About Us

“Every neighborhood faces constantly changing competition in attracting and retaining good neighbors. In a competitive context, it isn’t enough for a neighborhood to be a good place to live; the neighborhood must be able to attract residents even as its competitors change every year.”
          — David Boehlke

“Confidence is the currency all neighborhoods trade on."
          — Charles Buki

Fall Creek Consultants is a national consulting firm specializing in marketing and revitalization strategies to reposition neighborhoods, towns and cities to compete effectively for positive investment choices by residents, homebuyers, business, and others. Our clients include nonprofits; neighborhood associations; local, regional and state governments; foundations; national intermediaries; and other funders and policymakers involved in community development activities. Fall Creek Consultants is based in Ithaca, New York, and works with associates in Chicago, Washington, DC, Rochester, and Lancaster, PA.

Fall Creek Consultants subscribes to a theory of neighborhood change that acknowledges the competitive environment that neighborhoods operate in: neighborhoods need to attract new homeowners, responsible investors, and local institutions to remain healthy. Neighbors will not continue to invest in disinvested neighborhoods if they are the only ones investing. Neighborhoods compete for the choices of homebuyers to buy, for residents to invest time, money and energy in their homes and in the management of neighborhood issues, for positive images and actions by real estate professionals, media, government, and business. Most of all, neighborhoods must cultivate and maintain a high degree of confidence in their future by all of these potential investors if they are to succeed.

This model focuses on increasing neighborhood-friendly demand for housing in targeted neighborhoods. Success is measured by evaluating how well a neighborhood’s housing market is performing, how well the neighborhood is attracting demand and the degree to which residents and other stakeholders are acting confidently about the future of the neighborhood. This approach represents a shift from a supply-oriented approach that measures success by the number of dollars spent or the number of housing units created.

Fall Creek Consultants is a founding member of the Healthy Neighborhoods Group, a collaborative of consultants dedicated to advancing an approach to revitalization that repositions neighborhoods to succeed in attracting positive investment choices by homebuyers, neighbors, business, and others.

Who We Are

	Marcia Nedland

Fall Creek Consultants was founded by Marcia Nedland in 1996. Marcia specializes in home-ownership program and product development, neighborhood revitalization strategy development, and customer-focused marketing on behalf of neighborhoods and institutions. Marcia is best known for her work with community-based organizations and funders throughout the nation to develop marketing plans and customer service strategies that apply private sector successes to the work of the public and independent sectors.

Marcia also combines her neighborhood strategy and marketing skills to help people all over the country in creating neighborhoods of choice by developing neighborhood strategies and marketing plans focused on local assets and opportunities. She helped create and now co-teaches the core curriculum in neighborhood revitalization at the national NeighborWorks® Training Institute, and has helped develop additional courses that are part of a Professional Certificate program for professionals in the field of revitalization. She is a founding member of the Healthy Neighborhoods Group.

Marcia is an award-winning trainer, regularly teaches nonprofit, financial institution and government audiences, and has also worked with the NeighborWorks® Training Institute on curriculum development for home ownership and community development lending and marketing.

Marcia writes and edits articles and training manuals on community development topics and researches and documents trends and practices in the industry. She has degrees in marketing and business administration, and has worked in the community development field for twenty years.

Associates

Michael Schubert

Mike Schubert, principal of Community Development Strategies (based in Chicago), formerly served as Commissioner of the City of Chicago Department of Housing, a cabinet level position in the administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley. Before that he worked in various capacities for Neighborhood Housing Services in Chicago. With Fall Creek Consultants, Schubert has created neighborhood strategies for communities across the nation, and developed and delivered training on revitalization for many clients, including Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, the Goldseker Foundation, the State of Michigan, and Xavier University in Cincinnati. He has a Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois and currently lives in Chicago. He is a founding member of the Healthy Neighborhoods Group.

Eileen Flanagan

Eileen Flanagan, principal of Community Development Consulting (based in Rochester), has over 17 years experience in the non-profit sector, specifically in the housing and community development arena. Eileen served as the executive director of two CDCs – Black Rock-Riverside NHS in Buffalo NY and Rochester NHS in Rochester NY. She teaches business planning, market analysis and techniques for analyzing neighborhood conditions at both the state and national level. Eileen is best known for her work in analyzing markets that impact neighborhoods and community development strategies. With Fall Creek Consultants, Eileen has worked on market analysis projects throughout the nation, for CDCs, city and state governments, and national intermediaries.

Charles Buki

Charles Buki, principal of czb, llc (based in Alexandria, VA) has held senior positions at the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation and The American Institute of Architects. He was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University and a Mesa Fellow at the Common Counsel Foundation. He has lectured widely on revitalization and gentrification; in 1992 he was a panelist at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlement and in 2000 was a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission. Since founding czb in 2001 he has continued to speak out on the need for a new approach to community development. He presently serves on the board of directors of the International Sonoran Desert Alliance and on the Fannie Mae Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Organizational Effectiveness. He is a founding member of the Healthy Neighborhoods Group.

David Boehlke

David Boehlke (based in Washington, DC) is a nationally recognized expert in neighborhood revitalization and the country’s leading authority on Healthy Neighborhoods. David has worked in more than 125 communities over his 30-year career. He has served in numerous capacities as consultant and executive director of several nonprofit organizations. He holds degrees in geography and architecture from Johns Hopkins and Harvard. David has spearheaded Healthy Neighborhoods work throughout the United States, has written seminal works on the topic, and has trained many of the nation’s leading practitioners of neighborhood revitalization. He is a founding member of the Healthy Neighborhoods Group.

Marta Howell

Marta Howell (based in Lancaster, PA) is a community development consultant, specializing in creating organizational systems uniquely tailored to carrying out neighborhood revitalization strategies. Ms. Howell has worked in the community development field for more than 20 years, having served as the chief executive officer of Neighborhoods Inc. of Battle Creek, Michigan, and as interim director for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Bay County, Michigan. Ms. Howell holds a Bachelor of Science degree in urban planning and landscape architecture.