Where transit goes, development follows—often with unintended consequences. When property values increase in areas surrounding new transit, higher rents can price out existing residents, who often stand to benefit the most from better access to public transportation. This fall, at the annual conference of the California Chapter of the American Planning Association, HR&A partners Amitabh Barthakur and Stan Wall were joined by Jenna Hornstock (Deputy Executive Officer, LA Metro), Andrew Gross (President, Thomas Safran & Associates), and Mindy Wilcox (Planning Manager, City of Inglewood) to discuss how joint development partnerships can help align private sector objectives with community goals to achieve higher quality transit-oriented development (“TOD”) projects.

Citing Los Angeles’ Expo Line extension, where average rents have risen more than 15% around planned stations, Amitabh outlined how public officials can help offset rising housing costs around highly desirable TOD sites: “Cities must be willing to introduce flexible land-use policies and ease density and parking mandates around station areas, so developments can generate enough revenue to cover the cost of desired community benefits. Often, there are trade-offs to balance project value and social impact, which require careful prioritization of outcomes that are realistically supportable by TOD.”  

Stan underscored the efficacy of transit supportive land-use decisions, such as those currently being utilized by LA Metro, as both attractive incentives to developers and valuable tools for transit agencies seeking to reduce infrastructure cost burdens. Stan also highlighted strategies that maximize the overall value of TOD projects, which include: establishing strong public-private partnerships, ensuring alignment with local jurisdiction stakeholders, mitigating the cost and physical impact of TOD parking, and taking a holistic approach to evaluating the project’s impact on ridership and revenue.

HR&A is currently advising LA Metro on additional joint-development opportunities at multiple stations along the Crenshaw/LAX line that maximize project value and community benefits.

Read more about HR&A’s Transit-Oriented Development work.

Please join us in welcoming our newest Partner, Robert (Bob) Geolas. Bob is a nationally-recognized leader in the development of innovation districts, university campuses, and research parks, and most recently served as CEO of the Research Triangle Park Foundation. Bob brings his vision of placemaking as a public service to HR&A, where he will work with public, private, and university clients to deliver economic growth and real estate strategies that enhance assets and communities.

“Bob is a bold, visionary, and thoughtful leader. He has the rare ability to inspire while pursuing practical steps to get something built – uniting real estate savvy, discipline, and political skill.”

– John H. Alschuler, Chairman

Bob has 20 years of experience advancing the missions of top research and technology campuses for greater public impact. He led the first redevelopment of Research Triangle Park in over 50 years, and, as Executive Director of the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR), helped created one of the country’s most successful public-private research and development campuses.

“I am enormously proud to be joining such a well-respected team of talented and thoughtful leaders.  HR&A provides the ideal platform to serve our universities, our great cities and our diverse communities as they imagine and build new centers of innovation to promote dynamic and robust economies.”

– Bob Geolas

In addition to his role as Executive Director at CU-ICAR, Bob previously served as the Centennial Campus Coordinator for North Carolina State University. Bob also has significant public-sector experience and has worked for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, The Resource Center for State Laws and Regulations, and the North Carolina General Assembly.

Bob will join Director Kyle Vangel in HR&A’s Raleigh office and can be reached at Bgeolas@hraadvisors.com.

Stan Wall joins a distinguished group of landscape architects, designers, planners, and engineers to guide the direction of America’s leading landscape architecture organization.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Stan Wall to the Board of the Landscape Architecture Foundation, an organization that provides best-in-field research and scholarship in the field of landscape architecture, and awards fellowships to promising students and professionals. As someone who is dedicated to contributing to urban spaces and environments, we can’t think of a better individual to help guide such a dedicated organization in support of the preservation, improvement, and enhancement of the environment.

Stan has worked to preserve and enhance urban green spaces throughout his career as a development consultant, private developer, and public-sector official. He continues to ensure the development of inclusive and sustainable places through his work in HR&A’s parks and open space practice, where he is creating funding and financing strategies for parks and open spaces in Atlanta and Washington, DC.

We’re very proud of Stan’s accomplishment and look forward to the future successes of the Landscape Architecture Foundation.

To learn more about Stan and his work, read his bio here.

Cities across the greater Los Angeles region, have recently taken steps to reweave the urban fabric where sunken freeways slice through urban neighborhoods. HR&A in partnership with Melendrez, Nelson Nygaard and Cummings, is supporting the City of Glendale’s feasibility study to build a “cap” park over the Ventura Freeway, which cuts through Downtown Glendale.

Space 134, the proposed park, envisions as much as 30 acres of new open space in the heart of downtown Glendale. Building on our experience working on similar projects, including Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway and Phoenix’s Hance Park, HR&A is providing strategic guidance on capital, operational and governance as the team develops a conceptual design.

HR&A studied the capital and operational cost implications of a series of conceptual designs, as well as relevant funding options. To finance construction, HR&A explored the capacity of an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (“EIFD”), a new tax increment financing tool in California. HR&A also evaluated potential earned income and ongoing management strategies  based on national best practices.

To communicate the Space 134 Vision and build consensus among residents and businesses in Glendale, HR&A identified a series of economic and social benefits associated with the park’s development. These have supported the project team’s outreach through a series of pop-up workshops around the City.  The project has been well-received by Glendale residents, members of the business community and has gained support from local and State lawmakers. Looking toward next steps for the Space 134 project, HR&A is assisting the team to prepare a concise concept plan– including a phased implementation framework and potential project benefits — to support fundraising and to continue to build support amongst a wider constituency.

Our latest study focuses on the ascension of urban mixed-use development as the preferred environment for the modern office. This report, produced on behalf of the NoMa Business Improvement District in Washington D.C, examines trends in mixed-use office development, and explores its future implications. To understand these trends, we prepared a case study analysis of seven mixed-use districts to measure successes against comparable Commercial Business Districts.

