For New York State’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI), HR&A led the development of Strategic Investment Plans for three downtown communities awarded $10 million each in State funds: Plattsburgh, Jamestown, and Jamaica (Queens). The program – the first of its kind in New York State – seeks to transform formerly struggling downtowns into places where tomorrow’s workforce will want to live, work, and raise a family, through targeted public investments with the potential to leverage and catalyze private investment and create jobs.

Partner Kate Collignon, who spearheaded this assignment on behalf of HR&A, shares lessons learned and recommendations for how to spark investment in downtown districts that face similar challenges.

1. How did the HR&A team craft a vision for the future for these downtowns? What were their main differences?

A key step in our visioning process involved working closely with local planning committees. These committees were integral to the development of diverse, cohesive visions. Their participation ensured that there would be stakeholders positioned to advance the eventual projects and their input helped us transform the community goals into plans that were catalytic, achievable, and fiscally feasible.

Many of the most striking differences between Plattsburgh, Jamestown, and Jamaica involved the demographics, economic circumstances, and physical fabric in each community. However, all shared a recognition that to drive future economic development, especially during a time when jobs are likely to follow talent, they needed to invest in placemaking projects. They understood that investment in a combination of new development initiatives and improvements to the public realm would: enhance the experience of their downtowns; attract new residents, visitors, and workers; and strengthen their ability to attract and grow jobs.

2. What are the main challenges that these downtowns must overcome? In your experience, are these common challenges to downtown revitalization – in places big and small?

Plattsburgh and Jamestown were established around industrial anchors. As these anchors moved on and the industrial economy waned, so did local jobs. In recent years, both cities have made tremendous strides in bringing employment back by partnering with institutions that allowed them to pivot from their industrial past. Plattsburgh has partnered with its State University and invested in their airport to strengthen their economy. Jamestown, with support from the State of New York, has made large investments in its downtown especially around the National Comedy Center, capitalizing on its fame as the birthplace of comedy legend Lucille Ball.

While Jamaica is home to significant local economic activity, the downtown is still not capturing its full market potential because of the intense competition with other New York City neighborhoods. While it is a major transportation hub with connections to JFK, Jamaica’s key challenge is creating the right mix of retail and experiential opportunities that will elevate the downtown from a thoroughfare to a destination, and ensuring that nearby residents have the skills and access they need to participate in that economic growth.

3. For areas with smaller markets and limited local capacity, what are some high-impact projects you recommend?

Targeted placemaking can significantly strengthen the character and appeal of a downtown to residents, workers, and visitors—especially if focused on locations that already have strengths to build from. However, it is important to ensure that a community is not taking on more than it can sustain from an operations standpoint.  To help offset costs and capacity limitations, creative and visible partnerships with major institutions can generate high impact growth.

Additionally, denser housing attracts retail and other amenities to downtowns. By increasing the number of residents living downtown, spending also goes up, which sustains the retail and attracts shoppers from outside of town, fueling the market for more housing and positioning for downtown revitalization.

4. How has local engagement with stakeholders and the public led to more effective plans?

Local residents and community members are the best resource for insights and direction – they are downtown every day and are able to reveal nuances we could never ascertain from data alone. The community teaches us about issues the downtowns are facing and where the greatest opportunities exist. Plus, where there is excitement and enthusiasm for a project, there is momentum for implementation.

5. What key lessons or strategies from these projects might be useful for local planners and stakeholders looking to revitalize their downtowns?

• Recognize how your use of public resources can play a role in building value within a downtown. Whether you focus on enhancing the quality of a space or reducing costs for development, make sure your public investments are done in a way that allows you to leverage as much follow-on private investment as possible in the future.
• Target your investments by focusing on key assets. There are many opportunities to invest when growing a downtown, but it is important to avoid diluting the impact of your efforts by spreading those investments too thinly across too broad an area.
• Individual projects should build to a greater whole. One-off buildings won’t alter the economic course of a community. However, a combination of programs that overcome obstacles to development can make a downtown more appealing by creating a place that continues to attract people and investment. In this era of e-commerce, this experience of place and community is the competitive advantage that a vibrant downtown can offer to a city’s economy, future efforts to retain and attract talent, and employers.
• Build for today’s residents and businesses with a view towards the future. The community members who are focused on a downtown’s revitalization need to be part of and see themselves in its future. Revitalization generally calls for growth, and the addition of new residents and businesses is a sign of success. But growth also needs to translate into improved circumstances for those who have long supported downtown.

