Centre for the Development of Community Assets

The Centre for the Development of Community Assets (CDCA) is a private non-profit corporation working within the Canadian Urban Institute. Its goal is to halt the deterioration of the public realm and strengthen the public sector's ability to deliver needed community assets.

The CDCA brings together people, money and ideas to create the conditions to build community assets. Community assets include transit, roads, sewers, water- and sewage-treatment plants, power-generation systems, transmission wires and pipes that convey everything from gas and water to voice, electronic bytes and digital information. They also include hospitals, libraries, parks, trails, arenas, recreation centres, housing for low- and moderate-income people, cultural and heritage resources and the natural heritage system of ravines, rivers, beaches, streams and wetlands.

The CDCA's clients are municipal departments, agencies, boards and commissions, educational institutions, other levels of government and the private sector. The CDCA builds public processes that people can trust. It works with elected officials, government staff, organized labour, community groups and professionals to build the political will required to sustain creative approaches to building community assets.

CDCA Team

The Centre for the Development of Community Assets (CDCA) works on a project basis with a number of associates who are experts in their fields. Our core team members include Jeff Evenson, Founding Director of the CDCA and Tamara Balan, Project Manager. Nicole Swerhun is a Senior Associate who works regularly with the CDCA, along with other professionals in the CDCA network.

The strength of the CDCA team lies in the diversity of our experience. We have had the privilege of working with decision makers at all levels - from the Cabinet to the kitchen table - and we know that trust is built when the rationale behind decisions is transparent, reasonable, defensible, and based on the best information available. We design and deliver these processes by taking a creative, progressive, and pragmatic approach. We combine our big picture strategic thinking with expert implementation of the "mechanics" of good process, including issue tracking, record keeping, database management, and proactive issue resolution.    

Jeff Evenson, Founding Director

With more than 25 years of experience managing urban issues and public engagement, Jeff Evenson is the founding director of the CDCA. Acting as a consultant and advisor on private and public sector projects, Jeff specializes in communications, community consultation, partnership building, strategic issue management and process facilitation. He has a strong interest in sustainable urban development, with expertise in issues such as reinvesting in the public realm, culture and heritage, affordable housing, waterfront development, sport and recreation and green buildings.

During his career, Jeff has worked at various times as a community organizer, housing activist, assistant to local elected officials and political advisor to senior politicians at the provincial and municipal levels of government. He was chief of staff to two Toronto mayors. He has occupied key positions in a number of major city-building initiatives including the Toronto 2008 Olympic Bid, Toronto's waterfront regeneration initiative, Toronto's City Summit and Ontario's program to build 35,000 units of affordable housing in the early 1990's. He was the founding executive director of the Toronto Vital Signs Project. He was retained by the New York Power Authority in 2005 to facilitate consensus and support among the cities, towns and counties in Western New York for the Niagara River Greenway

Nicole Swerhun, Senior Associate

Nicole offers her clients and their stakeholders ten years of experience providing strategic decision making and process advice, as well as third-party facilitation services. Her work focuses almost exclusively on the public sector, and her clients have included all levels of government as well as local and international public agencies.

Over the last two years, Nicole has worked as an independent professional, retained to lead major public engagement and stakeholder consultation projects for the cities of Toronto, Norfolk, and New Orleans, the Province of Ontario, and the Multilateral Fund Secretariat for the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.   These projects have focused on a number of complex and potentially controversial issues, including affordable housing, public transit   policy, waterfront redevelopment, flood protection and river mouth naturalization, management of heritage assets, and how to provide effective supports to developing countries striving to comply with international environmental commitments.

Nicole's experience also includes work with the Boreal Institute for Civil Society at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Boreal was established in early 2005 to advance human development in Canada and worldwide by strengthening connections within civil society. Nicole was hired to design and implement Boreal's first project, focusing on the development of youth in the Greater Toronto Area.