Lisa Craig: Planning and Revitalization…Expert Sees A Bright Future for Lodi
Lodi Mayor Lisa Craig finds that when a professional challenge requires new learning, it’s a real opportunity. An expert in historic architecture and preservation, Lisa has spent her career revitalizing communities while actively saving buildings and towns from the forces of nature, age and economic change. She has embraced learning at every turn and credits her father with her fierce work ethic. “I got that from my father,” she said. “He started Teresi Trucking in 1957. He is now 86 years old and still goes to work every single day.”
That work ethic and her powerful communication skills as a speaker and writer have played a vital role in Lisa’s journey. As a young advocate for historic buildings in Portland, Oregon, Lisa remembers a leader telling her, “Never go to a public meeting and not testify. Always have something to say on behalf of your organization or yourself about the issue at hand.” Indeed, she has testified at every level of government hearings and commissions, giving expert testimony in many instances in which communication skills are of the utmost importance.
On career continuity and professional relationships, Lisa shared advice of her own. “Part of my success has been the relationships I developed. There are probably 1,200 people whose contact information I have kept in my Rolodex. It’s not only retaining your connections but using them in a mutually beneficial manner. You never know who you will end up collaborating with or partnering with on a project. And, if you are able, continue in your field.” Her field of historic preservation may have seemed a narrow one but she said, “I was able to make that work for 40 years. I stayed in my field, in as many different iterations of it as possible, just to be exposed to the different ways that people connect to places and how those places make the difference in their lives.”
One of those iterations materialized when Lisa took a position as assistant director in the Washington, D.C., planning office. “D.C. was tough,” she shared. “After the Oklahoma City bombing, the work I did in D.C. involved extra security measures, force protection activities and barriers going up to protect visitors, workers and residents from all kinds of threats. Security was paramount but we also had to make it look good.”
She took that experience into her next role in private sector housing redevelopment for military families. “I knew about history and historic architecture, but nothing about military housing. It came with so many unknowns. Finance was one, utilities were another,” she elaborated. “For an $82 million housing project I had to go find out ‘What do I need to know about electric utilities and how do we get those into 682 homes?’ All these things you learn on the job by seeking out the experts,” she reflected. “Providing high-quality housing for military families is one of the things I feel most proud of.”
Lisa’s work in property development led her to Annapolis, Maryland, where she headed up the city’s historic preservation office. As part of protecting the historic downtown business district, Lisa and her team addressed the chronic flooding and storm events plaguing local commerce and visitation by developing the nation’s first FEMA-based historic resource hazard mitigation plan, Weather It Together. She finds it immensely rewarding that the plan was carried out and continues to save businesses through preventive actions.
In 2019, Lisa returned to her hometown of Lodi to be near family and reconnect with her community. It was her work in property redevelopment and downtown revitalization that piqued her interest in joining the City Council. “Based on my work all over the country, I immediately recognized that Lodi had all kinds of rehabilitation opportunities with its older buildings to accommodate housing and businesses,” she said, “And I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t chosen historic preservation as a field and been involved in the adaptive reuse of buildings for the next generation.
“I know a lot about housing and zoning and planning, and some finance,” she said. “But I still had to learn about city systems, fire and police departments, public works, CEQA, which are environmental regulations unique to California, and the challenges of redevelopment in Lodi. Those are all things that, over the past five years, I’ve had to educate myself about in order to serve
our residents.”
For example, the City of Lodi owns its own financially self-sufficient electric utility, a huge economic development asset for Lodi. Lisa and city leaders are positioning that asset to serve as a regional hydrogen hub developing a clean energy fuel source for power and transportation needs along the I-5 corridor.
Confident and optimistic about Lodi’s future, Lisa said, “One thing we can count on is our city’s quality of life. That quality of life and our small-town roots and traditional values will stick with us even as we grow as a city. My goal is to protect and promote Lodi for who we are now and who we will continue to be—an economically strong, diverse, family-based community, much like what you see reflected in today’s Lodi City Council.”