For more information on this project, please contact HR&A Partner Kate Collignon, Principal Bret Collazzi, or Director Conor Muldoon.

This spring, the Bakersfield City Council approved the implementation strategies to leverage the transformative potential of high-speed rail investments.
 

 
One of the most documented effects of high-speed rail is the increased station area concentration and density of development that coincide with high-speed rail service. Given these effects, high-speed rail presents a unique opportunity for Bakersfield to concentrate a portion of its future growth inward, building on the progress already made in its downtown area, and lessening the negative impacts of suburban sprawl such as congestion and air pollution. However, in order to take advantage of this growth potential, Bakersfield needed a vision to guide the physical development of its downtown, stimulate economic activity, and enhance sustainability by encouraging infill development and enhancing multi-modal connectivity.

For over a year and a half, HR&A and SOM have worked with the City of Bakersfield, residents, and local stakeholders to develop a vision for downtown Bakersfield, both as the remerging core of the City, and as the future location of a high-speed rail station. This public outreach process provided an incredible opportunity for the community to come together and form an authentic vision plan for the overall downtown area. This effort, along with our market analysis highlighting key opportunities to capture demand, has culminated in the creation of a strategy to make downtown Bakersfield “high-speed rail ready” in the next 10 years.

To achieve this vision, a specific 10-, 20- and 30-year phased development strategy was developed, accompanied by an expansive list of physical and policy Implementation Actions that align with the project goals. The following is a list of prioritized initiatives that link project goals with real-world actions intended to make downtown Bakersfield thrive:

1. Launch a property-based business improvement district
2. Recognize that a proactive economic development promotion arm is needed in the city’s community development department to facilitate increased investment and revitalization throughout the community
3. Activate an innovative tax increment financing tool created by the City and explore additional financing tools
4. Utilize resources and partnerships to increase the population in the downtown area to 10,000 residents by 2030
5. Implement an iconic and catalytic housing and mixed-use development project in the downtown
6. Adopt an overlay zone to support development along the Wall Street alley area from D Street, to the Mill Creek Linear Park
7. Adopt a series of zoning updates that incentivize downtown redevelopment
8. Use vision plan as a platform for a future downtown land use plan
9. Adopt a downtown walkability plan
10. Leverage publicly-owned parcels for economic development

For additional information, please contact HR&A Principal Judith Taylor.

Image Courtesy: Detroit Riverfront Conservancy

The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, City of Detroit and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC) recently unveiled a plan to expand riverfront access and drive investment within the 400-acre East Riverfront neighborhood. The East Riverfront framework expands recreational opportunities for Detroiters and creates jobs within new mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods in a formerly blighted industrial area adjacent to the city’s Downtown employment hub, fueling Detroit’s continued revitalization. HR&A supported a multi-disciplinary team – led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) – by assessing real estate and economic opportunities and identifying strategies to shape the investment potential associated with both public improvements and private development.

The plan will create create eight additional acres of park space on the East Riverfront, while also advancing substantial street and public-realm improvements to make East Jefferson Avenue and other critical neighborhoods connections more bike and pedestrian friendly. Additionally, the plan will create two new greenways to connect upland residents to the riverfront. These public investments will drive new market activity for private development by enhancing perceptions of the neighborhood and bringing more residents and visitors to and through the East Riverfront. Implementation is already underway, with immediate groundbreaking for RiverWalk connections to the Belle Isle Bridge and Gabriel Richard Park, and the issuance of new development and adaptive reuse RFPs by DEGC.

The plan encompassed a year of conversations with community stakeholders, and substantial contributions from landscape architects Michel Desvigne and Inessa Hansch, McIntosh Poris, Giffels Webster, Kraemer Design Group, AKT Peerless, Rich & Associates, and E. Austell Associates.

For additional information, please contact HR&A Partner Kate Collignon or Director Connie Chung.

