With the support of WEDC, Northwestern Mutual, JP Morgan Chase and LISC Milwaukee attained the rights to use and customize Loveland Site Control, a user-friendly parcel survey software that provides real-time visual, quantitative and qualitative data by layering public information with user surveys. Loveland asserts “our community missions include arming people with information to battle a plague of tax foreclosures and running an ongoing survey of property conditions to help fight blight.” LISC Milwaukee recognizes the intentional use of this application would enhance both commercial corridor and housing development and revitalization strategies.
LISC Milwaukee’s strategy is simple: to engage and train community members to complete parcel inventories, launch software and establish ongoing processes. Using the software as a reference tool to engage, empower and educate community residents in identifying reinvestment areas, LISC provides technical assistance, strategic planning, and skill building to community-based organizations, non-profits and residents. Additional objectives for the use of Loveland are to coordinate neighborhood property inventories, identify opportunity for block integrity and fund clustered housing development and preservation informed by residents and coordinated with for profit developers.
In the early months of 2018, a group of Milwaukee high school students and UWM School of Architecture and Planning students surveyed eight Business Improvement Districts within central Milwaukee. With on the ground training by LISC’s community partner Groundwork Milwaukee, the students completed 1,200 commercial property condition surveys catalogued into a dedicated map entitled BREW CITY on the Loveland Site Control application. The purpose of these surveys was to provide BID boards and directors with real-time information and a comprehensive view of current conditions to inform strategies of improvement, recruitment, and retention of businesses to the corridors. Ongoing engagements lead by LISC with six of the BIDs have expanded knowledge of direct use and application of the tool and are actively incorporating Brew City map data and ongoing use in their respective strategies of revitalization.
In fall of 2018, LISC launched Loveland Site Control, working with Dominican Center as the anchor institution and support from Northwestern Mutual to complete a neighborhood-wide housing and parcel condition survey of the Amani neighborhood. Staff and neighborhood residents were trained to effectively utilize the application and in less than two months, more than 4,000 parcels in the neighborhood were catalogued. This comprehensive set of visual, qualitative, and quantitative data provides neighborhood residents and organizations with real-time conditions to inform housing development and revitalization strategies. The software is a means for innovative community and civic engagement in the neighborhood. A goal of this initial survey will be to identify parcels between recently rehabilitated homes and identify homes that are in need of some level of repair. This will provide parcel specific data and recognize absolute needs to create block integrity, where each structure has an opportunity for beautification and blight elimination in redevelopment efforts. Future, comprehensive surveys will serve as a community engagement tool with three benefits:
Foster community relationships, shared learning
Build resident knowledge, understanding of their neighborhood and built environment
Inform shared understanding of needs and identify centers for catalytic cluster development.
Together local neighborhood groups, LISC Milwaukee and Loveland Technologies can gather and present consistent and accurate information about property in clear and actionable ways.