The Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) Puget Sound partnered with Team Soapbox to create a compelling animated video that would help community members, stakeholders, and real estate developers reimagine the future of the Casino Road neighborhood in Everett, Washington. LISC needed a visual tool that could bridge the gap between community vision and developer interests while being accessible to the area's diverse, predominantly Spanish-speaking population. The challenge was to showcase existing neighborhood assets while illustrating development potential in a format that could support presentations to multiple stakeholder groups, from real estate developers to potential investors.
Team Soapbox delivered a complete end-to-end video production that included community site visits, strategic planning, script development, storyboarding, animation production, and Spanish translation to ensure broad community accessibility. Our approach began with comprehensive on-site research, meeting with community center partners and scouting key assets including the shopping center, schools, and community spaces. Animation was the ideal medium because it allowed us to visualize future development alongside existing assets in ways that photography could not achieve, showing potential mixed-use developments and enhanced community spaces while maintaining visual continuity with the neighborhood's current character.
The animated video has become a central tool for LISC's community engagement efforts, serving as both a presentation aid and a catalyst for meaningful conversations about the neighborhood development potential while honoring its diverse cultural identity. The video is now used in presentations to real estate developers and investors, community engagement meetings, stakeholder presentations to city and county officials, grant applications, and bilingual community outreach. The bilingual approach has proven particularly valuable, enabling direct engagement with Latino/Hispanic community members and reducing language barriers in planning discussions, ultimately contributing to more culturally responsive development approaches and increased participation from traditionally underrepresented residents.