By: Bret Collazzi

HR&A is proud to have contributed to the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, which released a report this Spring that advocated for justice reform, the closure of Rikers Island, and new uses for the 400+ acre site would enable the island to go from a place of injustice to a place of great public benefit. The vision we helped create for a reimagined island includes critical next-generation infrastructure such as: expanded airport runway capacity; modern wastewater treatment and waste management facilities; and renewable energy production and storage. Recommended uses would create over 50,000 jobs, produce enough renewable energy to power up to 30,000 homes, and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by 40%, positively contributing to the city’s economic growth and environmental quality. Coinciding with the release of the report, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s committed to close Rikers Island within the next decade. Innovative thinking and interdisciplinary design will be key to enabling important social reforms as we look toward the decades ahead.

Rikers Island is a roughly 400-acre, largely manmade island only 5 miles from Midtown Manhattan. It has been used almost exclusively to imprison New Yorkers – as many as 20,000 at the height of the drug epidemic and approximately 7,500 today – for the past 100 years. In March 2016, prompted by reports of endemic abuse on the island, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito convened an independent commission to study the city’s criminal justice system. As discussions of closing the jail began in earnest, an important question emerged: if Rikers Island were not a jail, what could it be?

The sudden availability of 400 developable acres in a global real estate capital conjured images of high-rise housing and exclusive destinations to some. But the island faces serious physical limitations that limit its value: isolation from transit, poor soil conditions, an FAA-imposed 15-story height limit, and the buzz of planes departing LaGuardia Airport, whose runway sits only a few hundred feet away. More essentially, the Commission was clear that any uses proposed for the island should help address the damage that the city’s incarceration system has exacted on families and communities, particularly low-income and minority communities.

Uses that would directly benefit impacted communities, such as affordable housing, public open space, or employment hubs, would be costlier to build on Rikers than elsewhere and would be isolated from the city. Our team sought to creatively convert these challenges into advantages and to simultaneously address larger challenges facing the region. The resulting vision is an island transformed: from the vestige of a shameful past to a vital and unprecedented collection of sustainable city infrastructure that can address climate change, improve the environment, and position New York to compete as a 21st-century global city.

Published in April 2017, the Rikers redevelopment concept plan demonstrates the feasibility of eight critical uses. The most ambitious is a third runway of LaGuardia Airport, which could accommodate 12 million more passengers annually and reduce worst-in-the-nation delays. Just as critical, the island could house one of the largest water treatment facilities in North America, large enough to replace four nearby aging and flood-vulnerable plants and allow the city to repurpose the older plant sites for housing, open space, and other public uses. Solar and biogas installations on the island could power more than 60,000 homes, while waste facilities – including one of the largest composting facilities in the world – could divert 40% of the city’s landfill waste. The island would enable next-generation technologies, such as battery storage and waste gasification that legacy cities like New York can have difficulty accommodating.

By finding a way to reuse the island that will benefit the city as a whole, its disadvantaged communities, and the global environment, our design makes it that much more likely that the important social justice recommendations of the report can be realized.

For additional information, please contact HR&A Partner Jamie Torres Springer or Principal Bret Collazzi.

“The American city confronts increasingly urgent challenges of inclusion and equitable development. Building on our 40 year history of service to urban regeneration, Andrea Batista Schelsinger brings new skills, perspectives, and energies to our work. Her work will support the development of an urban future responsive to  the needs of all city residents, including those most vulnerable.”

–  John Alschuler, Chairman

HR&A is pleased to welcome Andrea Batista Schlesinger as a Partner in our New York office. Andrea is a nationally recognized leader in progressive public policy with a deep passion for cities. She will bring her vision of inclusive and equitable urban growth to HR&A, where she will advise clients on policies, programs, and advocacy strategies that address the challenges of economic inequality and the barriers to inclusion in cities.

“The primary goal of my work will be to establish HR&A as a leading resource in the promotion of equity in the growth of cities. It is increasingly important that we develop meaningful responses to the ways that cities have too often become exclusive of the communities that make them vibrant.”

