Abstract
Norman Krumholtz was born in Passaic, New Jersey. He served as the City of Cleveland’s planning director under Mayors Carl Stokes, Ralph Perk and Dennis Kucinich. He also served on the Cleveland City Planning Commission. This 2017 interview was collected as part of a yearlong, community-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Carl Stokes' election as mayor of Cleveland.
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Interviewee
Krumholz, Norman (interviewee)
Interviewer
Perry, Dee (interviewer); Hickey, Christine (participant)
Project
Stokes: Honoring the Past, Inspiring the Future
Date
2017
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
62 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Norman Krumholz interview, 2017" (2017). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 501028.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1194
Transcript
Dee Perry [00:00:04] This is Dee Perry and we're here on the Eastern Campus of Tri-C with Norman Krumholz to talk about the Stokes commemoration project. And his name is N,O,R,M,A,N K,R,U,M,H,O,L,Z. And thank you, Mr. Krumholz, for being here today.
Norman Krumholz [00:00:28] I'm delighted.
Dee Perry [00:00:29] Now, from what I've read, it seems like your childhood had something in common with that of the Stokes brothers. So I wanted to have you start by describing the place and the circumstances in which you grew up?
Norman Krumholz [00:00:42] I was born in Passaic, New Jersey, which is an industrial mill town. I am one of three children. My father died when was very young and my mother raised that small family on her own. And we lived in circumstances that were fairly difficult. And frequently we got evicted from our homes because of nonpayment of rent. One of my jobs as kid was to watch our furniture when it was out on the sidewalk. So I think my background is probably similar to that of the Stokes brothers in early years anyway.
Dee Perry [00:01:33] And how early in life did you become aware of the impact of city planning on the lives of inner-city residents?
Norman Krumholz [00:01:43] I think was in my 30s. I was reading a series of articles in the New Yorker, and one called "The Skyline," which was written by Lewis Mumford, a famous planning professor was raising questions about the new development in New York City called Stuyvesant Town. And he was complaining about the density and the height and the fact that it was racially segregated. And I thought that was very sad and very interesting.
Dee Perry [00:02:21] And what were you doing at the time? I mean, in your 30s you had already been to college and chosen position?
Norman Krumholz [00:02:30] I had been- I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri in Journalism and worked for number of years in journalism and advertising and that sort of thing and didn't like it very, very much and thought that this was a good possibility for the future. So I went back to the Cornell University, which I'm glad to say accepted me, in their program in City and Regional Planning. I graduated with Master's Degree in 1965.
Dee Perry [00:03:09] And for the next few years you worked where? Doing what?
Norman Krumholz [00:03:17] During the period that I was with the City Planning Commission in Pittsburgh, I worked in a variety of roles and ultimately worked myself up to assistant director in charge of neighborhood development. And I must say, as an aside, was very much taken with Pittsburgh and liked living there and so on, but this opportunity in Cleveland was too much to resist.
Dee Perry [00:03:46] And tell me about the opportunity? Did someone from the Stokes administration call you or did the mayor himself?
Norman Krumholz [00:03:55] Well, the mayor had appointed some people on the planning commission. One of them was Al Fonoroff, who was professor at CWRU at the time in planning. Another was Bob Story, who was an African American lawyer in town. And they got in touch with me to see if was interested in applying for the job. And so I came up and interviewed in 1969 and apparently passed muster with those guys who were members of the planning commission. And then I met Mayor Carl Stokes for the first time, and he offered me the position, which I grabbed.
Dee Perry [00:04:45] Why were you so excited about the opportunity?
Norman Krumholz [00:04:47] I thought it was a tremendous opportunity. I've been a lifelong liberal, and racial integration has been an important part of my life. believe in equality deeply. And the emergence of African American politicians in leading roles was very, very new. And, of course, Carl Stokes was the first African American mayor of a major American city. And so I thought it was plum opportunity to work for somebody who might share my values.
Dee Perry [00:05:32] When you arrived in Cleveland after having accepted the job, what was the core of the city like in terms of living spaces? What did you see when it came to neighborhood amenities and transportation, all the things that you would be looking at as city planner?
