CONVENING FOR COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION
IN MECKLENBURG COUNTY
BY TOMMI LAITIO
BY TOMMI LAITIO
Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow (2022-2024)
Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University
JUNE, 2025
Laitio, T. (2025, JUNE). Convening for Collaborative Innovation in Mecklenburg County. The Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University.
© Johns Hopkins University 2025. This case study is provided to the public for academic and educational use only and may not be used as part of commercial activity. Johns Hopkins University hereby disclaims any and all
and warranties regarding the case study, including accuracy, non-infringement of thirdparty
and fitness for use.
Mecklenburg County.
Executive Summary
This case study examines convening and its contribution to advancing innovative partnerships in the delivery and governance of public goods. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, with its long and proud history of public-private partnerships, exemplifies how local authorities can deliver value without compromising democratic legitimacy when leaders convene partners to define a shared vision and pool resources for investments in civic infrastructure.
This case about Mecklenburg County is one of a series that illustrates the partnership capabilities model derived from my research as a Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. The research project posed the question: What skills and practices do local governments need in order to advance innovative partnerships that sustain the legitimacy of governance? Across five cities worldwide, I examined the development and operations of public parks and libraries — areas of governance where partnerships are common. The resulting model proposes four capabilities — navigation, convening, experimentation, and codification — that local governments utilize to advance effective partnerships and produce innovative outcomes.
Convening for Public Value
Convening establishes a foundation from which diverse stakeholders can build and advance a shared agenda. The capacity to convene for learning aims to ensure that parties with different assets, and perhaps conflicting priorities, feel seen, heard, and fairly treated as they enter into a partnership. When successful, learning together with a curiosity toward differences builds a common understanding of the challenge, facilitates a systemic approach to addressing public problems, ensures shared recognition and ownership of the challenges, and allows the partners to understand each other’s assets and contributions towards advancing solutions (Alhanen et al., 2019; Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010; Forester, 2009).
There are two practices that are central to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s convening capability for partnerships. First, local philanthropy supports learning, agenda-setting, and experimentation to address important regional challenges. This case highlights the Foundation For The Carolinas as a broker. The community foundation enjoys the trust of multiple constituencies and can mobilize support for joint initiatives through grant-making and convening. As a broker, it enabled collaborative reimagining of the role of libraries in the region, leading to several public-private collaborations, most notably the $137.3 million investment in a new Main Library, of which $65 million will come from private sources.
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina map. Charlotte
The new Main Library is scheduled to open in 2026. The library shares a lobby with the Spirit Square performing arts complex.
4. Nurture relationships built from convening. 1
Second, the Mecklenburg County government creates protocols for partnerships to ensure alignment, legitimacy, and impact for its initiatives. For example, the Meck Playbook offers a 10-year “implementation framework” (p. 20) for the county’s parks master plan that is “flexible,” adaptive, and responsive as the region continues to grow (p. 10). With clearly defined principles and goals of equity-driven partnerships, the Playbook offers specific objectives to facilitate “mission-driven” collaboration to drive open space investments. Protocols aim for fairness in partnerships by reducing administrative burden for the county, minimizing the risk of one-sided agreements and failed collaborations, and preventing obsolescence in long-term agreements.
Key Lessons
The convening of partners committed to Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s equitable growth provides an existing, trustworthy platform for diverse stakeholders to learn together across differences. Convening expands their shared reality through joint experiences and reconfigures their understanding of a joint challenge. This case study on Mecklenburg County offers the following takeaways for local governments to nurture convening as a capability in partnerships:
1. Identify a trusted organization to act as a broker who can facilitate learning, resource sharing, and collective action among cross-sectoral stakeholders.
2. Establish and build on shared values.
3. Identify the role of partnerships in delivering public value.
I. Introduction
The demolition of the Main Library in the center of Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 15, 2023, was a big day for the community. The 20th-century-era building at the original site of the city’s first library was making way for a 115,000-square-foot, world-class civic space. The new Main Library, scheduled to open in Charlotte’s North Tryon area in the spring of 2026, is a public-private capital investment of $137.3 million, with $72.3 million committed by Mecklenburg County and $65 million in donations sought from philanthropic, private, and corporate supporters (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, n.d.). The library is considered a catalytic investment in the North Tryon Vision Plan, an ambitious mixed-use revitalization plan in Charlotte’s Uptown area.
The cross-sectoral collaboration to build a new Main Library reflects a regional commitment to improving quality of life for all residents and illustrates Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s capability to convene for partnerships.1 Successful convening fosters partnerships built on shared theories of change, pooled resources, and collective responses to local challenges. This case highlights this capability and two associated practices: the role of local philanthropy as brokers to advance learning towards solutions and the local authority’s delineation of protocols that frame and guide partnerships to ensure public value.
Local governments, such as Mecklenburg County, seek partnerships to improve the quality of public spending by doing new things faster, with greater resources, and with higher design and engagement quality (Ansell & Torfing, 2021, Bloomberg Associates, 2020; Saunders-Hastings, 2022). 2 While partnerships can generate these positive outcomes, they can also risk ceding control over public policy and assets beyond democratic decision-making — or creating the perception of such. 3
This case study on Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s par tnership practices is one in a research series developed under the Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University that asks: What are the skills and practices local governments need to advance innovative partnerships that sustain the legitimacy of governance? To explore this question, the research project focused on the development and operations of public parks and libraries as an area of governance where partnerships are common. Through comparative case study research in five metropolitan areas, each case study in this series analyzes partnerships that generate tangible results for residents through the pooling of resources, knowledge, or other assets.4 Studying the practices and skills of effective partnerships within different institutional settings led to the identification of a partnership capabilities model with four capabilities that local governments need to drive impactful and legitimate partnerships.
