How We’re Building Better Communities: We’re working in Richmond to improve the quality of life for residents and build a sustainable future for the community by transforming the historic downtown core of the city through our Renewing Cities model and working with local leaders to revitalize the housing stock in the nearby historic Starr Neighborhood via support from our experts at Interurban.
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Richmond, Indiana
Richmond, Indiana, already has a proven track record of building things worth celebrating. The city, which is the county seat of Wayne County and located about 75 miles east of Indianapolis, serves as Indiana’s “Eastern Gateway” for travel and commerce. The community’s historic downtown is dotted with examples of Italianate, Greek Revival, and Gothic Revival architecture across multiple National Historic Districts; it has suffered from decades of underinvestment but retains great historic significance. The city is also renowned as the birthplace of recorded jazz, where numerous songs from legends like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Hoagy Carmichael were cut at Gennett Records, one of the few studios outside of New York that worked with Black artists. After a post-WWII industrial boom, Richmond began to lose legacy factories and jobs, and many residents have moved away from Richmond’s historic core.
Sagamore is now partnering with local leaders in Richmond to write a new chapter in the city’s history, focused on renewing its economic vitality by enhancing residents’ quality of life through the transformation of key historic commercial and residential buildings.
Supporting Community-led Renewal in Richmond
Our Interurban initiative, led by local development expert and Senior Fellow Bill Taft, is teaming up with the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) of Wayne County to breathe new life into Richmond’s historic Starr District. This once-thriving residential area has now fallen into disrepair. With support from private investors, local government, and the state’s READI 2.0 program, Interurban helped community leaders develop a comprehensive revitalization plan for the Starr Neighborhood, which will guide future home restoration, financing, implementation, and marketing efforts. Taft, who has led revitalization strategy for neighborhoods across the country, says that he has “never seen a neighborhood with more untapped potential to be a great place to live.”
Simultaneously, Sagamore is working with local leaders to acquire and redevelop critical historic properties in downtown Richmond and the neighboring historic Depot District. Under the Renewing Cities model, Sagamore has helped establish a land trust that has thus far utilized local philanthropic loan capital to purchase 17 properties in Richmond slated for repair. Instead of selling these buildings to developers outside the community, the nonprofit land trust vests full ownership of the properties to the community, where local government, business, and community leaders can utilize a blend of capital to deliver real change in years, not multiple decades.
Sagamore’s team and partners touring Richmond’s Depot District.
Interurban’s Bill Taft and Wayne County Foundation Executive Director Rebecca Gilliam speak at our 2025 Indiana Conference on Citizenship.
Taken together, these efforts in Richmond to restore the community’s historic downtown commercial and residential areas can serve as a model for other towns across Indiana and throughout the Midwest. Instead of accepting the inevitability of decline or the ineffectiveness of current development models, with the right support and collaboration, local leaders in small- and mid-sized cities like Richmond can step up and write the next chapter of their communities’ stories.