Neighborhood Retail Crucial, Says Mt. Airy USA

Anuj Gupta and Mt. Airy USA wear a lot of hats.

“We’re a traditional community development corporation,” Gupta said.  “We do everything from real estate development to new construction.  We deal with things ranging from single-family homes to 49,000 square foot facilities and everything in between.

Mt. Airy USA has an annual budget of $1.3 million, with the majority of that revenue coming from the organization’s real estate portfolio.

“Fifty to 55 percent of our revenue comes from rent or fees that we collect on property that we own,” Gupta said.  “Another 30 percent comes from philanthropy whether that’s private citizens or business owners, and the rest comes from government resources.”

Gupta said that Mt. Airy USA has a few primary objectives: corridor revitalization, housing counseling, drawing people and a brand new schools initiative.

‘We’ve spent a lot of time developing the physical character of the Germantown Avenue corridor,” Gupta said.  “We’ve done a lot of things like façade improvements and renovations.”

Gupta added, “Now that we’re pretty much done with the physical improvements, we want to work on growing our business community.”

Gupta stressed that drawing people to Mt. Airy is crucial to its future survival.

“We have a lot of destination restaurants,” Gupta said.  “GeeChee Girl has been featured on NPR, and Earth Bread has been in the New York Times.  We need to figure out how to get local retail to work.”

Gupta also said that the local schools are key to Mt. Airy’s future.

“We can rehab all the homes we want,” Gupta said.  “But if the public schools are not viable we’re going to lose the racial and economic diversity that makes Mt. Airy special.”

To help the schools, Mt. Airy USA partnered with the East and West Mt. Airy Neighbors to form a grant program that’s funded through tax credits. 

Gupta added that Mt. Airy faces a dilemma when it comes to developing the southern end of Germantown Avenue.

“We did an experiment with the first Final-ly Friday,” Gupta said.  “We had musicians start playing music in front of the Sedgwick Theater.  About 40 people were watching them.”

Gupta added, “We had them slowly walk down Germantown Avenue.  By the time they got to the Lovett Library, there were five people watching.”

“For whatever reason people don’t want to make that walk,” Gupta said.