II. A Partnership Capabilities Model
The partnership capabilities model begins with the common public sector goals that motivate partnerships, namely resident health and wellbeing, equity, and sustainable development. 5 Procedural goals are also important considerations in partnerships, especially fairness, efficiency, and efficacy. To those procedural goals, I add “convivencia” as an approach to navigating friction. Convivencia refers to an orientation and active effort to co-exist across differences, in which difference is not a feature to be resolved but an opportunity for negotiation toward shared outcomes (DiMasso Tarditti, 2007; Low, 2022; Wise & Noble, 2016). 6 Because the policies and practices of local governments create the conditions that can either foster or curtail civic life, I propose convivencia as a foundation for municipal action in operationalizing responses to friction through the partnership capabilities.7
This model proposes that navigation, convening, experimentation, and codification are the four partnership capabilities that local governments need to ensure both innovative results and legitimacy in the delivery and governance of public goods. The capabilities are interdependent, iterative, and, ideally, sequential. 8 I define each capability in more detail in the diagram on pages 7-9.
The four capabilities are interdependent and iterative and may build upon each other in sequence. Navigation enables local governments to enter partnerships with confidence, understand the root causes of friction, and assess their need for external facilitation and brokerage in convening. Convening ensures sufficient stakeholder buy-in and helps identify the resources and actors available for experimentation. Experimentation provides evidence and builds confidence for systems change. Codification sustains the lessons of the previous phases into institutionalized practices.
The model also delineates skills versus practices to illustrate how actions may differ for individuals versus teams or organizations. In reality, skills and practices are interwoven and shared among staff, teams, organizations and networks. As such, they may be less distinguishable from one another in practice compared to their depiction in the model.
The diagrams in the following pages illustrate the four capabilities in greater detail and how they build on one another.
Partnership Capabilities Model
From Capabilities to Outcomes
CODIFICATION
Institutionalizing partnership structures and policies
EXPERIMENTATION
Providing institutional spaces and resources for ideation and testing of new or reconfigured solutions
NAVIGATION
Building staff agency, support, and ability to embrace and work through uncertainty and friction in partnerships
CONVENING
Gathering partners and brokers to recognize and leverage differences and to develop a shared action plan
NAVIGATION
Local governments as employers and stewards of civic life have a responsibility to build staff agency, support, and ability to embrace and work through uncertainty and friction in partnerships. The capability to navigate friction entails being attentive to an alignment between resident needs and partnership opportunities and reconfiguring services and policies based on actively listening to stakeholder feedback. For staff, approaching friction as an opportunity to learn how to navigate complexity can improve work satisfaction, staff retention, and their sense of equity and safety. Embracing friction in partnerships with civil society can lead to a better understanding of resident concerns, foster a collaborative culture with stakeholders, and inspire new governance practices.
CONVENING
Convening establishes a foundation from which diverse stakeholders can build and advance a shared agenda. The capacity to convene for learning aims to ensure that parties with different assets, and perhaps conflicting priorities, feel seen, heard, and fairly treated as they enter into a partnership. When successful, learning together with a curiosity toward differences builds a common understanding of the challenge and problem definition, facilitates a systemic approach to addressing public problems, ensures shared recognition and ownership of the challenges, and allows the partners to understand each other’s assets and contributions towards advancing solutions (Alhanen, Soini, & Kangas, 2019; Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010; Forester, 2009).
EXPERIMENTATION
In experimentation, the local authority and its partners engage in an adaptive learning process in which they create, test, observe, and adapt or reconfigure new ideas or existing practices (Ehnert, 2023a, 2023b). It is a process that can improve the design quality of scaled-up solutions by mitigating risks and creating sufficient support for new interventions. Experimentation is a useful strategy for building confidence in organizational change by producing evidence for and prototypes of a different tomorrow (Bason & Austin, 2022; Ehnert 2023b).
CODIFICATION
Codification is the process of turning the local authority’s intentions and practices into institutionalized structures and policies. Codified policies and practices communicate institutional decisions and priorities; provide frameworks for government staff in partnerships; and allow stakeholders, the public, the media, and elected officials to hold the institution accountable (Barker & Rees, 2021; Bason & Austin, 2022; Huntington, 2006; Kattel et al., 2022; Wolff & de-Shalit 2007). Legitimate codification requires stakeholder engagement that is experienced as authentic by the involved parties. Particularly germane to public innovation, successful codification strikes a balance between predictability and flexibility (Kattel et al., 2022).
Table 1: Partnership Capabilities Model
SKILLS
active listening, attentiveness to resident needs
NAVIGATION
PRACTICES embrace friction, reconfigure services
CONVENING
SKILLS
dialogue, curiosity, negotiation
PRACTICES
facilitation, learning together, shared agenda
POTENTIAL OUTCOMES
y Collaborative culture
y Better understanding of resident concerns
y Staff work satisfaction and retention
y Equity and safety
EXPERIMENTATION
SKILLS creativity, observation, learning by doing
PRACTICES testing, iteration, adaptive learning
POTENTIAL OUTCOMES
y Problem definition
y Systemic approach to collaboration
y Sense of recognition and shared ownership
y Understanding of assets
CODIFICATION
SKILLS assessment, evaluation, policy development
PRACTICES advocacy, reporting, enforcement, policy adoption
POTENTIAL OUTCOMES
y Flexibility and speed
y Higher design quality
y Proof of concept
y Confidence for change
POTENTIAL OUTCOMES
y Predictability
y Legitimacy of government
y Accountability and transparency
III. Convening for Public Value
This case study focuses on Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s partnership practices to illustrate the capability called convening. 9 Convening establishes a foundation from which diverse stakeholders can build and advance a shared agenda.
