Show Notes

Matt (00:00):
Hey, welcome to the show.

Ilana (00:02):
My pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Matt (00:04):
Glad to have you on if you would just give us a little bit more about yourself to begin with, and then we’ll kind of take that forward and, so kind of give us a Genesis of your professional background, and then we’ll trail that into the book and your mission.

Ilana (00:24):
My pleasure. So my name is Ilana Preuss a city planner by training and I got into all of this work because I love places. I love downtowns. I love walking through places and it breaks my heart when I’m in a place that is clear not that it’s unloved, but that people don’t necessarily see the worth. And when I say people, it’s not even necessarily people who live there, but it’s the people who make the policy decisions or the investment decisions about that place. And for years, I worked in smart growth and community redevelopment, investing in downtowns and housing and transportation options. And over the years, I realized that we kept talking about jobs, housing balance, or, you know, mixed-use, but we never talked about what kind of businesses, what kind of jobs. And about 10 years ago, I went down a rabbit hole to try to figure out what kind of small businesses really do make.

Ilana (01:19):
The biggest difference for our neighborhoods really do make the biggest is difference for our economic resilience and really make the biggest difference for creating more equitable outcomes for more people both in neighborhoods, in bigger cities that have been historically excluded or neglected as well as rural smaller cities and towns that have been neglected in different ways. And I came aim to product businesses and these are, I call them small scale manufacturing. They’re any business that creates a tangible product that you can replicate or package my shorthand for it is hot sauce, handbags, or hardware. The other one that occurred to me more recently is artisans to advance manufacturing. Okay. So it’s really anybody who makes a, it can be food, it can be wood, it can be high tech, but it’s, it’s the product side of it because they can sell in person, they can sell online. And there is a very different kind of business for where we are right now with technology. But they’re also accessible. People have a heritage of making things from every different part of our population. And so they’re a, a really important part of our future economic development strategy.

Matt (02:28):
Yeah. And there’s, there’s so much in that, that first, first bit that we’ve just talked about, but to, to rewind a little bit, and you said you’re a planner by trade? Yes. Okay. Did you have a background, like, where there family members in planning or, or what kind of resonated with you too, to go towards the planning career?

Ilana (02:54):
That’s an interesting question. So I originally thought I wanted to be an architect. Okay. And I went and visited an architecture school at a college and realized that they don’t sleep they have then. And they still don’t. I, you know, I said, I really like design. I really like place. And then, and I’d never heard of planning city planning as a field. And coincidentally, at the same school, they had, planning in the department, urban regional studies. And I learned that it was this place where it was a combination of this kind of design question, but also government and policy. And I grew up, you know, my, my father worked in at the US Environmental Protection Agency. So government policy was sort of always at the dinner table and I fell in love with it. I really love this con love this concept that you could really think about what you wanted to create and work with people in a community to create that. And I was always focused on how are we redeveloping our downtowns, how are we reinvesting in our older neighborhoods from the very beginning?

Matt (03:57):
Interesting. So do you have, it sounds like you kind of really have a deep connection with city centers and urban cores and, and that kind of dense population is, is that kinda your background or have you just fallen in love with the this, this type of place?

Ilana (04:17):
I grew up in suburbia where I was okay Bike to my friend’s house, but there was nothing else I could get to no, as far as you got. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, got my license as soon as I was allowed to, so I would have that freedom. But I grew up also visiting New York City. And when we had a chance to travel, it was either to national parks or to cities we could wander in. I mean, that was really wandering places and appreciating places and, and the people who live there. And the differences have always been a part of, of who I am and my family and my mother, that was my father’s influence. And my mother’s influence was that she made stuff. She sewed, she knit, she quilted. She taught us all how to use drills. So my up and my brothers, we all, we are all tool people. So you know, that love, of not only using tools but being able to know that you can figure out how to make something if that’s what you wanna learn as also just a part of my history.

Matt (05:14):
Awesome. Yeah, I always think it’s kind of interesting to hear what people’s backgrounds are, especially authors that have written because obviously there’s influence from backgrounds and it’s absolutely, it’s funny how you, you know, we, we start unpacking it, it, it makes sense, but the mission behind recast is that, you know, you, you want to promote these types of businesses to create a little more diversity in the community and, and provide places for, for work and business. Right. can you give me in one to two sentences what the, what the mission of, of your book.