Norman Krumholz [00:05:54] It was kind of a confusing scene, at least in the beginning. The city had embarked in the '60s and in the '50s in a big urban renewal program, one of the biggest urban renewal programs in the country. And they certified about 8,000 acres [6,060 acres] in the city for clearance and demolition and redevelopment. And the demand, the market demand, never came close to that. And so they were working away at large-scale clearances, particularly on the east side in Hough and Central, in those neighborhoods. And many, many people were displaced. And there was lot of mobility in the African American community, which is where the urban renewal program really fell most heavily. So there were a lot of people who had been displaced for Central, for example, who had moved next door to the Hough neighborhood during the early part of the '60s. And it was very difficult kind of a situation. And the Hough neighborhood flipped from mostly a white neighborhood to mostly an African American neighborhood in a very, very short time. And I believe those conditions probably led to the Hough riots in 1966. So there was great deal of ferment and upset in the community, and it was a very difficult time for Cleveland.
Dee Perry [00:07:40] And as you mentioned, there was the Hough uprising in 1966, and before you came, the Glenville neighborhood exploded in 1968. What did you see as the aftermath of those events in the neighborhoods? Had any rebuilding-
Norman Krumholz [00:08:00] There was a small amount of rebuilding, but those two racially oriented riots caused a lot of people, I think, including African Americans and white people, to figure that Cleveland was not the place for them. And so a large-scale outmigration began. Population had been leaving Cleveland since 1950, but this sort of stimulated things. And during the decade that I was planning director, between 1969, 1979, the city of Cleveland lost about 170,000 people. So there was a great outmigration and as I said, much, much difficulty in the neighborhoods with regard to urban renewal and the results of the urban renewal program also, there was an underlying racial ferment that was very, very visible. Carl Stokes, an African American, came into a situation where there never had been an African American mayor. Consequently, there were no African Americans on the boards of key institutions. There were no African Americans ever on the board of the Cleveland Transit System, for example, and no African Americans on the board of the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. And Stokes, Mayor Stokes was correcting that problem. And of course, there was resistance. And that resistance was particularly manifested in the school board, where racial struggles were kind of an everyday occurrence. So it was a very tense situation.
Dee Perry [00:09:49] What kinds of conversations did you have with Mayor Stokes about vision for city planning?
Norman Krumholz [00:09:58] Well, I spent lot of time talking to Stokes about city planning, told him some of my ideas about planning, my concern about equality, and he was very supportive. Of course, he was involved in many, many other things which are much more important than city planning. He was trying to, for example, reform the Cleveland Police Department, which is a project, I suppose, that goes on over a long period of time. He was trying to create Black power on national level by recruiting other minority mayors to take certain positions. He was very anxious to get his brother or some other African American into the Congress of the United States. We never had a U.S. representative who was African American. And all these moves, which were stimulated and initiated by this African American mayor, were resisted, naturally, by the white community. So that sense of tension was present in almost everything that was I involved in. And it still is, frankly. It's little less visible, a little less obvious, interesting.
Dee Perry [00:11:31] You arrived as Carl Stokes was starting his second term as mayor, and I'm wondering what you saw around town or just in things that he had already accomplished that told you about his approach to bringing more equity to the city.
Norman Krumholz [00:11:55] Number one, he was an African American, and an African American politician deals with questions of equality because he represents, to a large extent, a constituency which is troubled and in need. And so that's characteristic, I think, of every African American politician. But it's also true of any politician. Any politician, regardless of location or ethnic background, must do more for his base. And the African American community, of course, was Carl Stokes's base. And so he was anxious to improve their opportunities in life, and so was I. And so we had a great similarity of purpose.
Dee Perry [00:12:52] I want to talk bit more about what your vision was as a city planner because you were in the forefront of something that was an urban development policy called equity planning. Explain what that is and how it fit your and Mayor Stokes'-
Norman Krumholz [00:13:11] Equity planning, which is now much more common than it was then - I think was the first one who tried to do anything along those lines - was something that looks at, carefully, looks at the questions of who benefits and who pays in urban development policy, tries to figure out if the benefits go to people who are in need of benefits or if not, and if the benefits do not go to people who are in need of benefits and the people who pay with their inconvenience or tax dollars or so on are disadvantaged, then equity planning tries to equalize the problem. And so if people are being displaced as a question of urban renewal, most planners would say, let 'er rip, you know, let's get those big buildings in town and let's help the developer develop new buildings. Equity planners would look at the people who were being displaced and say, can we minimize the number of displacees? Can we provide larger compensation payments for displaceees? Can we provide moving expenses? Can we provide advice that will help them relocate to neighborhoods and housing that is within their budget? And so on. These are very, very difficult social problems, which ordinary planners, who are mostly physical, that is to say they're interested in the physical city. Well, equity planners are interested in the physical city, the parks, the highways and so on as well. But they're also interested in the social impact of urban policies on the people who are most needy. So our slogan, our overarching goal, was more choices for those who have few. And that's in every plan we ever did, more choices for those who have few. And if you think about that, that's lining the planners up in a political way with the poor.