The capacity to convene for learning aims to ensure that parties with different assets, and perhaps conflicting priorities, feel seen, heard, and fairly treated as they enter into a partnership. When successful, learning together with a curiosity toward differences builds a common understanding of the challenge, facilitates a systemic approach to addressing public problems, ensures shared recognition and ownership of the challenges, and allows partners to understand each other’s contributions towards solutions (Alhanen et al., 2019; Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010; Forester, 2009).
In Mecklenburg County, balancing growth, sustainable development, and quality of life fuels significant public-private collaboration in the multi-jurisdictional region.10 The strong corporate presence in Charlotte-Mecklenburg — as employers, land owners, and boosters — encourages local authorities to partner with the private sector to deliver goods and services.11 The region has a long and proud history of collaboration for metropolitan development, with its tradition of public-private partnerships cited by numerous interviewees as part of the area’s culture and place identity.12
In this environment, there are two exemplary practices that enable Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s convening capability. First, local philanthropies, like the Foundation For The Carolinas, play a central role as brokers in this collaborative culture. Second, Mecklenburg County as a local authority develops publicly available guidelines, such as its Meck Playbook, to ensure alignment, impact, and legitimacy in transformation efforts. We describe these two practices in detail in the next section, focusing on the Foundation first, followed by the Playbook.
IV. Collaboration for Equitable Growth
Table 2: Key demographics on Mecklenburg County
Mecklenburg County is home to more than 1 million residents and includes the City of Charlotte and six surrounding municipalities (see Table 2 and Map 1). Provision of public services is distributed among county and municipal governments; germane to this case, Mecklenburg County manages over 22,500 acres of parks and open space in the region and is the main funder of the public library. U.S. CENSUS
July 1, 2023
Language other than English spoken at home, percent of persons age 5 years+, 2018-2022
housing unit rate, 2018-2022
Median value of owner-occupied housing units, 2018-2022 $334,700 $281,900
Median gross rent, 2018-2022
Median household income (in 2022 dollars), 2018-2022
U.S. Census Bureau. (2023). Population Estimates, July 1, 2023 (V2023) — Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and United States [data table]. Quick Facts. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US,mecklenburgcountynorthcarolina/PST045223
QUICK FACTS
Map 1: Mecklenburg County jurisdictions Source: Mecklenburg County,
An attractive business climate, competitive education sector and workforce, pro-active economic development policies, and high quality of life draw residents and corporations to the region.13 Between 2010 and 2020, the county’s population grew 20%, and the region anticipates an additional 1 million new residents by 2030 (Livable Meck, n.d.; The Meck Playbook, 2021). In recent years, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s focus has been on economic opportunity, due in part to high-profile research published in 2014 comparing intergenerational mobility in the 50 largest metropolitan regions in the United States. Based on multiple measures, the Charlotte metro ranked last for the economic mobility of low-income children (Chetty et al., 2014).14 Regional mobilization followed, with the City of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, and several local philanthropies establishing the Charlotte Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force to explore and respond to the multi-faceted challenge of limited economic mobility.15 In 2017, the Task Force recommended a new missionmanager body called Leading on Opportunity to steer a collective response.16 Established with seed funding from the Foundation For The Carolinas, Leading on Opportunity would prioritize “systems and structures” for early childhood, college and career readiness, and family stability, to “attend to underlying policies, practices, and mindsets contributing to negative outcomes for children and families” (The Charlotte Mecklenburg Opportunity Task Force, 2017, p. ii).
This effort has proved successful. Recent analysis by Chetty et al.’s Opportunity Insights team found that Charlotte’s economic mobility is close to “the national average due to improved outcomes for low-income Black residents and stable outcomes for low-income white residents” (The Opportunity Insights Team, 2024, p.4). Charlotte is now 38th among the top 50 major metros studied and third in making progress on economic mobility (Mildenberg, 2024). The region can continue to track its “collective progress” through Leading on Opportunity’s Opportunity Compass, launched in 2022 (Simmons, 2022).17
This preamble featuring Leading on Opportunity highlights key features of convening as a partnership capability: bringing organizations together to learn and develop a shared framework, a sense of collective responsibility, and data-driven protocols for action to tackle public problems. The remainder of this section takes a closer look at the practices of (1) brokering and (2) establishing partnership protocols.
Practice 1: Brokers Enable Learning Together
Brokerage advances partnerships between organizational stakeholders to support shared agenda-setting and action. Who acts as a broker will depend on local context. Key responsibilities include facilitating dialogue, encouraging joint fact-finding, negotiating solutions, documenting the process, and covering some transaction costs. Successful brokers uncover and address power differentials to ensure widespread commitment and build mutual trust among stakeholders. In doing so, brokers promote stakeholder recognition and transparent decisionmaking (Bason, 2023; Cramer, 2020).
For local authorities, a broker may be relied on to create a high-quality, inclusive environment that facilitates honest conversation between local authorities and actors impacted by public funding and decision-making, such as vendors, community members, developers, or nonprofits. Simultaneously, the presence of a broker allows local government representatives to be more explicit about public value and their parameters for engaging in partnerships with external stakeholders.
Rendering of the main hall of the new Charlotte -Mecklenburg Main Library.
As in Leading on Opportunity, the Foundation For The Carolinas often plays the role of broker in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. Established in 1958, the Foundation is one of the largest and fastestgrowing community foundations in the United States with assets worth nearly $4 billion. It currently hosts more than 2,700 donor-advised funds that focus on supporting charitable and civic initiatives in a 13-county area in North and South Carolina.18 Through its funds management, the Foundation has earned the trust of multiple constituencies and the ability to mobilize support for joint initiatives through grant-making. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the Foundation frequently convenes stakeholders to support learning, agenda-setting, and experimentation in addressing important regional challenges, including in support of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s new Main Library.
