landscape.