Strongest Town 2022, Round 1: Champaign, IL vs. Jersey City, NJ
Welcome to this first round match-up in the seventh annual Strongest Town Contest! In this round, 16 towns are facing off, and eight will advance to the next segment of the contest based on your votes. We invite you to read answers representatives from these two cities provided to our questions about economic resilience, citizen involvement, community response to the pandemic, and more. Then vote for the strongest at the bottom of this page.
Can’t decide? If you’re looking for inspiration, check out how we describe the Strong Towns approach.
You may vote once per match-up. Round 1 voting closes at noon CT on Thursday, March 3. For rules, and to follow along with the contest, visit the Strongest Town Contest page.
Note: All entries are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
CHAMPAIGN, IL
Entry submitted by: Rob Kowalski, Ben LeRoy, Lacey Rains Lowe, Roya Nassirpour.
What is your favorite thing about your town?
Champaign may not be known all across the country, but the people that come through our community leave a lasting impact across the world, thanks to the University of Illinois. We have students and researchers who have lived here and ultimately changed the world by advancing their ideas. Examples include the founders of the first modern web browser, the LED, YouTube, even whipped cream in a can! They’re progressive thinkers and our city is working hard to match that energy with a built environment that is also progressive, and showcases our city as one that understands and embraces the principles of incremental development and the Strong Town narrative.
What we love is that Champaign isn’t afraid to try new things, embrace alternative ways of thinking, or to question long-standing practices that are not helpful to achieving our goals. This comes from being a “university town,” where we have a regular influx of new people that come to the university from all over the world bringing new ideas and energy. Our city council has invested in planning for decades and understands the payoff our community can reap by planning ahead and establishing sound land use policies and practices. They have recently become committed to the principles of incremental development and have established it as a council goal. In light of this, the council has begun to implement specific actions, such as allowing accessory dwelling units (ADUs), eliminating parking requirements, and advancing other initiatives that will help allow incremental change to happen.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
Downtown Champaign is a story of local success. It has revitalized thanks to the investment of local people who have poured their life savings into opening the restaurant of their dreams or the retail store they have always wanted to own. As a result, downtown Champaign contains over 40 locally owned restaurants, taverns, and retail shops. This local flavor is what people love about our downtown. It’s not full of well-known chain businesses with big parking lots. It’s made of local businesses on the first floor with apartments above—all at a walkable and human scale.
However, we all know that the pandemic has disproportionately impacted the small, local business owner. As a result, the impacts to downtown Champaign may be more significant than other areas. Two years of uncertainty from shutdowns to changing preferences in indoor dining and working from home have been tough for our downtown economy. Looking forward, remote work will mean fewer daily customers and a need to reinvent, or at least tweak, our winning formula. But, our community is resilient and fortunately, has adopted a model of development and reinvestment that is also resilient and versatile. We are looking to provide public improvements in our downtown that will help boost recovery, such as more outdoor gathering space, local events that support business owners, and more organized efforts to help small business owners with grant assistance programs. We are confident that our downtown will regain its “mojo” in 2022 and beyond.
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
Champaign has a classic grid pattern of streets, making it ideal for walking and biking. (Oh, being flat helps, too!) Mode share for biking and walking to work are higher than national averages. We have bicycle sharing and car sharing. The average commute time in Champaign is about 15 minutes, which is a big reason residents choose to live here.
The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (CUMTD) was producing as many at 11 million rides per year prior to the pandemic, and a large percentage are “community” riders—not just students. Almost half (46%) of CUMTD’s riders do not own a car. Along with neighboring Urbana and the University of Illinois, Champaign partnered with CUMTD to complete $49 million of multi-modal infrastructure improvements from downtown to campus, including enhanced transit stations, dedicated bicycle lanes, and “all walk” pedestrian intersections. This project established a “high frequency transit route” that connects downtown to campus and connects a grocery store on the route. CUMTD is the first transit agency in the nation with a hydrogen fleet fueled entirely from its own 100% renewable source.