The 2008 financial crisis in the U.S. decimated local tax revenues used to fund municipal services. Mecklenburg County, which provided 90% of the funding for the award-winning regional library system, proposed a 50% budget cut for FY2011, which could result in the potential closure of half of the system’s 24 branches. Serving seven municipalities, the library was considered “critical to the quality of life and as an educational asset” in the region, according to a case study by the Urban Libraries Council (n.d.). Stakeholders agitated to keep the system open and sustainably funded.
To find a way forward, the Foundation For The Carolinas agreed to collaborate with the library and the county via a development grant to convene regional stakeholders. This grant enabled the creation of the Future of the Library Task Force that would use its “creativity, leadership and collective discussion” to make recommendations for library system sustainability focusing on core offerings; service delivery; stable, long-term funding; governance structure; and the library’s “optimum footprint” (Urban Libraries Council, n.d.).19
The Task Force reported to the County Board of Commissioners and the library’s Trustees that the relationship between the library and its main funder, Mecklenburg County, “lacked transparency and cooperation” and had resulted in “an undesirable disconnect” (Future of the Library Task Force, 2011, p.73). The system’s post-recession cuts were the second-highest among major U.S. cities; the resident survey showed majority support for maintaining library services in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and in branches reaching “the most residents.”20 Ultimately, the task force proposed a set of 39 recommendations “to guide the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library toward a sustainable future,” all of which were adopted. Relevant recommendations included stronger integration with the county, establishing a new Chief Executive Officer role for the library and a library foundation for fundraising, a new strategic plan, and the establishment of a committee to “explore issues and possibilities for the Main Library” (Future of the Library Task Force, 2011). 21
In 2012, the library hired its first CEO, local corporate and nonprofit executive, Lee Keesler, who remained in the role through 2021 and is credited with helping establish the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, 2021).
Fast forward several years and, under Keesler’s leadership, the library’s “possibilities” became central to a signature redevelopment initiative in the City of Charlotte. The library joined a public-private coalition to envision a walkable new urban district, North Tryon, with housing, offices, retail, civic and cultural spaces, and a hotel. 22 In a group interview, Keesler and city and economic development leadership described the library as the “cornerstone” and “iconic anchor” of the North Tryon project, attributing the library with “convening power” to attract and sustain partners over the long “twists and turns” of redevelopment. Per Keesler, the library could play this role in part because it was “furthest along” in planning for the future. 23
The Knight Foundation also supported this reimagining of the library’s future. Knight funded urbandesign support and benchmarking trips to the Boston Public Library and London’s King’s Cross for Charlotte-Mecklenburg civic leaders involved in North Tryon’s redevelopment. The trip to London demonstrated how cultural and heritage institutions, together with local businesses, had created a joint placemaking agenda called the Knowledge Quarter. Keesler described the effect of the trip:
There were six of us from several different North Tryon-based organizations who went to spend three full days in London’s Knowledge Quarter. We met with 30-40 of the Knowledge Quarter organizations, and what we learned affirmed, inspired, and contributed to the final North Tryon Vision. We left London convinced that our own knowledge quarter in North Tryon — consisting of a new Main Library, The Discovery Place science museum, one of the nation’s largest community foundations, a history museum, a branch of the fastest-growing campus of our state university system, the headquarters of one of the largest financial services company in the U.S., plus creative, technology, and media organizations — was beginning to coalesce. This awareness became an important part of the discussion in our North Tryon Vision planning activities.
Overall, the learning process built shared agency and enthusiasm and inspired the imagination of civic leaders by broadening their notion of the potential of modern libraries. The Charlotte Mecklenburg Main Library was then framed as a civic commons rather than merely a service provider, and it became clear to local stakeholders that these ambitions could not be met solely by renovating the existing Main Library building. In summer 2015, the library board approved a development plan for a new library building in North Tryon. In 2019, the new library’s design was announced, replacing the older, collection-focused building with a modern civic space with places for gathering, learning, eating, and reading. 24
Keesler described the library’s potential role as a civic commons and engine for economic development:
It’s a place where every corner of our community can come together to embrace and acquire knowledge: through digital access and learning; education and training; workforce development; research; and access to speakers and subject matter experts presented in the newly adjoined Spirit Square theaters. For a community that is very focused on closing the opportunity gap, this sounds like a pretty incredible tool.
Given the then-estimated price tag of $135 million (Knight Foundation, 2019), the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation launched The CommonSpark fundraising campaign to leverage the county’s commitment of $65 million for the Main Library. 25 As a sign of early partnership success, the Knight Foundation made the first private donation, $10 million, to the campaign — its largest-ever contribution to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community (Thomas, 2019).
