Poet in motion: a Wisconsin teacher, walking in Neruda's footsteps, aims to save a port town from decay. (Latin America).

Chile's rustic port city Valparaiso seems stuck in a time-warp, like San Francisco in the United States during the 1950s: A labyrinth of streets; dilapidated, quirky architecture built into the hillsides; rackety elevator cars climbing sloping hills to panoramic views of the Pacific; the obligatory stray dog waiting at each corner.

Charles Darwin stopped here during his voyage to the Galapagos on The Beagle. It is also home to the world's longest continuously published Spanish-language newspaper, El Mercurio de Valparaiso.

The city's charm, however, has slowly dissipated. Valpo, as it's called by Chileans, has lost clients to competing ports, slowly becoming more a home to customs agents and sailors--and an increasingly delinquent bohemia--than to the artists and aristocrats of before.

It was to this oddly forgotten place that Todd Temkin, a 38-year-old, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born academic, first came in 1993 to teach English literature and write poetry. Taking his cue from Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Temkin made a home for himself in the crumbling port town and immediately fell in love with its endearing chaos.

Soon, however, the lack of civic cohesion needed to promote and protect this unique city began to distract Temkin. Most Chileans, he says, had given up on Valpo as not worth saving. "I was hypnotized by the city, and by this looming paradigm of disrespect," says Temkin.

So, in 1998, Temkin established Fundacion Valparaiso, a foundation that seeks assistance to develop projects in hopes of triggering an urban renaissance. To date, the foundation has raised US$2 million dollars and completed 17 initiatives. Advice and labor has come from, among others, the architecture school at the Universidad Catolica, public relations students visiting from Miami, and Chileans living in the restored neighborhoods.

One of the first initiatives turns the stately, Victorian homes of Valparaiso into bed and breakfasts, as Edith Vega, owner of the Grand House, did with her two-story, early 20th-century mansion. Grand House took in 200 guests in the first year. "I could not have done this without Todd," says Vega.

Valparaiso expects to receive approximately $1 billion in private and public investment, including a $55 million waterfront renovation charged with turning the city's old warehouses and container lots into an epicenter for international tourism. The face-lift includes a business park and warehouse district in a 100-hectare lot built into a neighboring hill, keeping most of the port's busy work away from the water.

Tourist friendly. Getting the containers out of the way is key: In November, the port inaugurated a new cruise-ship terminal with a capacity for 75,000 passengers a year. Chile's cruise business grew 30% in the last five years to 38 ships in 2002--some 72,000 visitors, including crew--on their way to Patagonia or Buenos Aires. "Todd Temkin's energy and seriousness coincided perfectly with the company's modernization plan, helping to humanize the nuts and bolts of the port," says Harald Jaeger, CEO of Empresa Portuaria Valparaiso, which manages the port and oversees the plans for the waterfront's renovation.

Temkin has begun to make converts, some becoming word-of-mouth preachers, others long-term donors, including energy company Chilquinta, a subsidiary of U.S. power company Sempra Global Energy, which supplies Valparaiso. "Even though some people in Chile are skeptical towards foreigners-as-poets-as-saviors, I think it's a plus that he is a poet," says Hector Madariaga, Chilquinta's president.

Temkin, though, worries about the future. The foundation will need someone to carry on this mission for another twenty years, beyond him and the next person who comes along. The foundation will require an endowment, too, to succeed. "This is not a think-tank, incubator or political organization, it is a civic institution:' Temkin says. "And I am a social entrepreneur.