Bottom line, Champaign is very doable without a car. A good pair of shoes, bus pass, and a decent bike takes care of most of your needs in the core of our city. Most importantly, the built environment of our core is well designed, interesting, and invites you to experience it by means other than a car. When it comes to transportation, we are all about working to increase accessibility while decreasing dependency.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
The engine for Champaign’s local economy is the University of Illinois. It is the community’s largest employer and has over 50,000 students. Champaign was founded as a railroad town, a stop from Chicago to New Orleans. It “grew up” small scale, like most towns, with small wood frame, single-story buildings in downtown that turned into three- and four-story brick block buildings. As the university grew over the years, so did Champaign.
Most importantly, Champaign is not a corporate town. We don’t have Fortune 500 national headquarters and our local policy is not influenced by corporate interests. We have a world-renown university inspiring us to turn our city into an incubator for local business. The influx of students and faculty each year provides a rich diversity of people, thought, and money to our local economy. Most residents' living is tied to the university—whether they own and operate a small restaurant geared toward the diversity of our residents, rent part of their home to students, or offer services dependent on university activity.
We are proud of our locally owned and operated businesses in the core of our community that have poured their heart, soul, and money into their entrepreneurship. Examples include Farren's Pub and Eatery, Hopscotch Bakery, Lit, Neutral Cycle, Blind Pig Brewery and Furniture Lounge just to name a few. Cracked is a great example of a mobile food truck started by two University of Illinois students that is now a brick and mortar restaurant on Green Street.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
You would see a community built to a human scale and very walkable. If you walked from our downtown to campus, or our in-town neighborhoods, you would notice a strong mix of commercial and residential buildings that are each important pieces to a more resilient core. Maybe more important is what you wouldn’t see. You wouldn’t see many vacant lots or underutilized properties because the City has worked hard to emphasize the value of infill development. Back in 2011, the Comprehensive Plan update included a Fiscal Impact Analysis to ultimately educate residents on the value of infill over greenfield. As a result, policies have been set to support infill and a boom of infill development followed.
You would also see significant investments of public infrastructure that have in turn encouraged new private investment. Examples include the Boneyard Second Street Basin, a stormwater project that serves as a park; the Boneyard Greenway, formerly an overflowing creek that is now a trail that connects neighborhoods to Campus; and a re-engineered Green Street in Campustown. Of course, there is more work to be done. Zoning rules that promote expensive suburban-style development are being rewritten for the core of our community, city-owned surface parking lots are being offered for development so downtown can better serve people and not just cars. There is a reason Champaign is the fastest-growing Illinois community outside of the Chicago metro area and it’s because of the emphasis on strengthening the core of the community.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
Champaign has many small-scale developer success stories. Thanks to customer demand created by being a university town, there are local residents who have started property development and management companies by first buying a house, then a second, then a small apartment building, then eventually building their own buildings. We have a former school teacher who created one of the largest property portfolios in town. We have a local insurance agent who recently built several “missing middle” (8–12 units) apartment buildings in older, established neighborhoods.
The city has supported these efforts primarily by making the process quick and easy and by reducing unnecessary rules that make projects infeasible. As an example, the City eliminated all parking requirements and open space requirements for any development in the core of the community. These mid-century suburban zoning rules often precluded development or resulted in undesired development types. The city has wrapped up its first small business incentive grant program, offering funding for start-up business costs with a solid business plan. Several years ago, city planners pushed for recalling rules on food trucks in order to allow for more start-up food service businesses. Some have turned into traditional storefronts.
Of course, there is more work to do. The cost of housing is going up, the cost of land is going up. There is a consequence to making infill development more valuable. But, bottom line, the city continues to work to support small-scale developers. It’s how our city was founded and continues to develop.
At Strong Towns we believe financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What do you consider your most potent (existing) tax producing property? Where does your revenue come from? What do you spend it on?
Champaign derives most of its revenues from property tax and sales tax. This is typically the case for communities in Illinois. When asked, one might guess that the local mall or any of the “big box” stores are the most valuable for the City. Champaign is no different from many other communities that enjoy sales tax revenues from these stores. However, the most potent tax producing properties are those on Green Street in Campustown.