Corporate and philanthropic partners donated to the library to create a civic landmark and destination for the area’s urban core. Yet, multiple stakeholder interviews reflected how these grand ambitions are in uneasy tension with the local authority’s fiduciary responsibility for the partnership. For example, the county, as project manager, resisted a partner proposal for a third-party project manager, seeing it as the county’s responsibility to safeguard the public investment, donor pledges, and the project’s legitimacy in the eyes of the public. 26 The county’s focus on cost control raised concerns about whether the project would meet partners’ ambitious expectations. A business executive noted, “I think there have been legitimate points of friction at different levels ... with the county architectural staff” in which they make design changes due to cost considerations. As a donor, this left them wondering: “Are we true to the commitment to build the building we said we were going to build?” while recognizing that these “friction points” are “the reality of a project this size and scale.” 27
The ability to strike a balance within partnerships is what we call a “convivencia” practice, where collaborative skills enable partners to navigate friction, reconcile differences, and advance together. As the project has progressed, the county has adjusted project leadership and increased staffing to deliver on the shared vision of an iconic civic space, and this effort is recognized and acknowledged by its partners. The head of library services noted that after “a lot of upheaval” including numerous “leadership changes,” the county’s current project manager had been in the role for 18 months. She continued, “we’re very grateful for that because she’s got experience with libraries. She’s got an architect’s eye. She’s very good at flagging where there are practical considerations and listening when we have more aspirational things.” 28
The new Main Library is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2026. Marcellus Turner, the former library CEO, hopes that when people come to the new library, they experience a sense of awe:
Everyone goes into libraries with this idea of ‘I know one when I see one. I know what it should have. I know what it shouldn’t have. I know how I want to feel in it.’ But what you want for them is this liberation of ‘Oh, gosh.’ You want that serendipitous need or yearn to just wander through it. Find places and familiarity in collections and see people working with computers, but also stumble upon something that they just did not expect to see. The new library should have a 10% surprise element. You just want them to walk into spaces and their mouths just fall open when they say: ‘Oh, wow! I didn’t know.’ 29
Practice 2: Protocols for Partnerships
Mecklenburg County’s unifying role as a public authority across seven municipalities gives it significant influence over regional collaboration. This influence is heightened when it comes to cooperatively managing natural resources that span localities and require substantial investment beyond what municipal budgets can afford. To facilitate partnerships for the management of recreational and natural areas, the Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Department defined partnership protocols in its comprehensive parks plan, the Meck Playbook. 30 The Playbook embodies a model of collaborative planning, an approach recommended for environmental stewardship that encourages deliberation, relationshipbuilding, and sustained engagement with public and private sector actors towards a “shared vision and goals” for action (Linnenluecke et al., 2017; see also Goodspeed, 2016; McDonald, 2005; Vacik et al., 2014). The Playbook’s explicit principles and goals reveal the county’s aspiration to lead as a partnership facilitator for parks and recreation (Goal #15), especially for its portfolio of trails that traverse its seven municipalities into South Carolina. As department leadership assesses partnerships in the coming decade, the Playbook offers a prescribed set of protocols to guide their action and decision-making.
Published in 2021, the Meck Playbook is a 10-year plan governing the county’s over 21,000 acres of parks and open space for “a more equitable, vibrant, and sustainable County” that supports the health and wellbeing of all residents (p.5). 31 The Playbook is a plan update that followed more than a decade of open space growth and investment through land acquisition and facilities development with the aim to maintain its ratio of “19.1 acre [sic] per 1,000 residents” (see Meck Playbook, Figure 1.5, p.19). With data demonstrating that communities’ access to quality parks was uneven, the county pledged “an even closer look at community well-being and equity” in the Playbook compared to past master plans. Two of the Playbook’s four principles promised a “commitment to equity” as well as a boundary-spanning orientation to link communities to natural resources through partnerships and collaboration facilitated by the county (pp. 10-11). 32
3 The Meck Playbook, the Park & Recreation Master Plan for Mecklenburg County.
Meck Playbook
Parks in High Need Areas
Parks and Greenways
Existing Trails
Future Trails
Priority Communities
Gap Areas
Source: Meck Playbook
Rules of the Game
To position the County for this multifaceted role, this document organizes Mecklenburg County’s vision into four key principles: Commit to Equity, Evolve and Grow, Tell More Stories, and Move Beyond Boundaries.
These principles derive from months spent engaging with the Mecklenburg community through in-person and virtual public workshops, pop-up events, a statistically valid survey, focus group discussions, and stakeholder meetings. The principles are tied to a series of goals which will be implemented through projects, programs, and policies. Through these conversations, it is apparent that leaders, staff, and community members believe Mecklenburg Park & Rec must:
Commit to Equity
across the system to make improvements and close gaps.
Evolve and Grow
County assets to keep pace with the needs of all communities
Tell More Stories
to increase awareness and expand impact of Mecklenburg Park & Rec’s efforts.
Move Beyond Boundaries
to better connect our communities to natural systems.
In an interview in 2022, Bert Lynn, the department’s Capital Planning Division Director who led the Meck Playbook development, described an organizational intention to become “more proactive” in community outreach and partnerships. In an interview, Lynn responded to a question about the role of philanthropic partnerships in parkmaking as “something that needs to become something more of a focus for [the county],” as an additional revenue resource given other mechanisms such as collecting development impact fees that are prohibited by state law. 33
The county has long had protocols for partnerships, according to former Park and Recreation Director W. Lee Jones, who described coming up with a set of parameters in response to the merger between Mecklenburg County’s and the City of Charlotte’s parks departments in 1992. He recalled it being “a difficult time because we had different management philosophies” and had inherited facilities with lagging investment. Given that “the region was growing pretty rapidly, we had to come up with a methodology, how can we do this, and not do it on our own. …we were approached by a lot of private entities to say we want to partner with you. So we developed different protocols as to how to partner to be able to leverage the funding from a private entity or another public entity with the funding that we had available to meet common goals.” 34
The Playbook is the contemporary manifestation of this approach, “an implementation framework” (p. 20) that is “flexible,” adaptive, and responsive as the region continues to grow (p. 10). It illustrates what Leslie Johnson, Deputy County Manager for Sustainable Communities and Interim Park and Recreation Director, describes as the department’s attention to “front end collaboration” when it comes to partnerships. 35 Partnerships are explicitly defined in the Playbook as “joint projects, responsibilities, ownership, and implementation duties between Mecklenburg Park & Rec and other groups and organizations” with “clear expectations and outcomes” preceding “formal agreements” (p.8).
