By David Gordon, associate editor
A grassroots effort in Eau Claire’s Randall Park neighborhood could gradually bring about a greater balance of homeowners and renters in the area as well as improving its overall housing quality.
The Historic Randall Park Revitalization Corp. has been working toward those goals for more than a year, according to Helene Smiar, president of the nonprofit corporation. The corporation grew out of the city’s 2015 comprehensive plan and a series of follow-up meetings, and has the goal of systematically purchasing and rehabilitating rental properties and then reselling them to owners who will occupy them.
The neighborhood currently has some 85% of its housing in the rental market with only 15% owner-occupied, Smiar said, and the group hopes to bring this closer to a 50-50 balance. Most of the rental units are occupied by University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire students and the corporation is working with the area’s neighborhood association to connect with the student renters, she said.
Neighborhood boundaries and background
The Historic Randall Park Neighborhood is bounded by the Chippewa River on the east and south, by 10th Avenue (both sides) on the west and on the north by Fulton Street and an extension to the bike path behind St. Patrick’s school.
It was first platted in the 1850s and is one of Eau Claire’s oldest inner-city residential areas. Many of its homes were built between 1870 and the early 1900s, when the city was first settled, according to the 2014 neighborhood plan for the area adopted by the City Council.
The neighborhood began to experience a gradual transition in the 1960s when many single-family homes were converted to rental units for UW-EC students, a trend that was fueled by the university’s increasing size.
The area’s current 85% rental rate is “not really sustainable for any neighborhood,” Smiar said. As part of the effort to attract more residential home owners, the group will try “to raise the quality of housing by doing as many rehabs as possible,” with an immediate goal of doing a couple each year, she added.
She noted that the demand for off-campus student housing may decrease as UW-EC finishes renovating some of its dormitories and re-opens them to students. In turn, that may lead to a willingness on the part of landlords who now rent to students to sell their properties to the corporation for rehabbing and eventual resale as owner-occupied homes.
The Revitalization Corporation
The corporation is an all-volunteer organization at present, and is headed by a seven-member board chaired by David Barnes, a lifelong resident of the Randall Park area who is well versed in its history. The corporation was created in 2017 by a vote of the Historic Randall Park Neighborhood Association, which is the corporation’s sole member.
The corporation’s mission is “to improve the unique living environment and housing stock” of the neighborhood, through cooperative ventures. Its establishment was a response to an aging housing stock, with the intent of preserving the area’s historic character, Smiar said.
Its greatest challenge is to find funding for the housing activities it wants to undertake, Smiar said, since federal funding has been drying up. She added that the group is looking into all financing possibilities as part of developing a viable business model.
Shorter term goals
In the shorter term, the corporation will be designing and launching a website, developing a logo and launching a publicity effort that will include talks at meeting of local organizations. It has already produced an interactive map of housing in the neighborhood, with the help of two UW-EC Business School students who lived in the area and who took on this task as a class assignment.
The map shows all existing neighborhood homes and provides all public access records when a home is clicked. Smiar said the group hopes to add historic information to the available data, so all relevant information will be easily available when the corporation considers homes that could be of interest to purchase.
She said the group is also in the process of connecting with similar organizations in other cities, “learning from them and getting materials from them” that will enable it to develop a workable model for adding owner-occupied homes to the Randall Park neighborhood.
As part of its focus on owner-occupied homes, the corporation has an interest in affordable housing, she said. This would tie in well with the efforts of such groups as PORCH (Progressive OutReach with our Community’s Homeless), an organization set up to work with people experiencing homelessness to remove obstacles – such as a lack of reliable transportation to jobs – that contribute to their inability to find housing.
Note: the photos accompanying this article were taken by Andrew Fefer.
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