Dee Perry [00:15:49] We had finished talking little bit about equity planning.
Norman Krumholz [00:15:53] Yes.
Dee Perry [00:15:54] But wanted to ask about how you began to analyze what the city needed? What steps did you take to figure out how to equalize things?
Norman Krumholz [00:16:07] Well, I had hired a number of young people, most of whom came from out of town, and all of whom were interested in questions of equality and equal opportunity. And so we sat and talked and talked and talked about a proper role for city planning, and the charter of the city of Cleveland doesn't tell you very much, except your responsibility is to prepare a general plan, but it doesn't say what kind of plan. The general plan is presumed to be simply a long-range land use plan in which you say here's residential and here's industrial and here's commercial and here are the highways that connect it all. And our plan was essentially a social plan. And so we felt comfortable with that. And nobody ever raised the distinction at all. And so that was what we worked out, pretty much on our own. We asked the planning commission for advice, we asked Mayor Stokes for advice, we asked the Council for advice. But essentially we worked out the outlines of equity planning pretty much on our own. And we worked closely with people in neighborhoods. We were just meeting every night with people, many of whom were organizers, community organizers, that were employed by the Commission on Catholic Community Action, which at that time was the Roman Catholic Diocese social welfare wing. And they were organizing the neighborhoods, at least nine neighborhoods. And we were right there with them, working together.
Dee Perry [00:18:12] And so as you were analyzing, were you also proposing things that would be built?
Norman Krumholz [00:18:22] Absolutely. Not only things that would be built, but things that were important to the people that nobody really thought about. Let me give you an example in transportation. In transportation, most people think about highway congestion and lack of parking and stuff like that. Our analysis showed that one-third of the families in Cleveland did not have a car. They were the people who needed more choices, right? More choices for those who have few. Their choices were limited to CTS, Cleveland Transit System, which later became the Regional Transit Authority, or RTA, and they didn't need more capacity on the highway system. So we were not terribly interested in providing more capacity, which is what most planners would be. Our analysis suggested that what we should be doing, given our overarching goal of more choices for those who have few, was working on transportation in transit. And so we spent five years working on the terms and conditions whereby the Cleveland Transit System would ultimately be transferred to the Regional Transit Authority and what the city would get in return for that transfer. And our approach was that we wanted more service, lower fares, tighter route spacing so people wouldn't have to walk as far, tighter headways so they wouldn't have to wait as long. And also a point-to-point pickup and delivery system, which RTA adopted as a special service. So you call up one day in advance and you say, leave thus and so and have to go to Cleveland Clinic at 2:00 and a bus or vehicle comes to your door and picks you up and takes you to Cleveland Clinic and charges you modest fee. So that kind of thinking about transportation is very, very different from thinking about transportation as more space for cars, more space on the highway, more space on the arterial system, more parking for cars.
Dee Perry [00:21:16] And what was Mayor Stokes' input as you were coming up with those kinds of plans?
Norman Krumholz [00:21:23] We ran everything by the mayor's office and we ran everything by city council also. We recognized that they were the elected representatives of the people and still represent that, regardless of who is the elected official, and that we were merely appointed officials. And so all of our ideas, including our points of view on equity planning, were shared with the mayor and city council in advance.
Dee Perry [00:21:54] One of the projects you worked on with Mayor Stokes was to restructure the five-county regional planning agency. How had it been structured, and why did you and he think that change was important?
