Neighborhood Marketing Program

Promotional and branding program to strengthen the housing market in the Triangle neighborhood of North Winton Village, a target middle neighborhood in Rochester

https://nwrochester.org/category/healthy-blocks/

Geography

Triangle neighborhood of North Winton Village in Rochester

Sponsoring Institution

NeighborWorks Rochester

Key Milestones

1979

NeighborWorks Rochester founded.

2005

NeighborWorks Rochester launches the Healthy Blocks Initiative to strengthen targeted neighborhoods.

2014

The Triangle neighborhood becomes Rochester’s fourth target neighborhood in its Healthy Blocks Initiative.

2015

The Healthy Blocks Initiative conducts market analysis and develops a branding strategy for the Triangle neighborhood.

2016

The Triangle neighborhood launches its new brand, logo, website, and marketing campaign.

Financial Implications

Granted $35,000 plus consultant time by NeighborWorks America for marketing and branding work
Awarded $2,000 to each of five local artists for the design and building of the neighborhood’s unique bike racks
Recorded a $16,000 increase in the average sale price of a single-family home in the Triangle neighborhood over five years

Select Models Goals

Increase the percentage of home sales to owner-occupants to stabilize and strengthen a targeted, weak-market middle neighborhood
Increase resident involvement, confidence, and satisfaction in their neighborhood
Create a positive brand for the neighborhood

Implementation: Model Design

NeighborWorks Rochester organized a local marketing team to develop and implement a plan alongside an external branding consultant. The team included both new and long-term neighborhood residents, the merchants’ association chair, a real estate professional, and leaders from the larger North Winton Village Neighborhood Association.
The marketing team developed the community name (The Triangle of North Winton Village), logo, and branding strategy for its 32-block neighborhood. They also commissioned and installed artistic bike racks and gateway signage to denote entry to the neighborhood.
NeighborWorks Rochester developed marketing materials to share the neighborhood brand with real estate agents and ran full-page ads in local papers.
The two-year marketing effort was a key component of NeighborWorks Rochester’s five-year engagement in the Triangle neighborhood through its Healthy Blocks Initiative, which seeks to stabilize weak-market neighborhoods at risk of decline. The Triangle neighborhood was the program’s fifth target; other interventions included a combination of low-rate loan products, programs to build social connections and cultivate leadership, and neighborhood marketing.

Key Innovations

NeighborWorks Rochester is an early leader in tailoring place-based, neighborhood-strengthening strategies to the specific market context of middle neighborhoods. The program demonstrates how modest, targeted, and time-limited investments can stabilize and strengthen a low-wealth neighborhood at risk of becoming distressed without intervention.

The marketing program also demonstrates the value of detailed market analysis, which identified particular existing physical assets as leverage to increase interest from home buyers and support long-term residency. Specifically, market analysis revealed that if marketing efforts, among other factors, could increase the sale price of homes from the $65,000 range to the $75,000 range, those homes would be much more likely to be purchased by owner-occupants rather than investors.

Like many community development organizations, NeighborWorks Rochester’s origins were in neighborhood-specific, place-based work, but its focus has since shifted to providing more general housing services across much larger geographies. Available funding for such work is often elusive, but NeighborWorks Rochester has notably been able to maintain strong place-based work through the Healthy Blocks Initiative and its neighborhood marketing efforts.

By the end of the campaign, the neighborhood marketing team became a standing association demonstrating effective community engagement. Similarly, the local merchants association adopted a name and brand that aligns with the new neighborhood identity.

Staffing and/or CapacityNeighborWorks Rochester received a 2015 grant from NeighborWorks America to conduct neighborhood market analysis and to design and implement a strategy with its existing staff of 16. The Healthy Blocks Initiative’s coordinator and senior management prioritized working with the marketing team, which also invested significant volunteer time.