Midtown Neighborhood | Midtown Advisory Group
Midtown Revitalization | Youth Development | Community Learning Center
Housing Revitalization | Economic Development

The Midtown Project draws on a $150,000 grant from the San Joaquin County Human Services Agency (Youth and Family Enrichment Program) and $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program (COPC).

Together, these two sources of funding are enabling Jacoby Center to work with the City of Stockton and over twenty-five different university and community partners to undertake the revitalization of Stockton’s historic Midtown Neighborhood. These funds have been augmented with several smaller grants enabling the Center to undertake a variety of revitalization activities as part of a comprehensive Midtown Neighborhood Master Revitalization Strategy.

Jacoby Center has worked hand-in-hand since 2000 with the Midtown Advisory Group (MAG) created by the City of Stockton with representation of over twenty different community based organizations, businesses and public agencies which plan and oversee the Midtown’s development. Jacoby Center also works closely with the staff of the Stockton City Manger’s Office and the City’s Department of Housing and Redevelopment which provide staff support for MAG efforts.

The Midtown Neighborhood is an older, mixed central city residential and commercial area. The Midtown is located approximately a mile south of the University, just north of Stockton’s original central business district. Both the central business district and the Midtown are undergoing substantial revitalization and redevelopment, along with similar initiatives in several other surrounding areas and neighborhoods.

The Midtown Neighborhood possesses many of the homes built in the city between 1880 and 1920 identified as historically and architecturally significant by the Stockton Cultural Heritage Board. In fact, over half of the structures in the Midtown were constructed before 1920 and reflect virtually every notable architectural style of California’s 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these buildings are located in the Magnolia Historic District which takes in the north-western portions of the neighborhood.

As the neighborhood has aged, it has continued to receive a growing proportion of Stockton’s immigrants, including sizable portions of Latinos from Mexico and other Central and South American countries, Southeast Asians and representatives of a range of other racial and ethnic groups reflecting the San Joaquin Valley’s rich, multicultural heritage. Over twenty different languages are spoken in schools serving the Midtown’s students. The Midtown is an increasingly poor neighborhood, with average household income less than half that of the City as a whole, with one of the highest concentrations of households receiving public assistance in San Joaquin County, and with large percentages of adults with less than a high school education. It contains many of the social problems of other aging central city neighborhoods nation-wide.

Yet the potential for Midtown Revitalization is truly substantial. Many new families and property owners have taken an interest in renovating Midtown homes and commercial buildings. A new Stockton campus of California State University-Stanislaus has been established in the neighborhood, and the City of Stockton is moving to reverse many of the problems which have been growing in the neighborhood. Jacoby Center students and faculty are working hand-in-hand with the City, the MAG, and its other community partners to address many of the Midtown’s needs. This in turn is creating many and varied opportunities for students to involve themselves in this exciting project.

Youth Development Pacific students from a wide variety of majors and programs tutor and mentor elementary school students enrolled in the Midtown’s El Dorado Elementary School and help organize and support the Midtown Youth Advisory Board composed of Midtown high school students who take on a variety of neighborhood help and fund raising projects to improve the neighborhood. Nga Lann, one of our student tutors and now a Jacoby Center staffer, received an award from San Joaquin A+, a county-wide educational support organization, as San Joaquin County’s outstanding college tutor for 2002. see the YAB webpage

Community Learning Center Pacific students and faculty work with community partners such as the Chavez Public Library, WorkNet (job training), and a wide range of other organizations to provide cultural and historical programs, and a health fair attracting over 300 neighborhood residents. Film showings and history projects depicting central Stockton families, businesses and civic/cultural institutions have attracted many more. These are exciting ways for Pacific students to connect to the community, and they provide important social services and a strengthened sense of neighborhood identity to Midtown residents. Pacific students also participate in efforts to strengthen Midtown community organizations and serve as interns in Midtown non-profit organizations. For example, sociology major Diana Padilla taught computer software skills to students at One.Law, a Midtown alternative high school for at-risk teens (under the tutelage of Josie Cingcon, a Pacific Alum and One.Law instructor).

Housing Revitalization Pacific students and faculty conduct research on historic buildings, gather and map neighborhood demographics and housing needs, work with the City on housing code enforcement and anti-crime activities, and collect information on housing revitalization efforts carried out by neighborhood residents. A Midtown Residential Viewbook prepared by Pacific graphic design major Melissa Orth records the historically and architecturally distinctive structures in the Midtown. Undergraduates Chris Keola and Ryan Haug have worked with the City of Stockton’s anti-crime efforts, and students from the Sociology Department’s Urban Society course have helped to renovate a “safe house” for runaway youth.

Economic Development Working with WorkNet (a county job training agency) Pacific students and faculty, and staff from Pacific’s Career Resource Center, have organized career fairs attracting over 1000 participants which have helped many Midtown residents gain employment. They have organized an innovative small business training program to recruit and train child care providers in the Midtown, partnering with the Small Business Development Center and the County Office of Education. Pacific students undertake the outreach to attract Midtown residents to the program, help to run the workshops needed to provide certified training for child care providers, and provide case management services to help new providers overcome the problems associated with any new small business.

Check our links for the Youth and Family Enrichment Program and Community Outreach Partnership Centers Program to view the proposals which have provided the funding to support the Midtown Project.