Office rents in new, urban mixed-use districts are highly competitive with nearby established central business districts.

Our data analysis found that mixed-use development has become the standard for office development in many urban centers because employees want access to convenient services near their work. Furthermore, employers desire these mixed-use areas in order to attract a talented workforce. Interviews with 19 developers, financiers, brokers, and tenants helped explore the causes and implications of the trends in the data, and examined the benefit the office sector receives from locating in mixed-use districts.

Developing new mixed-use areas is challenging because of the risks associated with bringing new uses to an untested market.

Cities and improvement districts that foster mixed-use areas will have a competitive advantage that will be difficult to erode. Interviews emphasized the importance of the public realm and the bottom floor of buildings in successful mixed-use districts, elements municipalities can control or influence. The streetscape and the ground floor of buildings have an impact on the resulting urban spaces that should be attractive, inviting, and have the distinct sense-of-place employees and residents desire.

Read the full white paper below, and find out more about Washington DC’s NoMa neighborhood here.

We’ve worked for 30 years to create some of the most celebrated parks in the U.S. and abroad. These open spaces are critical pieces of urban infrastructure – providing places to play, while also generating economic value, improving public health, and ensuring social cohesion. In our open space practice, we transform underutilized spaces into great urban places, and ensure sustainable stewardship for the generations to come.

Tomorrow night at 8:00 PM, we invite you to watch a special television program, called 10 Parks that Changed America, on your local PBS channel. The program, hosted by Geoffrey Baer of Chicago’s WTTW, highlights ten of America’s greatest parks and explores their role in transforming and defining communities throughout the nation. We hope that this program contributes to a growing discussion about the role of urban parks and an appreciation for landscape architecture.

In this spirit, we’ve created our own list of ten parks that are changing cities today:

1. The High Line | New York, NY
   Reimagined what a park can be and how it can define a city
2. Klyde Warren Park | Dallas, TX
   Reclaimed space over a freeway for leisure and culture in Downtown Dallas
3. Lakefront Parks | Toronto, ON
   Transformed the lakefront from its industrial past to mixed-use neighborhoods
4. Brooklyn Bridge Park | Brooklyn, NY
   Laid a cornerstone for Brooklyn’s renaissance, becoming New York City’s first great 21st century park.
5. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park | London
   Used the Olympic Games and this park to tilt development Eastward
6. Romare Bearden Park | Charlotte, NC
   Affirms Charlotte’s eminence as a choice destination to live, work, and play
7. Fountain Square | Cincinnati, OH
   Engaged civic leadership to catalyze downtown reinvestment around the Square
8. Anacostia Waterfront Parks | Washington, DC
   Anchored a new neighborhood and reintroduced residents to the river
9. Shelby Farms Park | Memphis, TN
   Reimagined Memphis as a city of equity and opportunity
10. The Lawn on D | Boston, MA
    Demonstrated the value of engaging interim programming in placemaking

As we look to the future, we are thrilled to help shape and sustain the next great urban open spaces. We hope you enjoy tomorrow’s show and continue the conversation with us.

HR&A Advisors is a proud partner of Resilient NOLA, this year’s recipient of the American Planning Association’s National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice.

Resilient NOLA, the groundbreaking resilience strategy for the City of New Orleans, released in August 2015, is this year’s recipient of the APA National Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice. The strategic actions in this plan, developed with HR&A’s support as part of 100 Resilient Cities – Pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, will shape the future of New Orleans by defining an implementation-driven, holistic approach to advancing the city’s physical, economic, and social resilience. This approach, which incorporated the input of over 350 stakeholders including historically underserved residents, looks beyond traditional recovery and physical resilience interventions to create a transformative vision for inclusion, connectivity, and economic vitality.

The team developed the strategy’s 41 project-specific initiatives through an integrative process that considered the critical needs of environmental preparedness, infrastructure and systems modernization, and equitable access to opportunity. These actionable initiatives include increased coastal protections, urban water management strategies, and infrastructure systems redundancy to protect the city’s physical assets, as well as affordable housing policies, workforce development programs, and improved transit connectivity to foster empowered, equitable communities and economic growth for multiple generations of New Orleanians.

HR&A is a proud partner in this work, and will continue supporting the City of New Orleans through the implementation of its resilience initiatives, including the Gentilly Resilience District, which was recently awarded $141 million from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the National Disaster Resilience Competition.

Green Infrastructure places an imperative on stormwater management strategies that deliver powerful environmental, societal and economic benefits.

Eric Rothman will moderate and present on the panel “The Triple-Bottom-Line Beauty of Green Infrastructure” at the annual New Jersey Future Redevelopment Forum on Friday, March 11 in New Brunswick, NJ. Panelists will present case studies and lessons learned on evaluating cost and benefits, managing risk and innovation, and maximizing the social and economic value on green infrastructure for stormwater management.

Eric is joined on this panel by Michele Adams PE, President, Meliora Design; Russ D. Dudley PE LEED AP, Environmental Engineer, Tera Tech; Christopher Franklin, Director of Construction, Brandywine Realty Trust; Matthew Testa LEED AP, Director of Construction, Bijou Properties.

HR&A Advisors has promoted Green Infrastructure for its clients including economic assessments of a district stormwater system within the proposed Southwest EcoDistrict in Washington DC, proposed changes to the City of Detroit’s stormwater policies, and green infrastructure retrofits within Dallas’s park system.

The New Jersey Future’s annual Redevelopment Forum is their biggest event of the year, attracting more than 500 local and state officials, citizen activists, development professionals, architects, attorneys, planners, business leaders, and students. In September 2015, New Jersey Future launched a significant statewide initiative on Mainstreaming Green Infrastructure.