A key goal of the Playbook protocols is to facilitate and optimize relationships with the various “mission-aligned organizations” around the region (Goal 14; p.11, p.117). Related recommendations include a planner position to coordinate municipalities (Goal 16, p. 164) and a revitalized staff role explicitly focused on building partnerships (Goals 14, p. 155). In an interview, Lynn cited uncertainty about philanthropic interest in or awareness of parks and open space needs due to this gap in staffing. The protocols defined in the Playbook seek to ensure fairness in partnerships by reducing administrative burden for the county, minimizing the risk of one-sided agreements and failed collaborations, and preventing obsolescence in long-term agreements (Goal 14). 36
In operationalizing its principle of equity, the Playbook cites the importance of data analysis of the built, socio-economic, and natural environments to identify “priority communities” (p.7) for investment, a message reiterated by Lynn in interviews. Lynn credited New York City’s Parks Department under former Commissioner Mitchell Silver for their work on “park equity” as raising awareness about the correlation between lagging parks investments and a neighborhood’s socioeconomic status or political capital. In the Playbook’s planning process, the county subsequently assessed proportions of youth, older adults, renters, people of color, and residents living in poverty, including “overlapping” demographics, to designate priority communities. He elaborated, “And so when we look at things from a capital funding standpoint, those are our tier one projects. So we want to go in and reinvest or invest in those areas first, to support the people in those areas, and then move out from there. So it’s a way that we’re trying to kind of not just talk about equity, but use it as a driver of how we prioritize” investments.
According to Jones, the Playbook’s equity lens and data-driven project prioritization helps the department navigate demands from elected officials and constituencies with higher political capital:
A constituency may push you to jump the line. We have to be cognizant of that. And when we come up with a methodology and a request for funding over a five-year period, we have to make sure that we stay aligned with that, because we’re not doing that by throwing darts at a board. We’re using key factors and analysis and investigation to determine what’s best and what’s needed at this time to make sure that we are fostering an atmosphere of equity with regard to the facilities that we provide to the entire community.
4
Meck Playbook public meeting.
Since 1996, the nonprofit Partners for Parks 37 has advocated and raised funds for the county’s open spaces, but the county does not have “friends of” groups at the regional or local levels, Lynn explained. Questions of equity were at the fore in the department’s assessment of whether to encourage this model or other philanthropic partnerships to advance regional parkmaking. The department remains wary of the “friends of” model, per Lynn, because locally “where those conversations have occurred are in more affluent areas. And so, um, we haven’t been able to come to a place yet where we’re comfortable with allowing that to occur, um, because we see that as potential inequity.” Yet, Lynn also acknowledged that philanthropic investments enable more public funds to be directed towards priority areas. Overall, implementation is key, with another alternative in philanthropic partnership being “for the department to reinvest in what we have now. And to allow philanthropy to help invest in new things” such as new trails.
As the Department looks ahead, the Playbook’s partnership protocols may help address the inevitable friction that arises in collaboration. Johnson, speaking generally about partnerships, highlighted the need to begin with a process that establishes shared values that can serve as a “homebase” for all stakeholders. Johnson, Lynn, and Jones used words like “flexible” and “nimble” to characterize the department’s orientation to partnerships, and Johnson described additional partnership skills including a willingness to address conflict, to seek complementarity, and to remain focused on shared community goals. Jones’ characterization of the Playbook as a strategy document is illustrative of its potential to advance partnerships. 38 Using the same sports metaphors that populate the Playbook, Jones explained,
It’s like two football teams competing. You don’t really know what the other football teams are getting out of scouting and what they are going to bring. But if they bring out something totally different, you look at your strategy plan, and you select the plays that would deal with that unanticipated situation to allow you to still compete at the level [at which] you need to compete.
V. Lessons: Convening as a Partnership Capability
Over and over in interviews, stakeholders described Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s history and collective identity as “a community that’s built on public private partnerships,” as Tracy Dodson, Assistant City Manager and Economic Development Director of the City of Charlotte, told me. 39 Her county- and private-sector peers echoed this sentiment, with county executive Johnson explaining that it takes “individuals, as well as businesses, government entities, and organizations, to assist us in trying to achieve this common good for the betterment of our community. That’s kind of our philosophy.” 40 A private-sector executive described it as a local “practice” of problem solving, that those with “corporate power, philanthropic power, city, or county are part of that learning together [around] what needs to happen. They all feel a vested interest in ownership over the outcome, which then means money follows.”
The capability to convene is evident in these descriptions of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s commitment to partnerships. Organizations and leaders are “learning together” for the “common good,” which is a regional “philosophy” and durable infrastructure for collaboration. Convening as a partnership practice in Charlotte-Mecklenburg has led to “a revitalized and relevant Library system” (Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, 2021) that will anchor significant economic development in the region as well as a “ten-year comprehensive framework for the future of Mecklenburg County’s places, spaces, and programs” in the Meck Playbook (p.10). So what can other municipalities learn from Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s convening success? What skills and practices can nurture convening for innovative partnerships? I suggest the following lessons:
1. Identify a trusted organization to act as a broker who can facilitate learning, resource sharing, and collective action among cross-sectoral stakeholders. This role can be played by an organization that is trusted across sectors and has the professional capability for facilitation, agenda-setting, and negotiation, perhaps a local philanthropy or nonprofit. A broker organization should deliver a high-quality convening process and cover some of the costs. Successful convening results in a collective action plan with pooled assets for implementation.
2. Establish and build on shared values. Interviewees highlighted the importance of shared values over and over again as the “homebase” for partnerships, as a touchstone in navigating friction, and as the glue for partnerships lasting over the long term. For local authorities, these values may be codified and communicated in public documents, such as the Meck Playbook’s commitment to equity and opportunity. Local authorities and their partners should be willing to revisit and iterate on shared values as needs and circumstances change.
