Photo by Tom Jenz
Darryl Johnson
Darryl Johnson
With a mission to improve the quality of life for inner city residents in the Harmabee and Riverwest neighborhoods, Darryl Johnson has headed Riverworks Development Corporation for 21 years. The nonprofit has an unusual but successful approach in developing area real estate projects meant to be profitable and sustainable. Revenue earned from these developments is reinvested back into the Riverworks organization to help carry out its social mission.
One of Riverworks' developments is the Beerline Plaza located in the inner city on Holton and Townsend. The plaza is home to a Family Dollar store, a laundromat and an expansive building housing the offices of Riverworks Financial Clinic and the Riverworks Administration where I found Darryl Johnson running the show.
We settled into a large conference room. I found the executive director quietly confident, a good listener and a straight talker out of an analytical mind. He speaks in even tones, pleasant to listen to. Overall, an ideal leadership style.
Now 65, Darryl Johnson had grown up in this neighborhood in the 1960s, the youngest of five children in a Black Roman Catholic family living near First and Keefe where most residents were white and of German descent. He went to a Catholic elementary school and attended St Elizabeth’s Church. Then, he matriculated to Riverside University Public High School, which he told me “was a good experience because I got to mingle with a diverse student population.”
What did you do with your life after high school?
I went to UW-Whitewater for pre-engineering, but eventually I returned to Milwaukee and graduated from UWM with a major in Political Science and Sociology. I had no specific job goal, but being Catholic, I always wanted to give back to the community in terms of public service.
Take me through your career path and how you ended up as executive director of the Riverworks Development Corporation. You’ve been director for 21 years, I believe.
My first job out of college was overseeing the not-for-profit Parkside Housing Co-op in the heart of the central city. It was owned and operated by minorities. We acquired properties that were eyesores and vacant. These properties were single families and mostly duplexes, and we tried to acquire homes that were close to each so as to create a neighborhood concept. The families were paying members of the Parkside Co-op, so they were invested.
By being paying members, I assume that was an incentive for the neighborhood to be kept in good condition.
That was the idea. I did that job for six years, and then I worked for the city of Milwaukee in the Homestead program. The city government owned a number of blighted properties in the central city. The Homestead program helped diverse families get into homeownership for the first time. The buyer bought a house for a dollar and invested money into rehabilitation. If it cost $25,000 to fix up the house, the city would loan them that amount. Eventually, they did have to pay it back, and then they would own the house outright.
Along your career journey, you once ran for political office, right?
In the mid-‘90s, I ran for city alderperson in the 6th District, but I lost to Marlene Johnson.
Then, I went to work for the Lisbon Avenue Neighborhood Development, or LAND. I was the LAND Executive Director and held that position for eight years. We helped rehab homes in that area of the inner city. We also developed a health care clinic. I stayed in that position into 2003, and then I took this job as Executive Director at what is now called Riverworks. The job has been a challenge. Keep in mind, American Motors, Johnson Controls and Coca Cola had moved out of the North Side, and thousands of manufacturing jobs were lost. These companies employed a lot of Blacks in the community, helping to create the Black middle class. The neighborhood where I had grown up had changed dramatically, disinvestment, vacant and boarded homes, drug houses and the loss of neighborhood businesses. We started revitalizing businesses on Capitol Drive and some of the corridors. We focused on the Harambee and Riverwest area neighborhoods.
And you’ve been working on the Beerline Trail that connects Harambee and Riverwest Neighborhoods. The Beerline Trail had once been an abandoned railway.
That old railway was a dumping ground for debris, and there were a lot of illegal activities going on. In 2006, we partnered with the city and started phase one of rehabbing the Beerline Trail from Bremen on up to Keefe Avenue. We are now working on phase two, which runs from Richards Street up to Capitol Drive and will connect to the Oak Leaf Trail once completed. To encourage resident interactions, we built the community Connector Building on Richards & Keefe where the Kuumba Juice and Coffee will be opening soon. We are in the process of raising $6 million to build out the park area from Richards to Capitol Dr. Also, the Department of Transportation is building a tunnel under Interstate 43 for the Beerline trail to continue on to Green Bay Avenue. People will be able to walk, run, and ride their bikes through there.
What about Riverwest? Over the years, it has turned into a fairly nice area for residents.
As far as improving the Riverwest area, we are working with residents to possibly create a NID, Neighborhood Improvement District, to boost arts and culture to help with the quality of life and also to market Riverwest as a great neighborhood in the City of Milwaukee. We also manage and support the Riverwest Farmers Market.
I read this on your website: Riverworks’ real estate projects are an economic development tool meant to be profitable, sustainable, impactful and catalytic. Revenue earned from these developments is reinvested back into the organization to assist in carrying out its social mission. What exactly is the Riverworks social mission?
In order to help our social mission, one of our practical missions is real estate development. We own a couple of small shopping centers. Through these LLCs we are creating jobs, stabilizing the tax base, and improving the image of our community. I am the manager of each LLC. We also own Riverworks Lofts on Holton Street, a 36-unit apartment complex that had once been a pasta factory that we converted along with the Connector Building near the Beerline Trail. The Connector offers a cafe and a communal spot for events and gatherings.
To help improve the landscapes, we also run a business called Riverworks Cleans, and we contract with the city. When people dump garbage on city-owned properties, our teams clean it up. We pick up garbage in the Business Improvement Districts. We have eight full time employees from our communities that work for Riverworks Cleans. We also own and operate a laundromat right here in the Beerline Plaza. When possible, we try to employ people coming out of prison or jail.
Last year, Riverworks Cleans picked up 7,172 cubic yards of illegal dumps and 4,169 bags of litter.
Riverworks is a nonprofit organization. How is it funded?
Let me break down our funding into thirds. First is our earned revenue through the real estate we own, and our businesses. The second third comes from nonprofit foundations, including three of the largest Foundations here in Milwaukee, Bader Philanthropies, the Joseph and Vera Zilber Charitable Foundation and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. The final third comes from service contracts we have with government and private enterprises and business improvement districts.
What is the Riverworks annual budget?
Roughly $3 million dollars.
Do you write grants to raise money?
I write some of the grants, but we have a consultant who help us write grants.
Let’s say I’m a young man, and I want to work for you. How do I go about that?
If you apply, we can offer different jobs depending on openings, but we can also send you to our partners who might have job openings.
Let me read a quote from you: “My success and the success of the organization is really built on alliances and partnerships and getting people to come together to address those important issues that are negatively impacting our communities.” What are those negative issues impacting communities?
First, would be the lack of resources that come into our community. For instance, we have safety issues in our neighborhoods, criminal activity, reckless driving, formerly incarcerated people who can’t find work. We have a young population, too. An important issue is female heads of households, not enough fathers. We are helping create an environment where people feel safe and have positive things to do. We are trying to create more public spaces. So far, we have created three Healing Spacing in partnership with the city, and these little parks are on or near the Beerline Trail. The idea is to get people to congregate in a safe way. We also have created Tot Lot for kids to play and hang out near First and Keefe.
What is your leadership philosophy? How do you make things happen?
I like to listen to the voices of the community, take their concerns and figure out a way to develop them into something positive. I have a philosophy. When there is a positive need in our community, no one can stop me from doing it. I have the desire to make sure it happens. I try to pull people in to make sure a project gets done. I believe in myself, and I also believe that other people out there want to see good things happen.
As I think back, when I first took the CEO job in 2003, I had three employees. Now I have close to 30. My legacy might be to remember how things were when I took over in 2003 and how things are now. Is this community better off because of my leadership and involvement? I think so. But we still have more to do together.