Ilana (06:00):
It’s Recast Your City and I work at Recast City. So Recast Your City, the book is focused on how do we help communities bring small-scale manufacturing back into their center as a place and economic data strategy to create a great place.  It’s about building community, but it’s also about building our, our local economy.

Matt (06:27):
Yeah. And I said, these, it kind of hits home on, on some things because you know these, these types of artisans, these, these craftsmen, this, it’s, you know, I worked in Fort worth for a while and, and we always had there’s a part of town called the near south side and they really promoted these types of small scale manufacturing group and, and kind of a mixed industrial, small scale industrial slash residential mix, you know. So it, it really hits home and cuz I’ve seen how those things have worked together. So symbiotically and how it really creates a unique place. Are there other areas that you’ve seen this done really well that you’d like to highlight that are different cities or different parts of town that I’ve really adopted this? And we can take that and go from there.

Ilana (07:45):
Sure. You know, there’s a couple different cities, there’s in fact, a lot of different cities that are taking it on. Now, there were a couple of early adopters. So San Francisco with their organization called SF Mead was one of the first nonprofit organizations that was created by group of small manufacturers to say, we need, we have a collective set of challenges and we wanna create support for that. And so that was everything from helping people find real estate that was affordable and a good state of repair to workforce development training to representing their voice to the city. But also marketing them and, and sort of making sure that people understood that this was an, a part of the local economy doing tour days of their workspaces and everything like that. So they were really the first ones that got this figured out at scale, not for a specific neighborhood, but really looking citywide.

Ilana (08:40):
Their other that have followed suit Baltimore with their made in Baltimore brand and the open works maker space and the competitions that they’ve run a home run accelerator in Baltimore is really an amazing program where they identified that there are a lot of people that have home-based businesses, but would like to be in a storefront and Baltimore wants more businesses in storefronts. And so this program competed for assistance to folks who had strong home-based businesses to go through a training program and really make sure that they had all of their ducks in order and training in order to be prepared to be a storefront in a bricks and mortar and succeed at it. And then they also introduce those people to property owners who are interested in, being their landlords and provide a small amount of grant funding to them to help make the transition.
Ilana (09:29):
And so it was really thinking about this very purposeful engagement, who do we wanna benefit? What outcome are we trying to achieve? And those buckets of training real estate and capital are sort of the three key pieces of it. So you know, we’re seeing it all over the country from, from those kinds of bigger cities to small town, main streets. I did a project in Helu Alabama last year, two years ago that you know, really all about how do they work on their four blocks of the main street where they’ve done a lot of work with their main street program, but they still had a few vacancies and the whole idea behind small scale manufacturing that you’re not dependent on foot traffic today. You’re not dependent on local incomes because that business is, has a storefront, but is also selling online. And so the, or bringing revenue into the community makes it a really, really strong opportunity for smaller cities or neighborhood main streets that don’t have strong foot traffic right now. 

Matt (10:28):
And that, that seems like a pretty big advantage these days. Right? So being able to not pin on foot traffic and be able to benefit from internet sales obviously is, is something that is easier to kind of market to these small businesses of, Hey, we’d like you on our main street. We’d like your business there wanna bring people to the area cause they’ve gotta have a reason to come. Right. Right. So, you know, but we can’t guarantee the foot track until you actually come, you know, it actually multiple businesses come in and, and then they start generating that foot traffic. So that’s gotta be an interesting kind of new way to start those businesses that it, it wasn’t necessarily the chicken or the egg of do we bring, do we have to have residential nearby to make things viable or can we can we establish a business and then bring residential in? And

Ilana (11:38):

I mean, they’re gonna need re you know, downtown residentials, I assume part of the solution for me given what I’ve done. But I think the interesting part is that it makes people think about their space and their placemaking in a different way, because we always say with placemaking right, we want foot traffic. Well, if you don’t have any foot traffic and your retail has completely died, where do you start? Okay, you can start with programming fine, but that’s not long term. And so this is really thinking about all the steps in between that we need to be able to attract people back and do it in a way that is cognizant of what a small of sexually needs, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> they need, you can’t just ask a, a small store or a retailer to open up when there is no foot traffic, if you can’t promise foot traffic, if they’re completely depended on the people who are walking into their store.

