Making Moves on Main Street

Committing to the Community

Hitchcock stresses that community participation is the key to their brokerage’s success. “We got involved in civic organizations, attended town hall and economic development meetings, and worked to elect a mayor promoting a business-friendly environment,” he says.

“People saw us doing things, giving back, and always being there,” Yandura says. “Other entrepreneurs in the past came here and saw the investment opportunity but didn’t commit to living here like current successful entrepreneurs. Being part of the community is the best advice we can offer.”

They caution that reinvigorating a small-town main street isn’t always an easy or fast process. “Small-town development is forever a work in progress,” adds Hitchcock. “We’re in constant creation mode.”

Reflecting on their success, Yandura emphasizes their willingness to work with others, without letting money drive the long-term vision. “We matched people who wanted to start a business with people who wanted to invest in one,” Yandura says. “It takes some of the competitiveness out of business development, which is important in a small community.”

Turning Around an Indiana Neighborhood

Community is also at the heart of an incremental neighborhood revitalization effort in South Bend, Ind. Working with a cohort of small developers, Mike Keen, broker and managing partner of Hometowne Development LLC, is leading the transformation of an aging neighborhood into a growing, sustainable community he dubbed Portage Midtown. He’s doing it one property at a time, and he’s proving you can make money doing it.

Keen is a former professor at Indiana University in South Bend. “After 20 years of teaching, I’m in my office, imagining that if I laid every student paper I ever received side-by-side, it would be 19 miles long,” he says. “I knew then it was time to do something different.

“I’ve always been interested in communities and sustainability,” Keen says. “My plan was to be a sustainability consultant and build one net-zero home in my area to sell or rent, but the neighborhood was pretty rough.” To make the area more attractive, Keen committed to building three net-zero houses, buying a vacant flower shop around the corner and seven empty lots on a tax sale to clean up the area.

Beginning with the flower shop, he and two partners each put in $60,000 to rehab the property, but it appraised at only $150,000. “If it had been a standard ‘fix and flip,’ we’d have been out of business,” says Keen. “But it penciled out, and we could rent it, cover our expenses, and make a little cash, allowing us to move on to the next property.” Fast-forward seven years, and Keen is leading the effort to renovate a 56,000-square-foot abandoned former bakery into a collaborative village of retailers, professionals, artists and food entrepreneurs, drawing significant interest from other would-be local developers.