Norman Krumholz [00:22:11] Well, the five-county planning agency, which is now called NOACA, Northeast Ohio Area Wide Coordinating Agency, which was actually seven counties when I came here, Mayor Stokes asked me to go out and represent him at these meetings. They meet once month. And at the meeting, one of the things they were discussing was the Clark Freeway, which was freeway that would run through Cleveland's east side and intersect with I-271 on the far east side and take out the Shaker Lakes, incidentally, on the way. My staff did an analysis of that and showed that if the highway were built as proposed, it would displace 1900 Cleveland families, almost all of whom were African American, almost all of whom were low income. Incidentally, it would also take out the Shaker Lakes, as mentioned, and wreck the Shaker Square neighborhood. And also there would be 30-acre, a 60-acre interchange at Lee Road and Shaker Boulevard. So it would have wrecked Shaker Heights, incidentally. And so we took the position in opposition to the Clark Freeway. And Mayor Stokes was a very enthusiastic supporter of that position. And if he had not been an enthusiastic supporter, the Clark Freeway may well have been built with all the damage it would've done.
Dee Perry [00:23:59] I'm curious about your working relationship with Mayor Stokes. Were there regular meetings? Were you- Did you feel that you were able to get his ear at any time?
Norman Krumholz [00:24:15] My relationship with Carl Stokes could not have been better. He was always available, he was always supportive. If I screwed up, he was supportive. He stood behind his people. And he listened when I proposed things. When I came back from this NOACA meeting where the board had voted, over our objections, on the Clark Freeway, they had approved the Clark Freeway, I noticed that we only had three representatives on the board. There were 49 members on the board, and the city of Cleveland, which was the biggest city, only had three representatives. So I came back and told the mayor about this, and we went off to have lunch with John Little, who was his chief of staff. And I recommended that we remove ourselves from the NOACA board in protest. And he thought that that was probably not good idea, but he thought it would be reasonable to make protest. And he- What he decided to do was stop paying dues and sue NOACA on one man vote, one vote basis. In other words, we wanted representation on the board to represent the large number of people we had in Cleveland compared to the smaller suburbs. And that's what we did. And NOACA resisted and we had big fight. Ultimately, they agreed to everything we wanted. But that agreement came in the Perk administration. So I want to point out this is kind of ironic. The Stokes administration sued NOACA and demanded equal representation or better representation on the board, and NOACA would not yield. But they did yield to the next mayor. And I wish to point out that the next mayor was white and Carl Stokes was African American. You might not think that that's serious issue, but I think that was maybe, maybe had been a determinant issue.
Dee Perry [00:26:44] Were you surprised when Mayor Stokes decided not to run for third term?
Norman Krumholz [00:26:50] I was. I think everybody in his cabinet was surprised. I wasn't that close to the mayor, so I wouldn't have had any advance information at all, but I was surprised and very disappointed. But he had his own career to think about, and he thought he could do better in the big city, in New York City, as a television personality. So he chose to leave.
Dee Perry [00:27:25] And you've talked little bit about his successor, Ralph Perk, but I'm curious about the process because it seems like when new mayor comes in, they might want to choose their own city planners, et cetera. What about what you were doing made it possible for you to stay under the next two?
Norman Krumholz [00:27:49] Well, you're absolutely right. The planning director is an appointed official. He or she serves at the mayor's pleasure. If you screw up and the mayor is really unhappy about it, he can fire you without any further discussion. You're gone in a day. I think what happened in the Perk administration, where I went from a liberal Black Democrat to a conservative white Republican, was that Ralph Perk also recognized the need to provide some services and consideration for the poor. Now, Carl Stokes talked about the poor as African American people living on the east side of Cleveland, essentially, people living in public housing and so on. Ralph Perk always talked about the little people. That was his expression. But essentially they were both talking about the same people. Only what they were thinking of was Carl Stokes was thinking of the little people, the people who had very, very little, as African American people, and Ralph Perk was thinking about them as white ethnic people. In both cases, they provided the base for the individual's political success. And so I think what happened was that Ralph Perk respected lot of the things that I was doing for Carl Stokes and thought that I could be useful in his Administration. And indeed, I think was. And I worked out a very good relationship with Ralph Perk pretty much on the same basis as I had with Carl Stokes.
Dee Perry [00:29:53] So what could you see- What did you see coming to fruition during the Perk Administration that, that you could trace back as legacy to the Stokes Administration?
