Rooted Policy Labs | Mobile, AL

The Mobile Rooted Anti-Displacement Lab — hosted by Kindred Futures, Vivian's Door, and RUNWAY — produces Mobile County–specific, actionable policy and practice recommendations that protect legacy businesses and open pathways for new entrepreneurs to launch and grow storefronts. The lab improves commercial affordability, expands community ownership, builds pathways from leasing to ownership, and strengthens local capacity to advance those solutions.

The Rooted Lab focuses on commercial corridors facing structural change — where public investment, zoning shifts, redevelopment, and infrastructure decisions are reshaping who can stay, who can launch, and who gets priced out. Revitalization that does not protect what is rooted, or make room for what is coming next, repeats the displacement patterns of the past.

Using localized data and real-time scenario modeling, the lab produces strategies with cross-sector stakeholders and culminates in a short policy brief with follow-up support to carry the work forward.

What participants take away

• First access to a new data dashboard tracking small business and commercial real estate trends across Mobile County
• A co-developed brief capturing the policy and practice solutions that emerge from the lab
• A working network of business owners, capital partners, policymakers, and community advocates with shared language and aligned strategy

The hands-on lab brings together legacy business owners, emerging entrepreneurs, capital movers, policymakers, developers, residents and community advocates.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided.