About Us

Building Sustainable Communities Demonstration

A new community development approach in the Twin Cities

In 2007, the Twin Cities was chosen by national LISC to carry out a Building Sustainable Communities (BSC) demonstration to promote more integrated and comprehensive approaches to community development. Our pilot will focus on five areas: St. Paul’s East Side and Central Corridor and Minneapolis’s North Side and South Side and the suburban community of Hopkins. We chose these areas because each offers a multitude of potential partners, opportunities, and issues, and we have a history of effective work with them.

We’ve earmarked approximately $2 million in local and national resources to support this demonstration over three years. These resources will provide operating funds for coordinating partners; fund early action grants; and support community engagement work, action agenda formulation, connections among partners and resources, communications, and evaluation.

Progress so far

  • » A strategy team, with diverse representation from CDCs, other community-based organizations, foundations, and Minneapolis and St. Paul city staff members, has provided advice and guidance during the design of the demonstration.
  • » In each neighborhood, we’ve identified a few key leaders who can be instrumental in helping to shape and move forward this pilot. We have also identified people from key institutional partners that have a cross-neighborhood perspective and who are willing to participate in the design process with LISC.
  • » Payne-Lake Community Partners has agreed to support the pilot’s early convening and engagement work in geographic areas of mutual interest. They will help build authentic partnerships across organizations and cultures. Our role will be to help develop a more integrated implementation approach.
  • » Roll-out of the demonstration began in the latter half of 2008. Twin Cities LISC staff will be engaged initially in strategic assessment of the neighborhoods involved to identify coordinating partners and to begin deploying resources.