Ilana (12:26):

And so we saw a lot of change in that during the pandemic. So people are looking at businesses in, in a different way, but most of, most of our cities and most of our towns from an economic development standpoint sort of are like, yeah, retail’s nice and all, but that’s not economic development. Right? Economic development is us, you know, pursuing some 200 or 2000 person business that we wanna bring to our area and we’re gonna throw money or incentives at it. And I think one of the big challenges is from an economic development standpoint is getting local leaders to recognize that not only does the throwing the money at it, not usually influence the decision, making most places aren’t gonna win that competition. And so what is everybody else gonna do? What is that model for them? And so that’s where, where this really comes in is saying, you know, you, you can go after tech, if you want, you can work on recruitment if you want, but really you have these businesses in your community today and you can help them grow and you can help them grow their revenue and you can help them be more resilient and you can help them scale if that’s what they wanna do.

Ilana (13:30):

They’re some of them are gonna wanna say, stay solo entrepreneur. Some of them are gonna wanna scale to 5, 10, 20 employees. And these businesses pay 50 to a hundred percent more per on salary than retailer service jobs. So this is one of the ways that we start bringing better, more wealth into the community. Oh, and, you know, research shows that, you know, we have this huge racial health gap or white households have 10 times the wealth of black households on average nationally, but black households that own businesses have 12 times the wealth of black households that do not own a business. And so when we’re really starting to look at the, the big questions of our day, this is one of the ways out.

Matt (14:16):

So, so how do we get out? <Laugh> so that’s a big question, right? So you mentioned five steps, a five step method. You, you kind of condensed it down into five understandable attainable steps in, in the book. Can we go into each in a little bit of detail just to give everyone kind of an idea of, of what sure. What those

Ilana (14:44):

Steps are? So the Reester city book is a first important to understand it’s, it’s a, how to book. It’s a DIY, pick it up, get the worksheets, make it happen for your own community kind of book. There are no secrets that I kept back it’s all in the book. So that’s, I think an important person thing to understand the five steps in the book that are, this method are how we work with every community we work with. And so it, it starts with what outcome are you trying to achieve and who should benefit from it? That’s step one, step two is finding the right people to talk to. So in this case, we give people a method to find small scale manufacturing businesses, because they’re not a standing database, nobody knows who they are, but they’re there mm-hmm <affirmative> so find those people find the property owners in the target area.

Ilana (15:33):

You’re, you’re looking at who we think are open to doing something different than maybe before, or really believe into the, the community and its future. And then also finding connectors, people who can help you connect with these business owners from across the demographic diversity of your population. This is really important. We know that, like I said, we’re, we’re facing racial wealth gaps. We have the greatest income inequity we’ve ever recorded in our country’s history. That was before the pandemic. And we have a responsibility to make sure that we’re reaching across our demographic diversity, because the, there, the heritage of making things crosses every different part of our population across income, across immigrant status, race, ethnicity sexual orientation, age, whatever it is, whatever divide you wanna pick, there are people who make stuff. And so that’s a part of it as well. And then step three is about talking to people.

Ilana (16:27):

It’s really this method that’s straight out of tech research user or research techniques where it’s about sitting down with one business owner at a time and say, and asking a consistent set of questions, not in a survey kind of way, but actually in an open-ended kind of way to really hear what, what, what works for them about being in that community. What’s hard for them. What’s challenging for them about being in that place. And what’s most important to them in that next year. And I’ll come back to that question in a second. The fourth step is analyzing it, understanding from across all of the different people you’ve spoken to, what works, what doesn’t work what’s most important. What are the kinds of assets that you can build on to address some of the challenges or what are some of the challenges that could with a small step you’ve could solve really quickly?

Ilana (17:15):

And then the fifth step is, is making it happen. It’s an action step. It is all about, we really encourage people to find actions that they can take in the next three to nine months that are visible. That make a real difference that are not just visible, but make a real difference for these business owners because people are really struggling right now. And we can’t wait. And so find identifying those actions that you can take in the next three to nine months, what do people need in the next year, if right. Feeds into that, that can make a big difference, build on your assets, address some of those gaps that are the most important and most glaring, and then also identify the big, hard stuff that might take a few years to happen. But you’re building up Goodwill and you’re building up partnerships and you’re building relationships with these short term successes to reach the bigger, harder things. Mm-Hmm

Matt (18:04):

<Affirmative>. Can you give me some examples of, of some of these hard, hard challenges that, that people are facing in promoting this type?

