THE SPACE in the PLACE! ("Promise to Practice Center")

The "PLACE" could be the epicenter of urban retail Renaissance. A "PLACE" wehre the future (our youth) engage in Recreation/Retail/Social Responsibility and 21st Century Education in a proactive environment.

Successful 21st Century students will need skill sets not being taught or made available to them in many of their current classroom settings.

Shopping in the established settings are familiar but the boundless frontier of the electronic storefront is changing the landscape dramatically. The merging of the retail experience and the electronic speed-of-light technologies is a 21st Century job and will be a career for many of our young people.

What better group to lead this experience than the future of our community OUR YOUTH.

Certainly the papers are full of the small % of young people creating the crime, but there is a silent majority of young creative minds sitting in classrooms focused on state prescribed curriculum designed for marketplaces that are no longer viable in this world economy. There is a tremondous amount of creative expression waiting to be unleased on projects for the betterment of the community and "THE PLACE" could be that vehicle of expression and success.

I would like to see created a space design that allows for the creative expression and success of all who enter "THE SPACE". The SPACE that young people come together to engage retailers in a cooperative creative fashion to seek interships, foster internet web development for greater penetration into the community and helping to develop incubator companies that eventually take space in "THE PLACE". THE SPACE could be the new kind of 21st Century School experience where the rubber truly meets the road and becomes an incubator of new ideas.

"THE PLACE" could be the new destination for differnt target groups and provide additional enrichment for local students old and young to seek remediation, intellegent exchange, skill development, social networking or even social service help.

The SPACE in "THE PLACE" could challenge all to invest in themeselves and their community.