Lyneir Richardson is co-founder and CEO of The Chicago TREND Corporation. He is an experienced commercial and residential real estate developer with over 17 years of experience in urban retail development. Lyneir is also a Professional Practice Instructor in the Department of Management and Global Business at Rutgers Business School and the Executive Director of the Rutgers Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED). Early in his career, Lyneir founded Lakeshore Development Construction Company and was recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as Illinois Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

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Lyneir Richardson:

When I have meetings in church basements, in apartment building common areas—I had a meeting in the barber shop recently—I always start by saying, “When is the last time someone invited you to have an ownership stake of commercial property in your neighborhood that you go by every day? You see it, you saw it decline. Don’t you want to be a part of the Renaissance story?”

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

Welcome to The Measure. I am your host, Leon Andrews, president and CEO of Equal Measure. At Equal Measure, we partner with foundations, nonprofits, and public institutions to advance social justice through learning, measurement, evaluation, and strategy.

On this podcast, we talk with leaders and practitioners about centering racial equity and transforming systems. Today’s guest is Lyneir Richardson. Lyneir is the CEO and co-founder of The Chicago TREND Corporation and the executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School. He is also a board member at Equal Measure. Welcome, Lyneir.

Lyneir Richardson:

Thank you, Leon, for giving me this opportunity.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

And I’d like to start my conversation, which is what I like to do with my interviews, by asking guests about their background—how you think about place and context and history, and how it has affected you and who you are and how you show up in your world? So, I’d love for you to share with our audience how you would describe that journey for you.

Lyneir Richardson:

Man, place and people underlie the work I do every day. I grew up on the West Side of Chicago for the first half of my life in a small suburb just outside of the city that I saw change from predominantly white to predominantly Black in terms of population. My early childhood was shaped by having a really close family and a small family business that, every day, we talked about marketing and revenue and expense management and employee recruiting and training. So, I remember place in that context.

Secondly, fast forward, I remember placing the context of being a student at the University of Chicago Law School. My favorite seat in the library was a cubicle with the window that overlooked the dividing line between Hyde Park, which people know as a place of wealth and diversity and University of Chicago and the Obamas. And the other side of the line was Woodlawn, a place that was known for higher crime and lower incomes and historically even gang activity.

And I remember thinking, like, “What’s the difference between this side of the street and that side of the street?” And then fast forward one more time, I worked as a corporate lawyer at a large bank, and I remember, every day, falling asleep at my desk around noon because the work was boring. We were making $100 million loans or $500 million loans to big publicly traded companies. It wasn’t until the bank gave me a pro bono assignment where it was going to make a $100,000 loan to a barber on the West Side of Chicago, not far from where I grew up, to buy a building. And I remember people saying, “Oh, that deal’s too small. It’s too hard.”

But something about seeing value in people, in places, that other people overlook or undervalue, that became the clarion call for my work. And 30 years later, I still am chasing that same feeling about place and people and seeing value and seeing opportunity.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

Wow. That’s powerful to hear how you describe the journey, but how you described your purpose. So, thank you for sharing that story. I want to lean in a little bit more to the work that you’re doing and the work particularly at Chicago TREND. Your organization is focused on catalyzing commercial corridors in majority Black neighborhoods. Can you tell me more about that work?

Lyneir Richardson:

Yeah. Our work at Chicago TREND started as a research project for the MacArthur Foundation. The research was focused on how commercial corridors and commercial properties impact low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, particularly on the South and West Side of Chicago. And our conclusion was that commercial property is your first impression of a neighborhood. If the commercial corridor is blighted or disinvested, it attracts crime, brings down property values, loitering.

And, so, that became the nature of our work: that we would come up with strategies that would encourage and catalyze and accelerate development and retail development, particularly in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Today we now own seven shopping centers, community-owned shopping centers. We own properties in Baltimore, in Ohio, and in Chicago. Ideally, in 2026, we’ll expand the work to Minneapolis or St. Paul, Minnesota, to New Jersey, and do other projects in Chicago.

We formed a fund with six large foundations as our anchor institutional investors: MacArthur Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and Kresge Foundation, and others—Geraldine R. Dodge and McKnight and others. And then we have some philanthropically motivated, high-net worth individuals who also invested capital that will allow us to buy three or four more shopping centers over the next 12 to 18 months.

But most importantly, we created a deal structure, and we have intentionally made efforts to outreach, inform, and invite local individuals to co-own these shopping centers with us. And I’m very proud of the fact that we now have over 460 individuals who’ve invested, on average, $2,000 to co-own these properties with us. And I expect we’ll soon reach 1,000. And the “we” is more expansive than the 460-plus people who’ve invested. It’s now their kids and their family members. They have a connection. I always start my meetings, and when I have meetings in church basements, in apartment building common areas—I had a meeting in the barber shop recently—I always start by saying, “When is the last time someone invited you to have an ownership stake of commercial property in your neighborhood that you go by every day? You see it, you saw it decline. Don’t you want to be a part of the Renaissance story?”

And the whole thesis of the work is that if people have a little ownership stake, that they’ll patronize, protect, and respect the properties in a different way. And it’s our way of including the wealth creation component. Then starting in 2026, we’re doing a lot of measurement around, is crime going down? Are property values increasing without neighborhood needing to go from majority Black to majority white? Are we seeing any of the social determinants? Are people more civically engaged?

So … it’s juicy, and I’m learning a lot. And we are building a team of committed people around this, and very hopeful that we’ve had some success and the model is proving out, and we’re continuing to iterate and expand on what we think the impact could be.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

I mean, it’s inspiring as I listen to you share more and more about the effort to co-design this and co-own it with the community and people buying in, the 460-plus. And to know that, as you said, it’s not the “we” own this. It’s not just them, it’s their kids, it’s their kids’ kids. It’s a generational legacy piece that you are speaking to.