Ilana (18:15):

Yeah. So when we worked in Columbia, Missouri we worked with a community improvement district, which is just like a business improvement district. It’s just not in the downtown called the loop. And they had a, you know, the, the property owners across corridor are part of the, the, the board and got together and said, we know our area can be so much more and they are sandwich between a light industrial area tucked in next to the highway and an older residential area area, historically black households south of this area. And the improvement district said, we wanna be something to both of these, and we wanna make sure we’re benefiting our property owners, but we wanna make sure we’re, we’re answering a need in the community. And so we went out and interviewed a whole bunch of small scale manufacturing business owners from across the demographic diversity in the community.

Ilana (19:06):

And we found that there were bunch of food product businesses that people had at home mm-hmm <affirmative> they were producing in their own kitchen because of what are called cottage food laws that allow you to produce a certain amount of, of food at home to sell. And they were bumping up against the edge of how much they could produce at home mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they could only get into certain markets like a supermarket if they were producing it in a commercial shared kitchen, and we recognized this need. And the other thing that we recognized through the project was that there was a building on this corridor that was owned old cafeteria kitchen, and it wasn’t, it was there, it was a little old, but it was, you know, it had working parts and needed a little improvement. And through doing this project together, we also, they had also brought in the economic development authority.

Ilana (20:04):

And so all of a sudden we had a clear identified need, and we had the right partners already at the table because of the way that we did the discuss in the outreach. And so for them to turn around and say, well, we immediately can put within three months, we can put vendors at our popup park that we’re building already on this corridor, and we’re gonna promote them on our social media. And we’re gonna actually, they changed their branding immediately to talk about making things on the loop. Those were all things that they could do in the first six months COVID hit. But then they opened that commercial kitchen in less than a year and a half when it was COVID deleted by about six months. Right. And so, but that was because of what we had understood. We understood the outcomes they were trying to achieve.

Ilana (20:49):

They knew who they wanted to benefit. They wanted to make sure that the space was mission driven and benefiting black and Latino women in the community who were the majority of these businesses that they were finding. And they had the partnerships and the space, so they still needed some investment they needed to get buy in. There was whole that they had to negotiate, but they had a starter space for their commercial kitchen and could turn around and make it happen so quickly because of all of this other work that we had done at the beginning.

Matt (21:16):

Right. Right. So identifying assets, like you were saying, Mizu happened to have a kitchen <laugh> industrial kitchen nearby in a vacant building. That was a great idea to utilize, you know, what, what assets were available and, and meet that with the challenges of, of kind of those citizens in the area and yeah. Their additional investment in that area after it sounds like this was pretty recent, but

Ilana (21:48):

The kitchen opened in January.

Matt (21:50):

1. OK.

Ilana (21:52):

So if you noticed send, yeah, they they’ve changed the, they just also changed the zoning on this corridor to allow artisan industry is what they’re calling it. So now they’re really sort of creating the space for new development to happen. The reality is, is that the areas zone for use, but the buildings that are there, which are set with large parking lots are completely full mm-hmm <affirmative> they don’t have vacancies on this corridor. And so, and mixed use doesn’t actually pencil for the most part. And so part of what we also looked at for them was what are the interim uses that we could help them figure out? Could you create a series of popup spaces? Could you create you could use prefab buildings for like, for small scale manufacturing purposes, right? How do you, how do you get over that hurdle? And, and I think one of the things that’s really different about it is we didn’t say, let me say in the positive, we said, what do we want here?

Ilana (22:46):

And who should be able to be in that space? Right. Cause it has to be affordable to the small scale manufacturers. Right? So instead of saying this, we want a 10 story building. And like, that’s the only thing that we’re saying about it. So the 10 story building, or a five story building might be the right thing eventually, but none of it pencils right now. And even if you did new construction, the small scale manufacturers would not be able to afford it because the cost of construction is so high that none of them could afford the ground floor space without significant subsidy. So we’re really taking that step back and saying, we’re not looking at all of the assets in the community. We’re looking at the assets through the lens of the needs of this very specific business type in a very specific place, because we have to think about it place based and, and really thinking about who should benefit from the investment in that place.

