During this, our 50th anniversary year, we’ll be sharing 50 reason to celebrate Center for Neighborhoods — one reason each week. The posts will come from different stakeholders in the organization, representing our past, present, and future.

This week’s post is written by Gordon Gardner, CFN board member from 2001-2019, and interim executive director in 2019.

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My “official” involvement with Center for Neighborhoods began when I became a board member in 2001. I later served as board chair, and then as interim executive director in 2019.

In its many years as the Louisville Community Design Center, however, I knew about CFN through my engagement with neighborhoods as the executive director of Louisville Metropolitan Sewer District (MSD) for 18 years.

During those years, MSD engaged in a massive expansion of sewer and storm water services to many parts of the county where there was a minimal government presence. MSD was not always welcome, and significant engagement with neighborhoods was needed to get neighborhood approval and support for the action plans that were developed to expand services. Neighborhoods that had neighborhood associations and neighborhood leadership (usually with a few Neighborhood Institute graduates involved) were almost always better at expressing the neighborhood consensus and support for issues that needed to be addressed in the expansion of sewer and drainage services.

CFN has provided Louisville with grassroots leadership development and tools to help neighborhoods engage proactively to address problems and get things done. 

Many of the people who first engaged with the community through CFN later became leaders as elected officials, community and government board members, and enthusiastic cheerleaders for our city. 

50 years on, we need CFN more than ever to help us find our way to be the city we want to be.