| The University of the Pacific (UOP) is working to help create an "urban village" in the Midtown/Magnolia neighborhood of Stockton, California. The oldest chartered institution of higher education in California, UOP is located in the inner northern suburbs and within the city limits of Stockton, a mid-sized, ethnically diverse city. Though a private institution, more than 80 percent of UOP's undergraduate student body of 2,683 students receives scholarship assistance. Fifty percent of all entering freshmen experience a supervised community-based service activity. UOP's Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) was implemented through its Harold S. Jacoby Center for Community and Regional Studies.
The Midtown/Magnolia neighborhood lies a mile south of the UOP campus. Immediately south of Midtown/Magnolia is the central business district, which has been the focus of increasingly intense renewal activity since 1990. Midtown/Magnolia has suffered the fate of many neighborhoods in older cities, having ceased to be a significant center for retail, commerce, or single-family residences as its inhabitants moved to the newer suburban areas of Stockton. By 1990, the white, non-Hispanic population of Midtown/Magnolia had declined to 33 percent. Midtown/Magnolia also has sizeable percentages of Asian and Pacific Islanders, many of whom are Southeast Asian immigrants.
Midtown/Magnolia includes approximately 132 city blocks, half of which are residential. Twenty-five percent of the parcels in the neighborhood are designated commercial with an additional 9 percent designated institutional, industrial, or public. The median household income for Midtown/Magnolia in 1990 was $12,687; 75 percent of households had less than $20,000. The area ranks in the top 10 percent countywide in percentage of households receiving public assistance. Midtown/Magnolia is characterized by a substantial immigrant and non-English speaking population, low rates of early childhood educational participation, high unemployment, a disproportionate number of single parent households, and significant juvenile gang involvement. Nearly 54 percent of the adults in Midtown/Magnolia lack a high school diploma.
More than half of the 200 businesses in the neighborhood are automotive, specialty, or service-related businesses that fail to meet the commercial/retailing needs of residents. Criminal activity is higher in Midtown/Magnolia than in the rest of Stockton. A main street in the neighborhood has several identifiable drug distribution points.
A large section of Midtown/Magnolia is the former location of a state mental hospital, which is now closed for resident patients or outpatients. San Joaquin County Mental Health Services continues to operate facilities on the property, UOP operates a community re-entry program for mental health patients in the neighborhood, and there are other group homes for mental health patients as well. The disproportionate number of mental health patients living in Midtown/Magnolia has a stigmatizing effect on the neighborhood's reputation.
California State University-Stanislaus (CSU-S) has taken over the state hospital property and established a small campus on the site, which it plans to develop and expand over the next decade. Given its commercial-residential zoning, its current mixed use, and the eventual expansion and development of the CSU-S property, Midtown/Magnolia has the potential to become an urban village in which people live, work, and walk between home and job.
The core of UOP's COPC is its community learning center, which provides a base of operations to implement housing, economic development, and community building strategies, and provide educational and cultural programming. UOP staffs the COPC with Vista, Americorp, CCC, and UOP students. In addition to a Midtown/Magnolia Advisory Group, which has developed a community vision for the neighborhood, UOP's partners in the COPC include the City of Stockton, the Safe Neighborhood Action Group, the Stockton Cultural Heritage Board, San Joaquin County, Stockton Unified School District, San Joaquin Delta College, St. Joseph's Medical Center and Hospital, the Stockton Chamber of Commerce, the San Joaquin Community Data Cooperative, and Anderson Y.
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