Ilana (23:35):

So it’s not, we’re not all over the place. All of the actions are coming back to that outcome that we established at the beginning. So it’s, it’s super focused in, in what you’re trying to figure out so that the actions you take makes so much sense mm-hmm <affirmative> while you’re doing it, I’ll give you another example, E Ohio we’re working with right now in our recast leaders program, which is a 12 month cohort program. We run for five cities at a time to teach them how to do this, coach them, do it themselves and then support their implementation. And they are working with a property owner to renovate an older space and use it as an incubator for a number of small producers, three or four small producers, to be able to go into that space. The producers have gone through a training program right there. They’re gonna hopefully be able to move into the space next month, but it was all because the city said, we know we have these businesses somewhere, but we don’t have them downtown. And we wanna, whoever wants to work with us, gonna with first to start making these happen and do it.

Matt (24:43):

And was that, that example, was that a public private partnership or how did that, how did that work financially?

Ilana (24:51):

Just curious. Yes. That’s a public private partnership, private sector, public support to make it happen.

Matt (24:58):

1. And I would imagine for most places, that’s really what it, what it kind of takes almost to

Ilana (25:06):

Depends on the people and depends on the place. I mean, there’s a great example, Inca, New York that’s, there’s in fact, a lot of examples across the country that are completely private sector at this point because it, it really can pencil depending on the market mm-hmm <affirmative>. And depending on, on the creativity of the property owner, so Inca New York, there’s a space called press bay alley and the old newspaper press building. And cause it was already industrial. It was grandfathered in industrial. They could keep it like that. So they put a, they put a maker space in the basement, they on the alleyway, they created a whole series of micro retail spaces. They’re actually getting above market rate on because at th a 300 square foot micro retail space, the business coming into it, isn’t thinking about it on a per square foot basis. They’re thinking about the flat fee of using this space.

Ilana (25:55):

Right. And they have office space in the building, right. There’s a mix of different things going on there. But when we think about it as a part of this and really think about what the market wants, they’ve got a waiting list. I think of 50 business is wanting micro retail space. So they’re doing it in the second building. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> right. So they they’ve tapped into something that nobody else is answering. Similarly in Dallas, Texas there’s Tyler station. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, it’s a huge older, industrial building. You’re probably familiar with it, right? There’s 70 different businesses in there. And the space is divided up in a very simple way with chain link. Like it’s not, not investment of major walls, but it works. And so lots of these businesses now do do products together and it’s not just product businesses, it’s all different kinds of things out there.

Ilana (26:38):

And, and then if you look at Macon studios, which is in Philadelphia and the Kensington neighborhood, that’s old multi floor industrial property, you know, this is a private sector developer who got institutional investment backing and is renovated this these hundred and 20,000 square foot buildings to be subdivided into a whole bunch of small scale manufacturing spaces. They’re not micro they’re, I don’t know, 2000 square feet or bigger, but there are people coming from up and down the east coast to use these spaces because it’s like moving into a cowork space. It’s already, you know, there is one entrance, people are taking care of the building it’s and it’s just, there’s some amazing, serious and scaling businesses in these buildings.

Matt (27:26):

Yeah, that’s incredible. Yeah. I talked to Monty before in, in Dallas and Monty Anderson and he’s got quite a bit of that. He he’ll, he likes to use some of that right. Sizing essentially, of, of, of office space or working space and is able to create rents that are affordable. And it’s, you know, they’re smaller areas, but they’re right for the business, you know, most, most times you don’t need that huge investment for most of these businesses that you’re referring to. So right. Just

Ilana (28:04):

Under a thousand square feet. Right.

Matt (28:06):

Right. Is that kinda what the criteria for micro would be or is that even

Ilana (28:11):

Less? No, it’s not on a square foot basis. So I talk about, oh, for micro retail, maybe that’s a good question. Probably. I mean, most of our retail spaces are still being built at 5,000 square feet are bigger. Right? So anybody who has retail that was built in the eighties or nineties there, those are some of, I think some of our significant vacancies because so many stores, even the national chains have shrunk their footprint. And if you can’t get the national chains, most local businesses don’t wanna footprint that big. So we have this big challenge of that. Do you, how do reuse these spaces for retail in a that’s most effective for them? But you know, we see the same thing with small scale manufacturing that we see with other businesses. There’s a ton of them that are really small, think about tech freelancers, right?

