Retail Commercial Support Initiative

The Retail Commercial Support Initiative is comprised of community development corporation staff and directors, bankers, City and County representatives and developers. The committee meets monthly to tackle issues of mutual concern. Some of the programming developed by the RCSI include a real estate database of available spaces in the neighborhood districts, Retail Spaces Cleveland , organizing Shop Local campaigns and providing Neighborhood Safety resources.

With ongoing support from NAIOP, the RSCI launched www.retailspacescleveland.com in 2001. The website showcases neighborhood demographics, assets and listings of available retail spaces with locations and descriptions.

CNDC facilitated the formation of a committee to address security issues in the neighborhood, specifically the retail districts.  Top concerns were the building of a unified approach to safety efforts in the City through a uniform system of communication and education between merchants, CDCs and District Commanders, definition of trends to identify and predict hotspots in retail districts and strengthening partnerships with District COmmanders. The committee coordinated a detailed study of five year crime trends in retail districts including statistical analysis and GIS mapping. The committee provided a safety consultant to create safety plans for sixteen districts.  A Merchant Safety Kit was created and over 5000 were distributed.

In addition to analysis and planning efforts, the committee directed research to create a data base of safety programming resources. Local Initiatives Support Corporation has an online library of community resources and research documents about a variety of neighborhood safety best practices. The Community Capacity Development Office’s Weed & Seed IN Sites online magazine chronicles community successes in increasing neighborhood safety. Other links include: