Helen Davis Johnson is co-founder of CreateHere, which has helped entrepreneurs found more than 110 local businesses.The world of civic associations can roughly be divided into two types: established organizations staffed by suave professionals and boisterous groups that attract fresh-faced youth, ready to change the world.
Chattanooga-based CreateHere, which is about to disappear forever, was intended to be the latter.
Through five years, the Lyndhurst Foundation-backed group set up shop on Main Street and helped entrepreneurs found more than 110 local businesses with projected sales of more than $8 million. CreateHere conducted what it calls the world’s largest visioning project, collecting more than 26,000 survey responses in record time, and relocated dozens of artists downtown to jump-start the creative economy.
Founders Helen Johnson and Josh McManus call the end of its five-year run a “supernova,” a reference to the explosion of innovation that has so far spawned dozens of subgroups and side projects, some of which have taken on a permanent existance.
The group, which operates more like the French Revolution than a traditional company, has spread like a virus to other cities in other states, with one iteration currently launching in Detroit.