Ilana (28:56):

There’s a ton of them that are really small. There are a few that scale to 10 or 20 employees. And then there are a few unicorns under armor, right? Like the, they, they happen. Food and, and clothing are probably the ones that scale most that are more, most likely to scale, but not only and small scale manufacturing for, to me is businesses between one and 50 employees. If you’re in a smaller town, might max out at one to 20 employees because it’s really about fitting of the fabric of the downtown, the main street or the neighborhood that we’re talking about. And so that that’s really the criteria for it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>

Matt (29:35):

Well, why do you think people are, are drawn to these type of businesses for, for, you know, retail for, for purchasing? Why are, why are people drawn to local manufacturers and local artisans?

Ilana (29:51):

Well, I think when we, when people can afford it, it’s really something special, right? It’s, it’s unique. You, you can’t see it anywhere else. I think that people, and I actually think the, the, from what I’ve read gen Z is probably the best at this is it’s not about consuming lots of different things. It’s about consuming a few really special things. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And so I, I think this is a part of a, I also think that when you go to a festival or, or a cultural fair in your community, and you see vendors that are people from your community who make things, it really builds that sense of pride in your community and what you’re about. People really, it it’s really an amenity to be able to go to a window and see something being made. And so really thinking about how we create places that are unique, that are, that are really special telling the story or the, the heritage of your community and the people who are there really makes a place stand out.

Ilana (30:47):

It’s the places we often go on vacation. We wanna wander around the cute place. That’s unlike anywhere else. We wanna stop in the store. And so when we think about creating those kinds of places for our own community, then we’re going to have that potential of other people stopping in. We’re gonna be creating a place that people within our community value. And I think it’s important to think about the people from the neighborhood, from the community, getting access to those storefronts. The question of who gets the storefronts, I think is when we don’t ask often enough when we’re in place making and main street work. And I think it’s a really important question for us to ask, but, you know, we can really, we can really do a lot of exciting things in those spaces at this point.

Matt (31:28):

Yeah. And we touched on this previously too, but the, the digital revolution, you know, you’ve got Etsy has blown up <laugh>, you know, and it, it draws from kind of the local artists’. The family business is the small scale of manufacturing. Do you see the digital revolution as being a detriment to this, to this type of manufacturing or

Ilana (31:56):

No, not at all. It expanded their market, right? The fact that these businesses can sell online across their region or across the country or internet nationally, is why they can, the way Theyre historically, you know, a business was dependent on who they personally knew, or the people who were walked by their storefront, and that’s just not the case anymore. So I think that the digital revolution particular, the, the, these last two years to really buy so much online while still wanting the experience of going into storefronts, we know that part’s not going away that, that that’s a really a competitive edge for this sector cause of it and has made a really big difference. Mm-Hmm

Matt (32:36):

Well, we’ve thrown around the word. Placemaking a few times in this, in this discussion, and fittingly, I’d like to ask you what your definition of placemaking would be, and, and maybe how this concept of small-scale manufacturing can blend to your definition of placemaking.

Ilana (33:07):

I feel like you must ask everybody a question it’s a to so too is a that feel like they’re that’re and that they feel like they, that this is the place where the community can come together, however, whoever their community is. And, and I think that it needs to be defined by the people who live in that place, not by the the distant planners or the distant designers. Sure. I think the reason middle-scale manufacturing works so well is because it is, if you do it the way I’m describing it, it is of the neighborhood by the neighborhood. These are businesses that are coming from the community. But, they help create that unique identity that is, that we know is so valuable for placemaking. It helps create that feel of this is a place I wanna gather because there’s cool things for me to look at, or be a part of when we successfully have a diversity of business owners in the storefronts that are from the community or represent the demographics of the wider community people feel included, they feel like this is a place that can belong to them.

Ilana (34:20):

And it also creates that sense of beauty. Right? You can see these beautiful things even if, even if it’s a widget, right? The machines that make these things are just so fascinating. And so interesting that they become a draw of something beautiful and interesting to see in and of themselves. 