This area, along with downtown, represents the urban core of our community. Buildings fill the small lots and contain first-floor commercial spaces and upper-story residential units. There are new buildings and older, renovated buildings. By far, the square foot value of these properties produce more property tax value than their big box counterparts. And while perhaps their sales tax revenues are less than the big box counterparts, their spaces are more versatile and can adapt better to changes in economy so when a big box store goes dark, their urban counterparts are instead adapting and still going strong. They are built for change.
The City uses Food and Beverage tax revenues, as well as tax increment financing in downtown, to help fund improvements. Large financial incentives for highly leveraged projects are only provided sparingly and when considered absolutely necessary. Fitch Ratings consistently gives Champaign a AAA bond rating. The City is more focused on making money for tomorrow by investing in projects and programs that prioritize improving quality of life for all residents for generations to come.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
In Champaign, some citizens shape the future with their hands while others do it with their voice. Both are very effective. We have two local examples to share. First, the story of Hopscotch Bakery. Hopscotch is a locally-owned bakery whose owners began selling custom cakes to friends and family and eventually at local market events. In 2015, they decided to open a store in a vacant building in an older Champaign neighborhood. The building was a “corner store of yesteryear” downzoned to residential some years ago, thus not allowing a business. They hoop-jumped through zoning approvals to operate the bakery. They also incorporated two short-term residential rental units. The process stoked some concern about commercial business in a residential neighborhood, but ultimately opened the eyes of city staff. We have since been working to change antiquated zoning rules and instead support these types of proposals.
Second, the story of the CU Urbanist Club. Zoning hearings are always well-attended by opposing residents concerned with any tinkering of single-family zoning. The CU Urbanist Club is a small, new group of residents who think differently. They meet to talk about how their city can be more dense and urban. Most importantly, they are becoming a voice in support of such projects in public settings. A recent example is their support at a City Council meeting for proposed changes to regulations to allow accessory dwelling units. Their advocacy will be an important piece of Champaign’s movement to become a stronger town.
JERSEY CITY, NJ
Entry submitted by: Phil Jonat, Kevin Bing, Sean Reilly.
What is your favorite thing about your town?
The Statue of Liberty glows green and orange as the sun sets over Jersey City, reminding us that America is defined by waves of immigrants who have come to this country to make a better life. Here in Jersey City, officially nicknamed “America’s Golden Door,” this isn’t just ancient history and museums. Jersey City continues to be one of the most successful melting pots in this country, working hard to assimilate and celebrate many disparate cultures. Over 41 percent of Jersey City residents are foreign born, according to the U.S. Census. Recent waves of immigration have brought Palestinians, Egyptians, Peruvians, Filipinos, and Indians to our city. There are no easy ways to measure diversity, but a recent attempt ranked Jersey City as the most diverse city in the entire country.
These immigrants continue to bring along their foods from home, creating a restaurant ecosystem that is robust and constantly evolving. There are both high-end restaurants and suppliers competing with Manhattan, while many others thrive on serving their local community a taste of home. As noted by @hetal_nyc on Twitter, “Big bazaar on jsq [Journal Square] - brings immense comfort to immigrants missing authentic Indian groceries.. home right here in JC” @hetal_nyc
Even within the U.S., many young people are attracted to New York City to make a better life for themselves. But the price of housing in NYC has continued to outpace inflation for many decades. Jersey City has been a lower cost alternative and has continued to build significant amounts of new housing to accommodate migrants, instead of turning insular like so many peer cities.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
Jersey City and the NYC area are still in the early innings of a major housing crisis. Similar to the San Francisco/San Jose metropolitan areas, NYC job growth has long outpaced housing development, leading to rising prices. This affordability crisis is especially hurting Jersey City’s middle class, leading to conflict over gentrification, new construction, and property values.
