Stop Gentrification Now!

Submitted via email

To the Birmingham Board of Education,

Dr. Douglas Lee Ragland, D1

Terri Michal, D2

Mary Boehm, D3

Daagye Hendricks, D4

Mickey Millsap, D5

Cheri Gardner, D6

Sonja Q. Smith, D8

Sandra Brown, D9

Dear Birmingham Board of Education Members,

The Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust (DH-SCLT), in partnership with five other community-based organizations, proposes an innovative, regenerative plan to collaborate and develop the aging Brunetta C. Hill Elementary School into the Hill Mutual Aid and Community School (Hill Center). The Hill Center will follow Community School principals and will partner with the surrounding schools (Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary, Malachi Wilkerson Middle, and A.H. Parker High Schools), churches, and neighborhood  associations to uplift the community.

Our organizations assert that the creation of the Hill Center and fulfillment of its proposed programming will not only address systemic inequalities, but would also be a direct implementation of the City of Birmingham’s official development plans, including the 2013 Comprehensive Plan, the 2015 Western Area Framework Plan, and Mayor Woodfin’s 2018 Transition Plan. These programs will include community schools as neighborhood anchors, community land trusts for site control, art programs for the rehabilitation of buildings, a community equipment library or rental store, home energy retrofitting, water conservation, and community WiFi. It also would provide for the establishment of various cooperatives, including a proposed aquaponics venture. These ventures will all be a  powerful force to revitalize vacant and divested areas of Birmingham.

The Hill Center will also include many programs that are site-specific to redeveloping the school infrastructure. Converting the school library into a Black History and Geography Library and Black Women’s Culture, Art and Herstory Center and the gymnasium into a Theater and Recreation Space for children in the community will allow for educational or culturally relevant community nights, poetry and spoken word events, and various dance and martial art classes, including Capoeira Angola. The former cafeteria at Hill Elementary will be converted to a Community Cafe and Test Kitchen to provide healthy meals to the community and develop a robust cottage industry in Smithfield. The green space outside will be converted into an Aquaponics Learning Facility.

Our project is the only proposal for this building that is led for and by the residents of the Historic Smithfield Community. This project has been developed through discussions with the neighborhood association officers in the Smithfield Community and includes letters of support from adjacent Neighborhood Associations Officers, including Fountain Heights and North Titusville. Additionally, our project includes letters of support from multiple nearby churches, city-wide service non-profits such as Greater Birmingham Ministries, and has been developed with our partners at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Birmingham Southern College.

Our organizations are truly grassroots, created by community members in the neighborhoods of Birmingham that have been historically divested from. The DH-SCLT, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, was founded by Smithfield residents after the passage of the City of Birmingham’s Western Area Framework Plan, carrying out the recommendation to establish a community land trust in the western area. The co-director of DH-SCLT serves as the Chair and official contact for the Smithfield Community’s Implementation Committee for the Western Area Framework Plan, established by the Planning and Engineering Department for the City of Birmingham. Many of the organizations who have signed letters of support for this project have their own funding and currently rent space in and around Birmingham or are looking to do so. Using conservative estimates based on current rental expenses and our past fundraising efforts, combined with extensive research and in-depth discussions with facility management experts, we will have the capacity to both fundraise the capital to purchase this property at fair market value and revitalize and maintain the facility throughout the term of this lease to purchase. This agreement will allow the BBOE to not only recover full market value on the sale of this building but also to empower the community to build a tangible asset and build capital, thus enriching the surrounding neighborhoods and Birmingham as a whole.

We appreciate your time and energy reading this proposal. We are excited to partner with you on this mutually beneficial and urgently needed project.

In Service,

Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust (DH-SCLT)

Fountain Heights Farms

Birmingham Mutual Aid

International Capoeira Angola Foundation (ICAF) - Birmingham

Healing Exchange AL (H.E.A.L)

Sustainable Water, Energy, and Economic Transition in Alabama (SWEET Alabam