Full article by Leah Binkovitz

The role these groups could play crystallized for Eureka Gilkey, executive director of Project Row Houses, when the community-based, non-profit arts organization began working with the Emancipation Economic Development Council and a group of architecture and planning students and professors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year. The team determined that the churches, non-profits and public entities in the area owned roughly a quarter of the land in Third Ward.

“We’re definitely at a critical point,” Gilkey said, of the large portion of property owned by public entities and nonprofits. “Developers and funders are looking at this and seeing this is a game-changer.” And the community is beginning to see a way to hold on to their neighborhood.

“When we talk to other cities about the work that has already been done,” she said, “they’re amazed.”