And then you’re starting to talk a little bit about something that very much, as you know, we do it and we think a lot about here at Equal Measure, which is, how are you ultimately thinking about transforming systems in the work you do? How have you seen community-level changes contributing to systems change, or where are you in making that connection to the community work and systems change work?

Lyneir Richardson:

I believe that we are working to change the system of capitalism. I still believe in capitalism. Some days I don’t know if that’s popular to say or not. But I believe in capitalism, and I’m trying to make capitalism and the benefits of capitalism work for more people. And that’s what wealth-building and wealth-sharing strategies are all about.

Lately, I’ve been feeling sometimes like an oddball. So, when I go to conferences, there’s sort of two sets of conferences I go to. I go to the traditional commercial real estate conferences. What happens there is, people are talking about macro trends in real estate and how they’re doing the next, greatest deal. And, inevitably, someone doing one of those conferences will say, “Man, I really love the work you’re doing and you have 400-plus community investors, on average they’ve invested $2,000. I read about your work.” And they kind of pat me on the back, “I really appreciate your work. But is that communism? How does that even work? How do you make money with that?”

Fast forward to the next week, I’ll go to a conference, and it’s the cooperative ownership conference, and people will say, “Wait, you’re trying to make a financial return? And you ultimately have to sell the property? Or are you Blackstone?” They look at me like I’m the biggest hedge fund. And, so, the nature of changing capitalism is about finding projects that—they’re financially viable, but they also have mission-oriented community goals.

And even in doing the inclusive ownership work, I’ve learned, and I’m continuing to learn, that there are many models. Some models are about preserving affordability for small businesses. Some models are about governance—that the community governs and makes all of the key decisions. Some models are about space for art and creativity. And our model’s about, we want to show that you can generate a financial return and you can then have, at the same time, neighborhood-strengthening impact: crime decrease, property value increase.

So, that stuff, that measurement, as we talk about all the time at Equal Measure, I’m now trying to figure out how both. Not just qualitative stories—and I got some great qualitative stories—but quantitative. These will be assets that we own over 10 years, you’re owning them in 10 or more places. We’re looking for some quantitative impact metrics as well. And I think that’s going to fuel the work and create opportunities for other people around the country.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

Thank you for sharing that. And you have a wonderful opportunity of being an entrepreneur and then also teaching others who want to be entrepreneurs. And, so, through your leadership at the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers, you’re working with private, public, and the nonprofit sector to equip the next generation of urban entrepreneurs.

So, I’d love for you to share, given your experiences in this cross-sector environments that you’re in, what is something that you would share with today’s entrepreneurs that you wish you knew when you first started a lot of this mission-driven work?

Lyneir Richardson:

Here’s what I always tell people: that entrepreneurship, and especially mission-driven entrepreneurship, is about the narrative and the numbers. You got to be able to tell the story, what the value proposition is, what the impact will be, what’s the business model. And then, ultimately, the numbers are about, can this be profitable? Can this be self-sustaining? What is the financial expectation? My thesis is you can do mission work and still have a financial return.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

Yeah. I know what we think about this year for many, this has been, for many folks doing the work, it’s been a difficult, challenging year for lots of reasons—politically and resources not being as readily available for doing the work. Love for you to share how you’ve experienced this year in doing the work.

Lyneir Richardson:

There’s no future in pessimism, right? So, I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to see expansion of the inclusive ownership and community ownership models and vehicles. I see that a lot of people are writing and thinking about ownership in a different way. As I said, democratizing ownership, doing capitalism a little differently. All that stuff gives me great hope. I get probably, oh, once a month, once every couple of months, because of the outreach nature, I’ll get a Facebook message or an Instagram message. And I just want to take 30 seconds and read two of these, that, when you say, what keeps you inspired?

These were text messages from a shopping center in Baltimore—Edmondson Village—and I’ll just read two very quick messages. One said, “I love everything about this. I prayed for this because it’s just heartbreaking when I ride through our neighborhood and I look at that shopping center, it seems to be destroyed. Thank God that you are bringing about a resuscitation.” Here’s the one that brought tear to my eye. Guy said, “I’m proud to say today that I made an investment of $1,000 in the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. This is a neighborhood I was born and raised in. I lost two brothers in the neighborhood, and I’ve been shot there myself. But now I currently own a cleaning business of four years throughout the DMV. I know the ins and outs of Edmondson Village. So, if I can be of value to you, let me know. It’s definitely time for a change. Funny how the community I once helped to tear down, I’m now helping to build back up. I appreciate you.”

Man. At the end of a hard day, I’m hustling and trying to make the case to foundations for us, “Will you invest in our model? Why is it impactful?” I’m arguing with a tenant. And you get a message like that out of the blue.? It inspires you to get up the next day and the work even harder. That’s hope.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

I love that. Thank you for sharing. It’s such an inspiring story and commitment that you have made. And your energy and dedication, I think clearly comes across in the work that you do. Taking away a lot of hope in hearing those stories. So, thank you. Thank you.

Lyneir Richardson:

Thank you very much. Again, I appreciate the opportunity.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr.:

In a time when our safety, our rights, are under attack, I think about how important Lyneir’s words are about investing in our communities. We are stronger together when we build with intention, care, and justice at the forefront of our minds.

Lyneir’s insights remind me of Ella Baker’s words: “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.” When we invest in communities, we are building collective strength that lasts.

Thanks for listening to The Measure. Be sure to rate, comment, and subscribe to the podcast. You can learn more about Equal Measure by visiting our website equalmeasure.org. Until next time.