3. Identify the role of partnerships in delivering public value. Local authorities carry out strategic planning in a dynamic operating environment, requiring flexibility in implementation without losing sight of values and priorities. The Meck Playbook is a data-driven plan with explicit principles and 17 detailed goals that also aims to be responsive “to new opportunities and challenges” as they arise (p.10). To strike this balance, the Playbook offers a general set of protocols for county officials to consult when exploring “mission-aligned” partnerships (p.11) that will enable the parks department to equitably meet its parks and open space ambitions.
4. Nurture relationships built from convening. In the Library and Playbook examples, interviewees described 10-year horizons for economic development and natural resources management plans, respectively. Charlotte-Mecklenburg is fortunate to have a culture of public-private partnerships that encourages stakeholders to see convening as the start or continuation of long-term engagement around complex problems such as economic mobility or park equity. Cities should take an expansive view of convening as seeding long-term relationships versus solely a time-bound activity. This will also support partnership endurance as leadership and circumstances change over time.
VI. Conclusion
This case study demonstrates a way of tackling societal challenges through the partnership capability of convening. Convening is the method of bringing potential partners together across differences to develop a collective action plan for an area of shared concern. It requires facilitation and deliberation, openness to listening and learning, agenda-setting, and resource commitments. Convening is a critical capability for growing metros like Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which McDonald (2005, p.15) describes as a region seeking “common ground” across “very diverse planning perspectives” and objectives.
Fortunately for Charlotte-Mecklenburg, a legacy of public-private partnerships means there is a philanthropic community that supports the development of a joint agenda by brokering dialogue, supporting research, mediating solutions, documenting different concerns and opportunities, and funding the learning, discovery, and planning work. Meanwhile, local authorities ensure public legitimacy in partnerships through building on values through clear but flexible protocols.
This case study is part of a research series that explores skills and practices for local governments to foster innovative partnerships without compromising democratic legitimacy. The case of Charlotte-Mecklenburg demonstrates that convening for public value can lead to long-term, meaningful public-private partnerships that protect public legitimacy and steer collective investments for sustainable impact.
Endnotes
1 The phrase “Charlotte-Mecklenburg” in this article refers to the metropolitan region, which comprises Mecklenburg County, the City of Charlotte, and the towns of Cornelius, Davidson, Huntersville, Matthews, Mint Hill, Pineville, and unincorporated areas. See Map 1.
2 Partnerships typically involve shared responsibilities between local authorities and companies, philanthropies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or community-based organizations. They are established through varying levels of institutionalization, from verbal agreements to contracts or joint investments (Hofer & Juric, 2015).
3 I define legitimacy in rational terms (Weber, 1947), as an acceptance by residents and partners that the government is carrying out its legal duties in a manner consistent with democratically defined objectives. Risks to government legitimacy from partnerships include ceding control over public policy and assets to private actors, reinforcing distributional inequities, a lack of transparency, and prioritizing the needs and views of the powerful (Foster, 2013; Greenspan & Mason, 2017; SaundersHastings, 2022).
4 The research compares partnerships for parks and libraries in five metropolitan areas across three continents: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Fortaleza, Brazil; Los Angeles, California (USA), Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (USA), and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA). In 20222023, I interviewed 123 public-sector leaders and staff, stakeholders, and residents using a semi-structured protocol focused on why local authorities pursue partnerships.
5 The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals is an example of shared policy objectives, endorsed by all member countries, which aim to reduce poverty and inequality, improve health and wellbeing, encourage economic development, and address climate change.
6 I am indebted to the scholarship in cultural and urban studies that examines how cities and communities can foster, navigate, manage, and embrace diversity and difference in everyday life. Convivencia is the “shared life” of residents and describes their “lived negotiation” in moving through their local communities. It also conjures “belonging as [a] practice” of city living (Wise & Noble, 2016). See Scarato (2019) for analysis of the differences in meaning between convivencia, used in Spanish and Portuguese language, politics, and culture, versus the English language term “conviviality.”
7 This research aligns with applications of the notion of convivencia in policymaking and professional capabilities (Addy, 2023; Blattman et al., 2022; Ciudad Buenos Aires, 2020).
8 Building capabilities for collaboration can be difficult in bureaucracies. Drawing on Mayne et al.’s (2019) state capability framework, capabilities can be understood here as assets for successful governance. They derive from the set of group practices (e.g., within organizations and teams) and individuallevel skills that are routine and habituated in an institution. For example, see Anderson (2023) for how the public sector can adopt a problem-solving capabilities approach.
9 This study is based on 29 interviews conducted with public-sector, philanthropic, community, and business leaders by Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow Tommi Laitio in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg metropolitan area in December 2022. The interviews focused on understanding the ways the county engages in partnerships in a few selected metropolitan-level projects.
10 Livable Meck, a metropolitan planning and engagement strategy, lists almost 150 partners: https://www.livablemeck.com/ partnersandprograms.html. It is one of numerous planning initiatives in the metro region that inform and build on one another, including the Meck Playbook (2021, see Figure 1.29 on page 37)
11 The region’s long history of public-private collaboration to improve urban life has been honed over decades at least since North Carolina National Bank (today known as Bank of America) led the revitalization of the Fourth Ward in downtown Charlotte. The bank partnered with the city to develop innovative municipal lending strategies and catalyzed other corporate investments in infrastructure, in order to compete for global talent from other financial centers like London and New York City beginning in the 1970s. See Smith and Graves (2005) for a detailed review.