Matt (34:41):

Yeah. They, they really do, like you said, create kind of a gathering space. People see their neighbors when they walk into these you know, it’s, it becomes kind of a social gathering and that lends to, like you said, the, the place making aspect, and I want to touch back on what you were saying about for the people by the people. How do you, and you, you touch on it in the book and you go into detail in the book, but how do you begin those discussions with people that or how do you find these people, I guess, is more so that are making things and are, are doing small, small manufacturing and maybe in their own homes

Ilana (35:31):

How you find it is a hard part of the work. We, we do have a whole method in the book that is very true. And it is really based on the way I find people when I work with communities. And for anybody who’s interested, you can get the first chapter of the book for free at recast, your city.com, but you can also get the worksheets that go with the book there that give you the how-to in the worksheets on this. So it is about, it is a part about just word of mouth, who do you know, once you start thinking about this business sector, you realize you see them everywhere. That’s the first thing I hear from everybody. The second piece is that kind of asking the people, you know, who do they know in that sector who make stuff.

Ilana (36:13):

And then the other thing is connectors people who are known and trusted in different populations within your community, who believe in the potential of that community and believe in the future of that community, inviting them in having a cup of coffee with them, asking them, you know, telling them about what you’re trying to do and asking for their help, asking them to work with you on it. Because we have so many divides in our communities. So many divides in our population that we need to take the responsibility to build new relationships with people, to reach new parts of our population. There’s no other way to find a whole crew of home-based businesses without going through somebody who just has personal relationships with those businesses, those business owners. We also look at vendors for different markets, farmers, markets, holiday markets, it’s festivals, and things like that.

Matt (37:01):

And, and the first step, like you said, is, is awareness is, is being aware of this type of, of business. Just, you know, most people know somebody that’s maybe doing like a side business here or there, but I don’t think it really resonates with people that people are doing this at, you know, at a large scale and in their community.

Ilana (37:26):

Absolutely. I mean, there’s, there’s a wonderful woman around here near I has a cookie it’s actually not just cookies, but she started with cookies. She makes desserts. She tells her story. I heard her tell her story at an event where she was, you know, she was working, she was producing at home. And then she was using the kitchen of a restaurant when they closed at 11 o’clock at night. So she was producing from like 11:00 PM to 6:00 AM or something. I have no idea how she did this. And then she moved to a shared commercial kitchen, and then she scaled and was getting investors to build out her own 5,000 square foot production facility. Right. Like, but she went through all of those different steps to scale her business. And it’s so much harder than somebody who picked, opens a laptop. Right. Right. And, and her, her cookies are unbelievable.

Ilana (38:20):

Her chocolate chest pie, her business’ name is Whisk. But you know, this, this is what I, the concern that I have, especially with the economic development field is that people say sort of, like you just said, oh, there’s, there are people who do this, like in their spare time, the reality is, is there’s a ton of people who do this full time at home yeah. As their full income. And then there are people who are scaling beyond that and have employees and, and do these weird space combinations because there’s nothing about our economic development strategy and our real estate market that accommodates this sector. And so I always talk about thinking about what do these businesses need in terms of support space and capital when they’re starting up and scaling and really growing and they’re different answers at different has.

Matt (39:16):

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That these stories are and I’m sure you’ve got tons of stories of, of people that have, have kind of transitioned their way from a home business to scaling. And every, every step along the way keeps you up at night at your current role. I think you kind of touched on this with your concern there, but just curious, what, what keeps you up at night?

Ilana (39:46):

Current role keeps me up at night. So many things keep me up, but to this my biggest concern last year, we had this true outpouring of support for small businesses, not just small scale manufacturing, but, but local, small businesses. And I think that where we are with the pandemic, and this is true of how many people have died, this is true of businesses, closed. People wanna move on and they wanna have amnesia. They forget how hard and how awful last year was. And the reality is, is that the small businesses are in fact struggling a lot more right now because last year there were all kinds of support that we were throwing the weight. Not that it was equitably accessed, but there was support out there. And so many businesses that survived last year. So many businesses closed that year and they closed at twice the rate for Black-owned businesses or Latino-owned businesses than white businesses.