Norman Krumholz [00:30:06] Oh, one of the most important things was the formation of RTA. The Regional Transit Authority negotiations started in 1970 in the Stokes administration. And I was the designee and my staff were supportive of the negotiations that went on as early as 1970. The deal was closed, and RTA was formed in 1975 in the Perk administration. And I was Perk's designee. And what we did was prepare the terms and conditions for the transfer of the Cleveland Transit Authority, or the Cleveland Transit System, which was owned by the City of Cleveland, to RTA as the core of the RTA system. And as I mentioned earlier, the terms and conditions included lower fares, much more service, and Dial-A-Ride.
Dee Perry [00:31:08] And were there other things that you began as early as 1969 or 1970 that took several years to fall into place?
Norman Krumholz [00:31:21] Yeah, public housing was big, big deal in the Stokes administration and not a big deal in the Perk administration. Stokes was in favor and began big program in public housing and saw that his appointees on the Public Housing board hired a director, a man named Irv Kriegsfeld, who was very aggressive and very competent, very capable, who started building on a major scale. When Perk came into office, he was less than enthusiastic about public housing, and he was not all that supportive. But the Stokes legacy has to include thousands, literally thousands, of new public housing units that were built under the leadership of Mayor Stokes and Irv Kriegsfeld, who was the director.
Dee Perry [00:32:21] Louis Stokes was gaining visibility and power during that time. Was there ever any instance where that flowed down in terms of planning dollars that you could see?
Norman Krumholz [00:32:39] I really don't know. I think that Louis Stokes probably voted in favor of the Community Development Block Grant, which was begun in the Nixon administration, but was very, very important to the city. The city at one time got like $30 million a year from the federal government for neighborhood improvements. And so Lou Stokes might have been important in the passage of that legislation and that affected community development and affected planning. And for a period, my staff was partially paid out of Community Development Block Grant funds. So that might have been the work of, or partially the work of Louis Stokes.
Dee Perry [00:33:38] I'm also wondering about just the process of getting something done. Once you've said, here's the plan for this public housing, for example, then what? Who did you have to go to to get?
Norman Krumholz [00:33:57] Then you just have to bird dog it, and you have to push it. You have to be an advocate, you have to move it along, and you have to be, frankly, political and take your chances in the political arena. Because if you're pushing something like public housing, which is not very popular on the white side of town, you can make your share of enemies, but it's something that has to be done. And in the case of the transportation and the RTA formulation, that took five years, and so some things like RTA, some things like public housing, happen over long period of time. Some things never happen. For example, one of the things that my staff and I proposed and the planning commission approved and Stokes was in favor of was a proposal we called the Fair Share Plan for Public Housing in Cuyahoga County. At that time, there were 12,000 units of public housing, all of which were in the city of Cleveland. And that didn't seem like a very fair arrangement. It certainly limited the choice of people who depended on public housing for their living facilities. And so I thought it would be good idea to share public housing in all of the communities of Cuyahoga County. So my staff and I worked out plan whereby all the communities in Cuyahoga county, all 58 of them, would get some public housing. And under the plan, Cleveland got like 3,000 more units, and Parma got 300, and Solon got about 80, and Hunting Valley, where they still ride to the hounds, got three. And so we proposed this, and it didn't go anywhere. And obviously I should have spent lot more time politicking with the suburban mayors and managers to see if there was any support for that idea. As it turned out, there was no support outside of the city of Cleveland. But I still think it's a very important idea, and I think it should be done. The only problem is I'm not the one to do it.
Dee Perry [00:36:41] What do you- We've talked about some specific programs, but in terms of a general legacy of Carl Stokes, what do you see as something that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't become mayor of Cleveland?
Norman Krumholz [00:36:56] Well, Stokes and his utilities director, Ben Stefanski, passed a $100 million bond issue for a water improvement, quality of water improvement. You remember the burning river and all that, and the lake was in terrible shape. Nobody thought that that could be passed, but Stokes politicked for it and ultimately passed the $100 million bond issue for clean water. Stokes stopped the Clark Freeway, and in stopping the Clark Freeway, made the Opportunity Corridor, which is now under construction, a possibility because where Stokes stopped the Opportunity, the Clark Freeway was at East 55th Street. And that stub is now the beginning of the Opportunity Corridor, which is going to go to University Circle, then all the public housing that Stokes built, and the beginning of the RTA negotiations. I think that the legacy of Carl Stokes is very, very significant. And although some of the pieces like the Opportunity Corridor took 50 years or so to come into being, they're still his original work that finally got developed. Some things, as I said, take great deal of time. Some things never happen, but some things take 50 years. And they do happen, but maybe in a different way.