12 For example, the “Collaborative” guiding principle in the North Tryon Vision Plan (MIG, Inc., 2016, p.23).
13 In 2022 and 2023, CNBC ranked North Carolina as the “America’s Top State for Business,” highlighting Charlotte’s financial sector as a key component (Cohn, 2023). North Carolina’s Department of Commerce “Why North Carolina” page (n.d.) highlights a range of accolades, metrics, and infrastructure in the region that draws businesses, students, workers, and residents to the state: https://www. commerce.nc.gov/business/why-northcarolina. According to the Tax Foundation (Loughead, 2024), North Carolina’s corporate tax (2.5%) is the lowest of the 44 U.S. states that collect it, and the area attracts the headquarters of large corporations beyond the financial industry. The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance (n.d.) reports that the area “is home to 18 companies on the Fortune 500/1000 list, according to the most recent rankings provided by Fortune Magazine.”: https:// charlotteregion.com/fortune-500-1000/.
14 Chetty et al. (2014) use “commuting zones” (CZs) as the spatial unit, which aggregate counties in a way that captures metropolitan and rural areas together. The Charlotte CZ is not a 1:1 equivalent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
15 Chetty et al. identified five factors that influenced economic mobility: family stability, segregation, school quality, social capital, and income inequality.
16 For more information about Leading on Opportunity, see https://www. leadingonopportunity.org/
17 For more information about Leading on Opportunity’s Opportunity Compass, see https://www.leadingonopportunity.org/ compass/
18 For more information about the Foundation For The Carolinas, see https://www.fftc.org/ what_fftc.
19 A “sustainability plan for FY11” that utilized “for the first time, buy-in for funding” from the seven municipalities, kept 20 of 24 library branches open while the Task Force worked (Urban Libraries Council, n.d.)
20 Only the Dallas Public Library experienced larger cuts than the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library (Future of the Library Task Force, 2011).
21 Other recommendations from the Future of the Library Task Force included a $2 million increase in the library’s funding based on a comparison with 13 peer communities viewed as regional competitors for growth and limiting programming to core functions.
22 For more information, see the North Tryon Vision Plan available at the Charlotte Center City Partners’ website: https://www. charlottecentercity.org/initiatives/northtryon- street .
23 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 7, 2022.
24 Award-winning architects Snøhetta and Charlotte-based Clark Nexsen designed the new library.
25 For more information about The CommonSpark campaign, see “About the Campaign” at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation website: https:// foundation.cmlibrary.org/about-campaign/
26 While fundraising for the library is ongoing, the county fronts the funding for the construction.
27 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 7, 2022.
28 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 7, 2022.
29 Interview by Tommi Laitio on February 9, 2023.
30 For more information about the Meck Playbook, see https://publicinput.com/ meckplaybook
31 The county now manages over 22,500 acres of parkland. For more information, see https://parkandrec.mecknc.gov/Places-toVisit/Parks
32 The Meck Playbook’s other two guiding principles are 2) environmental stewardship to meet demand and 3) community awareness and impact (pp. 10-11). The Playbook defines equity as “a proactive and strategic approach that aims to alleviate the differences in opportunities, burdens, and needs to improve outcomes for all.” It is realized “once everyone in a community has contextual or responsive investment and choice in” parks and open space regardless of demographics (p. 6).
33 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 6, 2022.
34 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 5, 2022.
35 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 8, 2022.
36 Partnerships in The Meck Playbook are highlighted in specific recommendations for varied aspects of parks planning, including sustainable development, for land acquisition, for public art endeavors and stewardship, and in shared use agreements with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, to name a few examples.
37 For more information about Partners for Parks, see https://partnersforparks.org/
38 This is in comparison to a conventional master plan that, in Former Park and Recreation Director W. Lee Jones view, uses community engagement to identify program, service, and facility needs and tries to fulfill those requests.
39 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 7, 2022.
40 Interview by Tommi Laitio on December 8, 2022.
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About the Author
Tommi Laitio was the inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University from 2022-2024. The fellowship supports exceptional public-sector leaders in sharing their practices and developing new insights for the field of public innovation. Before the fellowship, Laitio acted as the first executive director for culture and leisure for the City of Helsinki, overseeing arts and culture, sports, youth work, and the public library for Finland’s capital. Laitio holds an MA in political science from the University of Helsinki and an executive MBA from Aalto University. As an independent consultant, Laitio advises libraries, museums, cities, and foundations in North America and Europe to find solutions for urban friction, partnerships, and public engagement.
The Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University works to advance public sector innovation across the globe by marrying cutting-edge practice with world-class research to transform the culture of government, deliver exceptional results for residents, and inspire trust in public service. Since its launch in 2021 in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Johns Hopkins University, the Center has brought research, technical assistance, and training programs in proven approaches for impact to 214 global cities, improving the lives of millions of people around the world.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Mecklenburg County’s Deputy County Manager for Sustainable Communities and Interim Director of Park and Recreation Leslie Johnson, former Director of Park and Recreation W. Lee Jones, Deputy Director of Park and Recreation Peter Cook, Division Director Bert Lynn, Division Director Chris Matthews, former Charlotte Mecklenburg Library CEO Marcellus Turner, Director of Library Services Caitlin Moen, Executive Assistant Shelley Book, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation Director Jenni Gaisbauer, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation Deputy Director Karen Beach, Gambrell Foundation President Brian Collier, Johns Hopkins University Research Assistants Qiqin Sun and Sebastián Cortesi, and members of the study team at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins for their invaluable cooperation and support.
This research was reviewed and approved by Johns Hopkins University Institutional Review Board (IRB), #00015285. The research has been carried out as a part of the sponsored grant by Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins University and its Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
