Harrisonburg presents Community Connectors plan to address urban‑renewal harms along Mason Street

Amy Snyder, deputy city manager for the City of Harrisonburg, told the Harrisonburg Development and Housing Authority on Jan. 15 that the city has a $130,000 Community Connectors grant — funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and administered by Smart Growth America — to support planning and community engagement intended to reconnect the Northeast neighborhood and downtown along the Mason Street corridor.

The City of Harrisonburg is using the grant for four main components: a small‑area plan that can be appended to the comprehensive plan, a facilitated dialogue process to provide trauma‑informed space for residents to share harms and experiences from urban renewal, a program of historical research to identify displaced households and property records, and a community‑led, temporary demonstration project for Mason Street. Snyder said the city also has technical assistance provided directly by Smart Growth America in addition to the $130,000 in grant funding: "we are doing all of this with $130,000 in grant funding and then additional free technical assistance funding from Smart Growth America," she told commissioners.

Why it matters: The work is explicitly framed as addressing past harms from urban renewal in the 1950s–60s. Snyder said the project aims to rebuild trust between residents of the Northeast neighborhood and city institutions, document who was displaced and…