Dee Perry [00:38:48] You spent decades as an educator grooming future generations of city planners. I wanted to talk about what you said to them about how and why to prepare for leadership roles in their communities.
Norman Krumholz [00:39:09] Well, it's pretty much recitation of the kinds of things my staff and I did while we were in City Hall. There's a great deal of responsibility. You can assume that responsibility by doing minimum amount of things, because typically the charter in most cities do not demand all that much from their planners. There's responsibility for zoning. There's responsibility for land use control and regulations and things of that sort. And occasionally you get involved in a project that's interesting. But for the most part, planners are not urged to do much more than work on the physical city. If they work on standard zoning procedures and they work on park projects and housing projects that don't make any waves, approving permits and things of that sort, all of which are perfectly legitimate and important in planning function, that they can have very, very quiet and secure life. But if they want to do things that are interesting, in which our society is desperately in need, turn toward the social, turn toward the questions of equality and opportunity, and analyze your material and try to make decisions that bring us all as society into more equitable balance. That was my message in 40 years of teaching, and it still is.
Dee Perry [00:41:16] Is there anything that I haven't asked that you especially wanted to-
Norman Krumholz [00:41:24] Well, think it's important for me to say, at some point, that Carl Stokes changed my life in a very fundamental way. And it was great honor, of course, think, to work, to have worked for him. And it was also an exercise in improving my philosophical view of the world. I remember one thing which I really have never forgotten. I had conversation with him, and he was complaining about story, newspaper story that was balanced. He was talking about voting in the South, and it was very fair and balanced kind of a story, and he was complaining about that. And my undergraduate work is in journalism. So I said, well, that's what journalists are taught. They have to be balanced. And you always have to say, on one side, here's this, but on the other side, here's this point of view. And he said, to him, it seemed like this. On one side, there were bunch of people who wanted to vote. On the other side, there were bunch of people who wanted to kill them for voting. And how can you write a balanced story out of that? And I always thought that was very, very profound and very true. And, in fact, you can't write a balanced story about that. So he was very, very important in my life.
Dee Perry [00:43:11] And I wanted to have you expand little bit on how he changed your life. Was it just the job? Was it something else?
Norman Krumholz [00:43:20] Well, it was job, and it was an opportunity to work in a context that I had never experienced before. I had had a number of jobs in business and in city planning. I worked in city planning in Ithaca and Pittsburgh for five years before came here, and I had never worked before. came to the Carl Stokes administration in Cleveland in setting that was more integrated. The Stokes cabinet was, like, half African American, and I'd never worked with African Americans at that level, and that was very, very different. And I'd never worked, of course, for an African mayor with a different set of perspectives on what had to be done and what was important. And all of those perspectives and experiences were totally new to me and, I as said earlier, helped shape my life.
Christine Hickey [00:44:29] So when you first came to Cleveland, did you get a sense, you know, you talked about the equality development? Was that really a charge from him? I missed little bit of that.
Norman Krumholz [00:44:42] No.
Christine Hickey [00:44:42] Okay. That was you, right?
Norman Krumholz [00:44:45] The mayor offered me the job. I grabbed at it. We exchanged a couple of words about my salary. If I remember rightly, asked for $24,000 year. And he said, well, he only earns $30,000 year. And said, you need raise, Mr. Mayor. But it was that kind of joshing conversation. It was not a conversation that says, want you to look for greater equity opportunities or greater equality opportunities. It was not that at all.
Christine Hickey [00:45:30] Okay. Okay. I'm trying to figure out that. I'm trying to figure out if we could. You said it little bit at the end when you talked about his legacy and you mentioned the Stokes utility, the $1 million bond, and then stopping Clark Freeway, public housing, RTA. So I wanted to just kind of recap that again and talk about his legacy. You know, it's not necessarily that he was able to finish everything, but what he started still.
Norman Krumholz [00:45:55] Yeah.
Christine Hickey [00:45:59] Okay. If you could, talk to me.
