MORE TO COME ON THIS.
A few basic tips:
Start with a full site. You want every category to have 1-2 pieces of content for people to engage in and to hit every possible audience segment (people who care about schools, business people, moms, etc.)
Have search-friendly content as a foundation for the site. Use Google Trends and Insights to find out what is heavily searched in the area. Local search terms are a huge opportunity area and Patch can own them.
Positive, evergreen stories about influential community members double as audience development tools. Start there.
Be heavy on alerts, especially in the beginning. You want to start establishing a habit of visiting the site often for everything local.
Always be on top of what's breaking. Again in terms of establishing habit you want to be the go-to source.