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Article Launched: 10/02/2006 11:47 AM

Helping to Polish a Gem

By MICHAEL LAFLEUR, Sun Staff
Lowell Sun

LOWELL -- After more than two years at the helm of the Coalition for a Better Acre, Laura Buxbaum has decided to return to her former job as a nonprofit-sector consultant and spend more time with her family.

She will be replaced as CBA executive director by Emily Weitzman Rosenbaum, 43, of Leominster, who has spent the past four years running the Jewish Organizing Initiative in Boston, which trains recent Jewish college graduates to be community organizers. She previously spent five years as executive director of the Twin Cities Community Development Corporation, which serves Leominster and Fitchburg.

Buxbaum -- who championed Rosenbaum's candidacy before the CBA board -- said her replacement's qualifications and experience make her the perfect fit for the CBA, Lowell's oldest neighborhood organization.

For her part, Rosenbaum said she has a "burning passion to get back into community development." She starts tomorrow.

"The city of Lowell is a gem," she said. "I'm truly going to be blessed to be there and to work with the great leaders that you have and to work in a community that really cares. It's really people who want to be there, who want to make improvements, who want better lives and a better community."

Buxbaum, 48, who lives in Gloucester with her longtime partner, Brian Dunn, and their 8-year-old son, said she became familiar with Rosenbaum's work while working as deputy director of the Salem Harbor Community Development Corp.

Though she wasn't "in a big hurry to leave," when Buxbaum learned that Rosenbaum was looking to get back into the community development world last spring, she jumped at the chance to connect her with the CBA.

"I just didn't think a candidate like that came along every day," she said. "I felt it was very important, if she was interested, for the CBA to consider her a candidate. And under those circumstances, I was willing to leave sooner than maybe I would have been otherwise."

The CBA board then launched into a two-person selection process, between Rosenbaum and another candidate Buxbaum declined to name before ultimately agreeing to terms with Rosenbaum.

Founded in 1982 and based at 517 Moody St., the CBA specializes in community activism and affordable-housing development. It has an annual budget of about $800,000 and an 11-employee workforce.

Rosenbaum's negotiated salary information was unavailable. Buxbaum declined to disclose her salary.

The agency's leadership had been in a state of flux before Buxbaum arrived in the spring of 2004. The executive director's post had been essentially vacant since October 2002. It fell to Buxbaum, who was then interim executive director, to pick up the pieces, get the CBA back on its feet and run the national search for a permanent agency head.

Unfortunately, the person selected by that search process -- Diane Cantor, head of a Georgia Habitat for Humanity chapter -- unexpectedly backed out of the job after she was named.

Buxbaum said she never intended to be the CBA's permanent executive director because of the demands of such a position and her desire to spend as much time as possible with her family. But after much soul-searching, she and the CBA board "decided the healthiest thing for the organization" was for her to become its executive director.

During Buxbaum's tenure, the CBA has hired four new employees, launched a $13 million renovation of the 267-unit North Canal Apartments affordable-housing complex on Moody Street, started a $3 million rehab project at 442-462 Merrimack St., and is poised to redevelop the former St. Joseph Elementary School into 15 low-income apartments.

The CBA's 13-member board has also added two new members: Enterprise Bank & Trust CEO George Duncan and Adam Baacke, deputy director of the city Division of Planning and Development.

The agency also has launched a multifaceted affordable-housing and transportation campaign.

"We've made amazing progress," Buxbaum said. "This is a wonderful time for the CBA. I'm so proud of where we've come. Emily is fortunate to come to an agency that is poised to grow, and she has the skills and commitment needed to make that happen, with the support of the wonderful team we have here."

The CBA will say its formal goodbye to Buxbaum and welcoming of Rosenbaum during its annual meeting, scheduled for Oct. 21 at the Stoklosa Middle School.

Michael Lafleur's e-mail address is mlafleur@lowellsun.com.