Norman Krumholz [00:45:09] The legacy of Carl Stokes is varied and extensive, particularly if you look at it within the timeframe that it takes for some things to evolve in the urban scene. For example, he stopped the Clark Freeway. The stoppage of the Clark Freeway led 50 or 60 years later to the Opportunity Corridor. He supported nominees to the CMHA board that hired very aggressive, very competent executive director named Irv Kriegsfeld, who built thousands of public housing units, some in the Stokes administration, some in the Perk administration, the next administration that followed on. Carl Stokes, involved in the RTA negotiations, Carl Stokes had me begin those negotiations in 1970, when the issue of the transfer of the Cleveland Transit System to RTA would come to fruition. But it took five years, from 1970 to 1975, for the actual negotiations to work out and for RTA to be established. But Carl Stokes provided the leadership at the get go for all of that. So there are a number of issues and developments that take place over a long period of time where Carl Stokes was clearly the originator. And the reformation of the NOACA board and the improvement of the representation of the NOACA board was also part of Carl Stokes's legacy. So it's a varied palette of activities, but all of which make up what I think is very, very impressive legacy.
Dee Perry [00:48:21] And I'll ask the equity question another way because I was curious about something. You had already been exploring the idea of equity planning when it came to city planning. When the Stokes administration reached out to you, was it because they knew your philosophy?
Norman Krumholz [00:48:47] No, no. The Stokes administration reached out to me through members of the city planning commission. Their director had retired or resigned several months before, and the commission which hires the director with the mayor's approval, were looking for new director. And so they hired. They asked me to come up from Pittsburgh and be interviewed me for the job. I did that, and then they recommended me. The planning commission as whole recommended me to the mayor, and the mayor offered me the job. That was the sequence of events.
Dee Perry [00:49:30] But in the interview, did you talk about your vision for-
Norman Krumholz [00:49:35] No. However, I had thought along these lines during my service in Pittsburgh, but I had never had an opportunity to really practice because the director of the agency in Pittsburgh was not open to these ideas at all.
Christine Hickey [00:49:56] Would you say- I'm trying to figure out how- You know, when we think about Carl was very- Carl and Lou were very civic minded. You know, they wanted to give back to their neighborhood, where they came from- They wanted to help the urban community. And it goes along with what you were talking about.
Norman Krumholz [00:50:17] Right.
Christine Hickey [00:50:18] You know, and so your paths were like, right next to each other. I'm trying to figure out how to connect them. Would you say something along the lines that Carl gave you the opportunity?
Norman Krumholz [00:50:30] He gave me the opportunity by hiring me. I mean, Carl Stokes gave me the opportunity to practice or evolve the concept of equity planning by hiring me, first of all, and secondly, by supporting many of the ideas that we came up with. And he was a tremendously supportive mayor and allowed his planners to think in creative ways and was always there for them.
Christine Hickey [00:51:15] And you feel that opportunity gave your group or your team, so that opportunity gave your team an opportunity to give back to the community or to-
Norman Krumholz [00:51:34] Yeah, if you want to look at it that way, of course. The ability of Carl Stokes to support the kinds of activities that was taking place in the planning staff, my staff, gave all of us an opportunity to evolve this concept of equity planning and definitely to give back to the community.
Christine Hickey [00:52:06] I'm just trying to tie it in how it all-
Dee Perry [00:52:11] There's a question that I didn't ask that maybe can take it from the Stokes administration forward. When you began with Mayor Stokes, you began analyzing what the problems and solutions were for city planning. But it would be 1975 before you came out with the Clean Cleveland Policy Plan.
Norman Krumholz [00:52:38] Normally, but we were working toward those goals from the get go, from 1969, 1970. I had been lucky enough to hire about dozen very, very young and bright and capable city planners from around the country. As it turned out, they didn't come to Cleveland because we have a big flashing nightlife here, or we have great surfing or anything like that. These young people, all of whom, all except one or two, were in their 20s, came here to work on serious issues like racial discrimination and poverty. So that's why they were hired, and that's why we were able to build this core group. I must say also that many of them have stayed in Cleveland. Some are still in government in one situation or another, and all of us are still friends. So 50 years on, think it's pretty great to have friends in the community who have worked together for that long.
Christine Hickey [00:54:00] You guys had a real mission. [laughs] No, mean, it's interesting the way you were looking at things at the time.
