Crosstown shows diverse workforce can be attained
Awell-known English proverb says, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Or, to quote William Shakespeare, “If there is a good will, there is great way.”
Both statements aptly fit what the leaders of the redevelopment of the old Sears Crosstown tower into the Crosstown Concourse worked to accomplished in terms of having minority participation in the building’s $200 million makeover, a renovation that includes a significant public investment.
Thirty-two businesses owned by minorities and women received, in total, 29 percent of the construction spending, project leaders revealed last week.
That share exceeds the project’s goal of at least 25 percent going to minority and female-owned firms.
The project received local tax incentives and was obligated to make a best-faith effort to spend at least 20 percent of the $130 million in hard construction costs with minority firms. Professional fees, furnishings and fixtures bring the total construction budget to $200 million.
More than a million square feet in the old tower, built in the late 1920s, are being converted into an urban village of medical, art-related, educational and retail tenants.
What the Crosstown Concourse developers have accomplished is notable when viewed in the context of a recently released consultant’s disparity study for the Shelby County Commission that showed businesses owned by African-Americans received 5.8 percent of Shelby County’s contract dollars, while firms owned by white men received 88.3 percent.
The study revealed that businesses owned by white women received 5.15 percent, Native American businesses got 0.37 percent, Asian-Americans got 0.33 percent and Hispanic-Americans got 0.02 percent.
The study, conducted Mason Tillman Associates of Oakland, California, looked at a company’s ability to do the work. The report showed that even when minority-owned or female-owned businesses were capable of fulfilling a county contract, they did not receive that contract.
The study’s findings were not a surprise, but the overt discrimination in the awarding of contracts to African-American and female-owned businesses for construction, professional services, commodities and other services showed that the efforts of those in the county responsible for the contracting were, at best, tepid.
That is why the team guiding the renovation of the Sears tower should be commended for its 29 percent accomplishment. The members worked at it.
They created a plan to not only exceed their minority contracting commitment, but also to hire an unusually large number of smaller minority firms.
“The number of women and minority business enterprises and individuals who were impacted, that’s the bigger point,’’ Crosstown Concourse’s coleader McLean Wilson told The Commercial Appeal’s Thomas Bailey Jr. in a story published Monday.
“It’s a real commitment,’’ he said. “It takes time and takes money. But the developer ... we’re in control of making that happen and forcing the issue, or not.”
That point says it all regarding the millions of dollars spent and the numerous plans and nonprofit efforts over the last three decades to increase the number of successful black-owned and female-owned businesses, and increase the share of business they do with the government and private sectors. This city still is on first base in that regard. It will not get any better unless there is a sincere collective will to make it so.