Jersey City is the undisputed leader within the entire New York MSA for building new housing. According to the 2020 census, the city’s population grew by 45,000 people, or 18% growth. This far outpaced other northern NJ cities/towns, NYC itself, or any of NY or CT suburbs. This reflects the great combination that JC has for walkable urban neighborhoods and also new buildings that are filling in the big urban renewal project mistakes and old industrial manufacturing. For example, a new neighborhood is under construction in the shadow of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. This neighborhood, originally called The Horseshoe, was an Irish immigrant enclave that was destroyed by construction of the highways leading to the Holland Tunnel.
I’m afraid that the housing affordability crisis is only going to continue to get worse if the rest of the metropolitan region doesn’t learn how to accommodate large amounts of incremental development. There are strong needs to meet this challenge through all means necessary, like public housing, upzonings, tenant protections, and more.
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
Jersey City has a number of transportation options that other cities don’t have. For example, there is a system of private jitneys that cater to immigrant communities. These services offer fast and frequent service to the car-free population and serve a mix of routes that both overlap with the official government-run New Jersey Transit buses (5th most heavily used bus system in the country) and provide additional routes like Bergenline that cater to Hispanic immigrants.
Jersey City joined the Lyft Citi-bike system in 2015, which provides a convenient bike alternative. Unfortunately, the system is undersized for the demand and the bike lane network remains disconnected. New protected bike lanes continue to be a focus area for the City. A number of scooter rental systems have popped up, but none have taken hold enough.
There is also the NJT Hudson-Bergen light rail, which has 13 stops within Jersey City (56% of the stops). This is the 13th busiest light rail system in the country.
There are numerous ways to get to NYC for a job, including the PATH subway system, private jitney, public bus, ferry, or the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. The neighborhoods with the most bus ridership are further away from the PATH, ferry, and light rail. Ironically, Jersey City tore down all of its heavy rail over the years, except a few passing tracks. There are no heavy rail stations within JC.
All of these options means that JC has very low car ownership by U.S. standards. Approximately 38% of households don’t own any car at all, and 43% have only one car. In 2019, Jersey City partnered with Via to provide subsidized, shared taxis within city limits. The administration felt they weren’t getting enough service from NJT and negotiations weren’t moving fast enough.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
Jersey City’s economy is too complex to describe fully here—nearly 300,000 live within its borders. There are enough offices in the downtown area to swell the pre-pandemic daytime population by 100,000 people. A lot of the growth in white collar office space came after September 11, as financial companies sought to diversify away from downtown Manhattan. In addition, there is a thriving arts community, port activity, logistics, and retail. And don't forget the pencil factories!
There are a lot of food businesses to serve the diverse food choices of residents, including Goya, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the U.S. There are many supply chain companies that specialize in importing from a myriad of foreign countries. These companies strengthen the economies of their home countries as well, just as Italy pulled itself from poverty on the strength of exporting its food to nostalgic migrants one hundred years ago. One of my favorite small businesses is the “Coco-Frio” truck located at Pershing Field, one of the largest and busiest parks in the City. This food truck is run by Dominican immigrants and serves fresh fruit. My children love to have their thirst quenched by a cold coconut, hand-cut with a machete.
The business community in JC provides a key source of diverse revenues to the school system. There was a planned cut in state aid for the district and a payroll tax was added in 2019. This has raised $86 million per year, helping significantly during the pandemic.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
Jersey City has fine-grained, walkable urban places spread out across many different neighborhoods. The residential neighborhoods present a continuous front of missing-middle buildings, many from pre-war era (the city’s population peaked in 1930). Newer, mixed-use “four-over ones” stand alongside traditional mixed-use storefronts with apartments above. There are multiple commercial “main street” areas, each reflecting the character of its neighborhood, with many small restaurants and locally-owned stores. The newest neighborhoods are dominated visually by high rises, particularly along the downtown waterfront and in Journal Square. Twenty years ago, some high rises sat in a sea of parking facilities or industry. However, the urbanism of the high-rise neighborhoods has continued to get better incrementally as new buildings have been built.