–  Andrea Batista Schlesinger

Andrea has dedicated her career to advancing economic equality and social justice. Andrea comes to HR&A from the Open Society Foundations, George Soros’ global philanthropy, where she was Deputy Director of U.S. Programs. In that role, Andrea helped develop strategies to tackle state preemption of local laws, raise the minimum wage, improve the wages and working conditions of child care workers, and support progressive local elected officials throughout the country. While at Open Society, Andrea launched the innovative civic engagement initiative, “Talking Transition.” Working with local partners and HR&A Advisors as program manager, the New York City and Washington D.C. initiatives transformed the usual closed-door process between the mayoral election and inauguration into an opportunity for broad public engagement through public conversations about policy issues and their effect on communities.

Previously, Andrea served as a Special Advisor to New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and as Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, originally founded by an advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Andrea is the author of The Death of Why: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009) and has advanced degrees in history from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, where she focused her studies on how global cities have constructed their responses to inequality during the latter half of the 20th century.

To reach Andrea and learn more about our vision for equity in economic development please email abs@hraadvisors.com.

HR&A, in partnership with transportation and engineering leaders Arcadis and Sam Schwartz, released Driverless Future:  A Policy Roadmap for City Leaders, a white paper examining the disruptive nature of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology and potential policy solutions for city leaders.

To help cities navigate the complex challenges and opportunities presented by the rise of AVs, Driverless Future provides six policy priorities for cities:

LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE MOBILITY

Cities and their public and private transportation providers should embrace smartcards, open data, and universal apps to allow riders to compare, book, and pay for multi-modal trips.

PRIORITIZE AND MODERNIZE PUBLIC TRANSIT

Transit agencies should prioritize investments in high-ridership, high-frequency light rail and bus rapid transit corridors while leveraging driverless shuttles to provide first- and last-mile connections for riders.

IMPLEMENT DYNAMIC PRICING

Cities can reduce congestion and create a level playng field between public and private transportation through dynamic road pricing plans that vary by origin and destination, number of passengers, congestion, household income, etc.

PLAN FOR MIXED-USE, CAR-LIGHT NEIGHBORHOODS

Cities can shape demand, by planning for and incentivizing mixed-use development, overhauling parking requirements, and providing alternatives to driving.

ENCOURAGE ADAPTABLE PARKING

Parking garages should be built with redevelopment in mind. Adaptable garages are already being contemplated in Boston, Seattle, Nashville, and other cities.

PROMOTE EQUITABLE ACCESS TO NEW JOBS AND SERVICES

To ensure that disadvantaged populations will benefit from AVs, public and private operators must partner to provide alternative payment methods, equitable service coverage, and new employment and training opportunities for drivers and others in legacy occupations.

Similar to other technological revolutions like the railroad, streetcar, and automobile, public policy will play a decisive role in shaping autonomous technology and its impact on cities. We hope this paper will start a discussion and help cities prepare for this generational opportunity. Driverless Future and additional materials exploring the effect of autonomous vehicles on cities are available at DriverlessFuture.org.

 Jamie and the team answer five questions about working with the City of Boston to guide the creation of its citywide plan in 50 years.

1. How did your experience with large-scale planning help inform your strategy in Boston?

Planning for the long term asks cities to define citywide goals, develop an overarching vision to guide investment, and then use that vision to identify policy priorities and align public resources. Collecting the best expertise from across many disciplines is critical for success.

A useful citywide plan goes beyond land use or capital projects. It begins with a deep understanding of demographic and economic changes, and leverages the city’s public and private physical assets, human and social capital, and regulatory and financial tools to achieve the city’s goals. We work closely with our city clients to integrate the best of land use planning and urban design, policy and economic analysis, civil and transportation engineering, civic engagement, and innovative thinking about sustainability and resilience to give policymakers the best information and insights to act upon.

2. What was the biggest challenge to address when imagining Boston’s future?

Boston is a historic, land-constrained city with a highly productive workforce and a population that has grown twice as quickly as the nation since 2010. Like many younger knowledge economy cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, Boston is planning for the challenges and opportunities that come with growing rapidly and specializing in innovative, knowledge-based industries. I would say Boston’s number one challenge is one many that cities are facing—how will Boston keep housing affordable, invest in infrastructure, and expand access to opportunity as it grows?

Through Imagine Boston 2030, the City is answering this question by guiding new housing and investment to areas that can support growth, while also ensuring that the benefits of that growth become accessible to more Bostonians.

