About a year ago, at a meeting of the North Central Columbia Neighborhood Association (NCCNA), I challenged association president Linda Rootes’ continued support for a “troubled youth shelter” planned across from Hickman High School.
Ardently advocating a so-called “overlay ordinance” that would mandate neighborhood design standards and ban so-called “undesirable” activities—including halfway houses—Rootes nonetheless supported the shelter.
An NCCNA member since 2002, I agreed with neighbors, who opposed the proposed six-plex as a striking deviation from nearby single-family homes and, with drug dealers and the now infamous “crime house” at 802 Wilkes operating with impunity nearby, a questionable environment for troubled kids.
But Rootes refused dissent and shut down the discussion.
I walked out of the meeting, and have only returned a handful of times at the urging of friends. It’s become too painful to watch—a personality-based leadership crisis that could harm one of Columbia’s great neighborhoods.
In the Beginning
The NCCNA story is about a scrappy group of neighbors who, fifteen or so years ago, decided to fight back. Reeling for decades from failed segregation and the poverty it caused, North Central Columbia—now known as The Village—fought crime, decay, slumlords, and City Hall apathy with little organization and even less political clout.
Enter sometime mayoral candidate John Clark, a bear of a man whose often-overbearing style was exactly what the troubles ordered. With his equally outspoken partner, Mrs. Rootes, Clark, in a word, worked.
Armed with a law degree and a mind for the kind of minutia that ties unthinking bureaucracies in Gordian knots, Clark countered the siege. With Rootes and a newly-constituted neighborhood association, he raised money; published a newsletter; fired off letters to errant landlords; knocked heads with code violators; shined the Neighborhood Watch light on drug dealers; and rode City Hall until it got tired of NCCNA on its back.
In many ways, John Clark and Linda Rootes wrote the book on organizing substantive, effective neighborhood associations.
But their efforts have become a mixed success story of late, largely because they ignited so much progress that the neighborhood outgrew their leadership. In conflict with Rootes, Clark stepped down and hasn’t attended a meeting in over a year. President for the past two years, Rootes has brought a heightened imperiousness to the job at precisely the time when debate, coalition building, and new ideas are in critical demand.
Troubling Trio
Under Rootes’ leadership, the neighborhood and its association have suffered a trio of stunning defeats.
Just last month, after going through tens of thousands of dollars in donations and tax credits, NCCNA, in partnership with Central Missouri Community Action, lost the historic Heibel March Drugstore, a 10-year renovation project returned in worse repair to its original owner, City Hall.
At a weekly meeting of renovation coordinators that included Rootes and retired Stephens College drama professor Peter Byger, “tempers ran high as committee members spent much of the session sniping at each other,” the Columbia Daily Tribune reported in 2007.
“‘You’ve been antagonistic to everything I’ve put on the table,’ Byger told Rootes, his voice rising.” Acknowledging “dysfunction,” Rootes told the Tribune, “We have a lot of organizational issues. Nobody knows who’s in charge here.”
The Shoe Factor
Deciding they no longer wanted to worry about who was in charge, half the north central neighborhood—the business half—angrily seceded, forming the Shoe Factory District in October.
After donating money to NCCNA for the overlay’s preparation, neighborhood booster Tom Atkins later condemned his firm’s surprise appearance on that list of forbidden enterprises. Atkins said he felt betrayed.
Ironically, it wouldn’t matter. At an NCCNA meeting this year came the third shocker: The overlay ordinance—another 10-year project—appears all but kaput. To NCCNA board member Amir Ziv, the overlay’s sudden death signaled a time to get back to basics like crime and slumlords.
“We have someone killed in Douglass Park, we have gunshots fired off on Fairview Street in the afternoon, and we don't have time to talk about any of this,” Ziv emailed association members after the meeting.
“I am not interested in using our less than two hours each month for venting,” Rootes responded.
Obama Time?
NCCNA should take a page from Barack Obama: It’s time for change. In the president’s case, change apparently means returning to basics by rebuilding roads, bridges, and schools.
In North Central Columbia’s case, change should mean persistent letters that got a one-time neighborhood repository of spent condoms, burned drug spoons, and empty whiskey bottles fenced, posted, and cleaned.
It should mean fundraising drives, membership outreach, and helping low-income neighbors fix household hazards.
Today, change at NCCNA should mean working with the new Shoe Factory association and other central city groups like the First Ward Ambassadors and Ridgeway neighborhood to address crises like the spike in violence at Douglass Park.
As the best-located neighborhood in the city, but working with what association member Sid Sullivan insightfully termed “a housing stock mostly in the code enforcement stage rather than the urban renewal stage,” North Central faces unique challenges.
A neighborhood association should be an instrument of “organic” urban renewal, fighting blight and crime from within, but also supporting the arts; encouraging forward-thinking entrepreneurs like the Atkins family, John Ott, Brian Pape, and Mark Timberlake; and communicating with the larger public through newsletters and the giant Village neighborhood online listserv.
It’s time for NCCNA to start saying “Yes We Can” again. If America can do it, so can one great Columbia neighborhood.
-- Mike Martin for the Columbia Business Times