Ilana (40:44):

But so many are more that are still, there are struggling this year for various reasons. And so my big fear is that last year, people really understood that if small businesses fail the community fails and that’s really the soul of the play and that this year people sort of wanna move on. And I’m worried about a neglect of this sector and a, an ignoring of this sector that really needs attention, not just right now to get through where we are still economically, but that we have this opportunity to create this almost perpetual economic engine with the American rescue plan act money that went out to all these communities, tons and tons of money that’s out there that, yes, we definitely need to use it to help them, the small businesses. And a lot of communities are doing it for infrastructure and fixing their water system is very important. But part of it could also be used to really build up this sector of small businesses, small-scale manufacturing, and I’m worried that we’re missing that opportunity.

Matt (41:43):

Hmm. Those are, that’s a great point. There is, there is a lot of help distributed recently and to make sure at least a portion of it goes to support something that is added to the economic viability of, of your city centers, your downtowns is important. And, you know, in several areas I’ve seen that the, you know, the downtown areas get neglected or new sparkly infrastructure out the, you know, at the edge of the city and hopefully more of that attention gets, and, and you’re, you’re seeing it in some places, but hopefully more of it gets distributed to those, those city centers. That’s really the heart of the city.

Ilana (42:37):

Well, or the neighborhoods that didn’t get the investment in the past. Yeah. Right.

Matt (42:41):

Looking forward. What is what is the legacy of not only yourself, but recast? What do you hope that legacy looks like years in the future?

Ilana (42:55):

Oh my goodness. I can barely get five years in the future. <Laugh> recast city. So the legacy of recast city to me is that communities recognize that small scale manufacturing businesses are a key part of their economic development strategy. That space for locally owned business is particularly product businesses are seen as a public good and gets public support like affordable housing. We create affordable commercial space to retain good middle income jobs and locally owned businesses in the community alongside other investments. And that this really is, is a big part of the change of how we address the, the racial wealth gap, the ethnic wealth gap that we’re seeing across the country, and really changes who can build wealth and create a lot more opportunity for people who didn’t have the, or who were excluded in the mm-hmm

Matt (43:52):

<Affirmative> well, you are you’re well on your way, but that is a big task.

Ilana (44:00):

You gave me a hundred years. I’m okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (44:02):

You, you got plenty of time. No problem. Plenty of time. <Laugh> well, I, I really appreciate your time today. I did want to give you some time here just to, just to give us a little bit more about where we can find we’re about not only recast, but your book yourself and your mission.

Ilana (44:23):

Sure. So you can find all the information about the book at recast, your city.com. You can get the first chapter for free there’s links to buy the book@bookshop.org. You can get the Kindle version Amazon, or if you wanna get the hard copy discounted, you can order it directly from the publisher island, press, you use promo code recast, and you get 20% off the list price. And if you’re interested in information about the work that we do with communities, go to recast city, and we right now have open applications for the recast leaders cohort for 2022, if this is something you wanna with a crew of other cool cities.

Matt (45:10):

Awesome. Awesome. So just on this, this cohort can you give us a little bit more about what what’s involved?

Ilana (45:22):

Sure. it’s the co leaders, we bring five communities together who want to bring small scale manufacturing to some part of their city. And each community builds a team of three or four people. And we work with all five cities together to train them on this method, coach them to do the work themselves, do the, do find the list, create the list, find the people, do the interviews, do the analysis. And then we help each community build their own action plan. And then the second half of the cohort time is supporting those communities to implement their short term actions. Because we found that when we worked with communities and handed over an action plan and walked away, they really struggled with implementation if they didn’t have any kinda support. And so this is really our answer to how do we help make sure people get through through a big part of that first round of implementation.

Ilana (46:15):

So it’s a 12 month program. It’s really exciting to see communities go from from very first step of what outcome do we wanna achieve and achieve. And how do we find these people to implementing the example I gave you from Euclid, Ohio is, is a group a, is the a group from, in the cohort program right now that are really implementing things real-time. Yeah. Because they figured out what the community needs and they got the buy-in and they’re making things happen. So it’s very exciting. The next cohort starts January 2022. And so if you look on our website about how we work with people, you’ll see information about recast leaders there. Awesome.

Matt (46:57):

It sounds like a really cool program. Thank you for

Ilana (46:59):

It’s a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun running it. <Laugh>

Matt (47:02):

Awesome. Well, thank you again for all your time and hopefully, we can stay in touch. Thank

Ilana (47:09):

Thank You so much for having me.