Blast from the past: newly elected Mayor Johnson calls for rehabbing 305 abandoned buildings

I recently came across this article [link here, relevant text below] from over a decade ago, from Black Enterprise magazine (May, 1994). The interview is with newly-elected Mayor William Johnson, in which he mentions plans to rehab 305 abandoned buildings. Interestingly, he doesn't focus on housing (probably because he's being interviewed by a business-oriented magazine), but rather rehabbed commercial buildings providing low-cost options for people from nearby neighborhoods to open small businesses. It would be interesting to know what became of those plans...

Rochester: face-lift for "The World's Image Center."

Richard Prince

Black Enterprise, May 1994

The signals that things would be different in Rochester came even before January's inauguration of Mayor William A. Johnson Jr. For his transition co-chairs on economic development, Johnson appointed African-American and Hispanic small-business owners and, in a role reversal, it was they who gave direction to members of the city's business establishment.

Rochester, N.Y., an old industrial city on Lake Ontario, today touts itself as "The World's Image Center," acknowledging the dominance of the city by major employers Eastman Kodak Co., Xerox Corp. and Bausch and Lomb, makers of optical equipment.

What most concerns Johnson, however, is the city undergirding the image--a city 31.5% African-American that began the decade with nearly one-fourth of its residents below the poverty level. Johnson intends to rehabilitate 305 of Rochester's abandoned buildings. "It doesn't make sense to build houses and not have services--cafes, boutiques, for example--that would create ownership opportunities and jobs for people," Johnson says, adding that empowerment efforts will focus on "local people first."