3. What was your approach to addressing these challenges?

The City wanted to understand where Boston could grow given its constrained size of 49 square miles, while also responding to the needs and ideas of existing residents. The City and the planning team began by developing job and population projections for 2030 and 2050, which enabled us to assess demand for new housing and jobs across the city. We paired these projections with significant urban planning and land use analyses that identified three types of places for enhancement and growth: existing neighborhoods that are predominantly residential and where quality of life can be improved; the commercial core, which can accommodate continued growth and diversification; and edge areas between the core and neighborhoods, where industry can be strengthened and significant mixed-use growth can occur.

Contextually-sensitive growth and investment in these three areas will enable Boston to accommodate projected 2030 and 2050 growth, while also addressing the city’s goals of improving quality of life, strengthening Boston’s economy, and preparing for climate change. The plan also identifies two additional priorities to guide investment in these areas: creating a waterfront for future generations, and generating networks of opportunity through physical, economic, and social connections between historically-underserved communities and the city’s existing and emerging economic centers.

4. How has engaging the public led to a more effective outcome for Boston?

Mayor Walsh’s administration has done an excellent job prioritizing public engagement and community outreach. Imagine Boston 2030 is an extension of that approach. To date, we’ve heard from over 12,000 Bostonians through open houses, street surveys, and online platforms. Their feedback has shaped the way we approached all parts of the plan—from identifying new places to live and work, to providing feedback on open space and economic development priorities. We’ve also focused on making sure the ways in which we engage residents and visitors give insight into the planning process, for example, using Legos to consider how different densities of development can produce varied community benefits.

5. What’s next for Imagine Boston?

We’ll release a final plan in 2017 that identifies how the initiatives and priority actions identified in the November plan will be funded, led, and measured to ensure success. Concurrent plans like Climate Ready Boston, Go Boston, and 100 Resilient Cities are other important avenues of progress for Imagine Boston’s goals. HR&A’s involvement in Climate Ready Boston and 100 Resilient Cities bolstered the City’s internal coordination, and is enabling the development of a series of focused, aligned actions.

How HR&A’s Resilience Approach Helped the City of Boston Plan for a Stronger Future

Boston is no stranger to climate hazards. In fact, the city has experienced 21 weather-related disasters in the past 15 years alone. As our world becomes warmer and wetter, we’re working with  cities around the world to create public and private solutions that will mitigate climate-related risks for people, property, infrastructure, and the environment.

The increasing frequency of destructive climate-related events is not the only challenge cities face. The same characteristics that make cities so appealing – vibrant, densely-populated neighborhoods; historic architecture; and extensive infrastructure – also make urban climate adaptation expensive and complex. To unlock the growth potential of climate adaptation, cities need to develop mitigation strategies that leverage interdisciplinary thinking and reflect economic realities.

We’ve developed a resilience approach for climate adaptation to help our clients identify actions that produce  benefits beyond risk reduction, supporting broad social, economic, and environmental policy goals. Central to this approach is ensuring that the solutions proposed can harness the value they create – through avoided damage and disruption as well as new development, jobs, public spaces, etc. – to help finance future adaptation projects and minimize reliance on scarce public funding.

In Boston, we incorporated our resilience approach into the city’s new climate adaptation plan,  Climate Ready Boston. With a team of city and regional stakeholders, we identified initiatives that will help Boston continue to thrive in the face of climate change. Key recommendations from Climate Ready Boston include forming a regional consortium of public and private infrastructure owners and operators to coordinate system-wide adaptation; creating new resilience workforce development pathways; integrating coastal protection infrastructure and other improvements into growth plans for new neighborhoods; and establishing requirements for future development to be adaptable and climate ready.

HR&A also collaborated with the City of Boston to integrate resilience considerations in concurrent planning efforts, including Imagine Boston 2030 and 100 Resilient Cities. Through Imagine Boston 2030, the first citywide plan in 50 years, the City has identified areas capable of accommodating Boston’s growing population and economy. However, to grow successfully in waterfront areas, Boston will need to implement multi-layered flood protection, partially by leveraging the value of new development to support them. As our work in Boston demonstrates, by applying our resilience approach, cities can unlock the growth potential of adaptation.

Learn more about HR&A’s resilience approach.