Norman Krumholz [00:54:11] Well, I think one has to remember that 1969 and thereabout was a period that was coming out of the anti-Vietnamese war protests. So there were people in the streets and great deal of ferment there, and also the Civil Rights movement, which had a great impact on me and my staff and President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. So some of the things that we did were emboldened, frankly, by the events of the '60s. And so I thought when I came to Cleveland that was riding rising wave and that was going to be the future, our country's future. As it turned out, the wave had already crashed with the election of Richard Nixon, but I didn't anticipate that at all. So you do the best you can.
Dee Perry [00:55:29] And you said that the Cleveland Policy Plan, you were already putting those policies into action, right from '69 and '70. What were some of those policies of the plan?
Christine Hickey [00:55:44] Just say, what is it?
Norman Krumholz [00:55:46] I'm sorry, Chris.
Dee Perry [00:55:47] So what is the Cleveland Policy- What is the Cleveland Policy Plan?
Norman Krumholz [00:55:52] The Cleveland Policy Plan. There are copies that are still available in the City Hall Library, and you can check it out if you like. And also, it's been made a historic planning document by the American Planning Association. And so you can access it online at apa.org. It is the first plan that was ever produced by a planning agency, by a public planning agency that is essentially a social equity plan rather than a physical plan having to do with land use and land use development.
Dee Perry [00:56:37] And inside that plan, you set forward some policies that would-
Norman Krumholz [00:56:44] Yeah, policies that were designed to make, to raise up people who were lacking in opportunity and wealth and so on, had bad housing and rotting neighborhoods and all the rest of it. And I must say that although the profession as whole has not adopted equity planning, there are a lot of examples of individual planners adopting equity planning, but the profession as whole has not adopted equity planning. However, the academy, that is to say the professors who teach city planning, now incorporate equity planning as part of their curriculum. And so everybody reads the first book that I wrote, Making Equity Planning Work, which is commentary essentially on what we did here in Cleveland during the Stokes administration.
Christine Hickey [00:57:49] I'm trying to get some, like short version of essentially what you guys did. Well, I'm trying to get that short version. I'm just trying to get short clip version of, like, if you could tell somebody about what you guys were able to accomplish in that time period. Just short.
Norman Krumholz [00:58:13] What we were able to accomplish was- What we were able to accomplish during short period of time at the beginning of our tenure in Cleveland was to agree on the ideas of equity planning. We, being myself and my staff and the mayor, agreed on the ideas of equity planning and begin working on series of studies which provided the basic analysis for lot of the policy recommendations that we make in the plan. And as you can see, if you look at the plan which is not very, very long and not very involved, it's all of these studies - there must have been 20 or 30 of them - are cited in the plan. And they provide the logical and statistical background for our recommendations. So that's a tried-and-true planning kind of technique.
Dee Perry [00:59:19] And you said something earlier that was thinking about that there was lot of. Around some things, there was lot of grassroots organizing. Neighborhood community organizers.
Norman Krumholz [00:59:33] Yes.
Dee Perry [00:59:34] Would you say that? That the community development corporations of today, you can trace-
Norman Krumholz [00:59:44] Absolutely. The community development corporations in Cleveland as of today are a direct descendant of the organizations we were working with in the '70s, which were supported by the Commission on Catholic Community Action. Many of the people who were organizers and had various roles in these advocacy organizations of the '70s went on to much higher, much more important jobs. Chris Warren, for example, was an organizer for Tremont West Development Corporation in the '70s. He became the community development director for the city of Cleveland for Mayor Michael White and Mayor, think it was in Frank Jackson's original administration. Mark McDermott, who was an organizer for the Citizens to Bring Broadway Back, is now the regional director for the Enterprise Community Partners, which is an organization, a national organization, that raises money for low-income housing, and so on. And so there are a couple of dozen organizers who were essentially not much more than organizers making $40 or $50 week in the '70s, who are now doing very, very well as CDC directors and regional directors. Rob Curry, who's the executive director of the Cleveland Housing Network, is one of these organizers too. He worked for the Citizens to Bring Broadway Back. And he's now essentially in charge of 150-person staff that essentially does the affordable housing work for the whole city of Cleveland. So yeah, there's been lot of growth and development in that group, and can say with pleasure that I knew them when. [laughs]
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