The city is on a peninsula, the view to the east is the Hudson river and Manhattan. This is where you can find the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, both of which stand not far from the city’s largest park, Liberty State Park. The waterfront is always full of people. As you walk further south down the waterfront, there is a large Port and industrial area. The western side of the city has the beautiful and historic Lincoln Park, which looks over the Hackensack River and the Meadowlands, an environmentally-protected wetland immortalized in the words of Bruce Springsteen as the “swamps of Jersey.” The northern part of Jersey City, the Heights, sits atop the lower end of the Palisades, a 20-mile long rock cliff. The Heights is well-connected with Hoboken, either through an elevator which connects to a light rail station or through the Hundred Steps, a staircase down the cliff face originally built in the 1800s and rebuilt in the early 2000s.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
The most restrictive zoning within Jersey City still allows duplexes on a standard 25-foot-by-100-foot lot. As prices for new housing has gone up significantly, this has spurred lots of new small-scale developers who are adding incremental density to all neighborhoods with R1 Zoning. Several developers have started with flipping and as they become more successful, they start to do full-scale gut renovations. Then, they buy vacant or neglected properties and put in a duplex, known locally as the “Bayonne Box.” These can be held by the developer, or sold as condos. These duplexes have added thousands of new units over the past decade. Successful developers (as well as architects, contractors, etc.) can continue up the value chain, building progressively larger buildings with each success.
The city administration has sought to support small businesses and launched four shipping container-based incubators. The space was built on a vacant lot near the City Hall and only cost $150,000. Selected businesses are given free rent for a few months, helping entrepreneurs move their businesses from their “garage” to a more public-facing space. Similarly, the city has recently tried to clarify rules and make it easier for street vendors to be fully permitted and regulated.
At Strong Towns we believe financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What do you consider your most potent (existing) tax producing property? Where does your revenue come from? What do you spend it on?
On a raw property tax-per-acre basis, waterfront office towers Harborside 1 and 2 produce more than $1.75 million per acre. Originally built as part of the Pennsylvania Railroad's infrastructure west of the Hudson, they have become the center of a thriving downtown, served by bus as well as light and heavy rail. Another prime example is The Sevilla in Journal Square, which houses 115 apartments and 14 local businesses on three-fourths acres of land, generating $333,000 per acre in property tax per year. While this raw total is obviously significantly lower, this building has been an anchor in its neighborhood since it was constructed in 1928. It is poised to increase in value as Journal Square continues its massive transformation into a walkable commercial hub.
Property taxes and PILOT payments form the majority of city revenues (54% of the City budget and 23% of the school budget), with another 10% of the school budget coming from a recently-instituted payroll tax. Of the remaining city budget, another 12% came from COVID relief funds, 8% from taxes collected by the state on behalf of the city, and the remainder came largely from local sources and state aid. The remaining school budget comes largely from state and federal aid, although the City’s growing wealth has allowed the state to redirect some of its aid to districts with less development.
Expenses are largely on the schools (57% of the combined city-school expenditure), public safety (6%), fire, and employee health insurance and retirement (11%).
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
There are many residents in town actively fighting to build a healthy bike culture in town. Jersey City roads are plagued by many of the same safety issues identified by Strong Towns, but there have been active bicycle advocates for over 20 years now. Bike advocates were able to fight for the Citibike share program (same as NYC) in 2015. This system is the largest in the country and users get access to 82 bike stations in NJ (as well as another 1,500 in NYC). The electric bikes are starting to roll out now, helping JC residents tackle the Palisades hills and making the full seven miles from northern border to southern border even easier.
Jersey City recently drafted it's bike master plan, Let's Ride JC. This project was spearheaded thanks to the advocacy of groups like Bike JC and Safe Streets JC. Backed by a forward-thinking city administration, through this project and our Vision Zero campaign, Jersey City has brought on experts in tactical urbanism and equity in transportation, including Mike Lydon and Charles Brown. Through a series of workshops, on road focus groups, and pilot projects, this plan has brought in feedback from every corner of Jersey City. While so often transit plans are seen as things for high-income neighborhoods, the Let's Ride JC plan calls for a wholesale rethinking of our streets and putting every resident within a short distance of high-quality bike infrastructure.