When the nonprofit foundation of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg went looking for cities to award grants for innovation, foundation leaders didn’t just give out an address and wait for applications.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, seen in 2006 at the William J. Clinton Library in Little Rock, has made a commitment to philanthropy.
(Photo: AP Photo/Brian Chilson, File)

They got a list of the 100 largest cities in America and whittled it down to only those cities with a strong mayor form of government.

“We then narrowed it down further with conversations we had with folks at the Brookings Institution and academics who focus on government innovation and a range of other national organizations that work with cities pursuing innovative policies and programs,” said Jim Anderson, head of the government innovation section of The Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Even before the next step of talking with mayors of those cities, Memphis had to be heavily favored. Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration has a working relationship with the Brookings and its work in converting public housing projects to mixed-use, mixed-income developments has caught the attention of reformers across the country.

Local nonprofit and philanthropy groups work closely with national foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on education reform work garnering national attention.

There’s a buzz about Memphis.

Bloomberg awarded $24 million in all to five cities last week including Memphis. And each of the cities has selected different goals they will pursue with the “Innovation Delivery Teams” the money will fund. The Memphis team will tackle two goals – gun violence and the economic development of blighted areas of the city.

The goals differ from city to city. But Anderson said the “critical barriers” the cities face are consistent.

“There’s a lack of private sector risk capital to fund new ideas,” he said. “There are challenges, especially now with so many cities making layoffs, simply having the bandwidth and the capacity to advance big bold new initiatives when you’re already stretched just to keep the machines of day-to-day government operating efficiently and on track.”

The Wharton administration will get $4.8 million – $1.6 million a year for three years from Bloomberg. That funding is conditioned on the city raising a local match that will bring the total amount over three years to $7.2 million.

The Bloomberg money is to pay the salaries of the office’s director and other staff members and beyond that provide some support for the projects that emerge from the office. Wharton will do the hiring.

“We’re going big on this,” Wharton told reporters as he echoed Anderson’s point about the nature of being a mayor in a tough economy.

“Most mayors these days, we’re locked in a struggle for life. It’s just crisis after crisis. It’s survival after survival. I don’t have the answers,” he said. “But I am convinced there are folks around this world who know how to come in and set up the right package of incentives and set up the right plans to begin to recapture and revitalize some of our neighborhoods.”

Anderson said most mayors’ offices aren’t organized to cross political and jurisdictional barriers necessary to pull off enterprises that are a mixture of public and private with public money hopefully leveraging private investment.

But Bloomberg himself clearly thinks mayors who work under charters that give them broad discretion stand a better chance than those who share power equally or to a lesser degree with legislative bodies. In a written statement announcing the grants last week, Bloomberg said mayors are “uniquely positioned” to meet the challenges.

Wharton said the challenge is not as simple as getting structures built. He points to planning decisions.

“Every time we build a (interstate) loop we hear that giant sucking sound that’s sucking all of the industry and retail out. The infrastructure in Hickory Hill is solid,” he said turning to the recent sale of Chism Hardy Bottling there to City Brewing Co. “We simply need to find ways to encourage retail and manufacturing to come back in. … We need 25 or 30 other City Brewing folks to come into Hickory Hill and fill up all that vacant space.”