WHEN THERE IS BY STEVIE ZVEREVA Peoria’s i-team is tackling some of the city’s oldest problems with a novel approach. DATA fail fast WALKABILITY FACILITATE Public Health Benefits ideas CSO $ $200 million <strong>INNOVATION</strong> DELIVERY APPROACH SUSTAINABILITY Wo r k f o r c e GREEN i-TEAM GREEN interactive INFRASTRUCTURE stabilization benefits creative GRANT ACTIVELY ENGAGED novel priorities storm EPA concept water quality P o t e n t i a l Job Creation APPROACH H20 REINVESTMENT crime mitigation neighborhood 54 InterBusiness Issues -- January 2016
Kate Green, Anthony Corso and Kathryn Shackelford are Peoria's i-team. IT’S BEEN A YEAR SINCE PEORIA WAS SELECTED AS ONE OF 14 CITIES TO PARTICIPATE in the $45-million expansion of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Innovation Teams program. Since then, an innovation team has been appointed, offices renovated, committees organized, experts tapped, a global conference hosted, community outreach initiated, and priorities set around one mission: solving Peoria’s combined sewer overflow (CSO) problem. Though it could be decades before the seeds of the three-year grant—up to $1.5 million at $500,000 per year—come to full fruition, the magnitude of its selection is already being felt as Peoria attempts to become the first city in the nation to employ an all-green infrastructure solution in combating the problem. DRIVEN BY DATA The idea behind the Bloomberg program is to unleash innovation within the nation’s cities by addressing barriers to innovation and delivering change more effectively. While cities are uniquely able to transform the lives of their citizens, their governments aren’t always organized to support such innovation, the organization explains, especially for “horizontal” issues like poverty reduction and sustainability—which are “the shared responsibility of multiple departments and chains of command.” Cities tend to lack the strategies needed to overcome departmental silos in such multifaceted challenges, as well as the human capital, organizational capacity and financial resources needed to take on bold ideas. Enter Bloomberg Philanthropies’ “Innovation Delivery” approach, which attempts to minimize the risks associated with innovation, and so far, it seems to be working. The program’s initial, multi-year investment in five cities has already shown results in tackling a slew of tough problems. Its first grants in 2011 have helped reduce retail vacancies in Memphis, minimized ambulance trips to the ER in Louisville, cut licensing time for new restaurants in Chicago, moved the homeless into permanent housing in Atlanta and reduced New Orleans’ murder rate by about 20 percent in less than two years. Through the program’s expansion, 14 additional cities receive grant dollars, technical assistance, connections to peers and resources in other cities, unique training opportunities, and other tools to address their designated challenge. ON BUREAUCRATIC <strong>INNOVATION</strong> It sounds like an oxymoron. How do you breed innovation—an inherently flexible, creative process, within the confines of bureaucracy, the notoriously stiff, governmental status quo? That challenge—reshaping local government’s reputation and residents’ perception of its capacity to innovate—was enough to entice Anthony Corso, local architect and green building expert, to accept the appointment to become Peoria’s first chief innovation officer last March. Corso brings over 15 years of experience in urban design, sustainability and smart growth to his team of three, rounded out by project managers Kate Green and Kathryn Shackelford. Here in this small, nondescript office on the fourth floor of the Twin Towers Plaza, Corso says his team is close enough to City Hall to be part peoriamagazines.com 55
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