West Coast Archives - Page 2 of 3

Richmond Business Recovery Action Plan

October 5, 2022 / Comments Off

There is no comprehensive playbook for how local communities should recover from COVID-19, but it’s critical to balance meeting immediate needs with building a more equitable and resilient economy.

In Richmond, HR&A collaborated with the City and the Economic Development Commission to develop guiding principles for inclusive recovery that set the foundation for a comprehensive Business Recovery Action Plan focused on addressing the short-term needs of small and locally-owned businesses. The team identified recovery needs and available resources and made recommendations such as expanding available grants for small businesses, often owned by people of color and reluctant to take on additional debt in an uncertain economic environment; removing barriers to access and consolidating information about City services, recovery resources, and regulatory approvals; and identifying opportunities to use federal recovery dollars to support workforce recovery and capital improvements.

The plan focused on identifying priority actions that could be meaningfully advanced within a six-month timeframe and that aligned with equitable recovery principles including addressing community needs, building local capacity, and improving equitable access. HR&A has since helped the City to advance several recovery actions including the creation of a new Economic Development Working Group, and to identify longer-term economic development strategies with a focus on building the capacity of the City and local businesses. As we help advance the plan, including forming the initial agenda for the multi-stakeholder economic working group and framing a buy local campaign, we look forward to applying lessons to other communities across California and beyond. The City of Richmond continues to demonstrate its commitment to supporting underserved residents and recently retained HR&A to lead a community-centered engagement process for allocating the City’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.

SDSU Mission Valley Innovation District Development

September 30, 2022 / Comments Off

Universities across the country are taking on new roles to increase opportunity for their students, faculty, and surrounding communities by creating inclusive spaces for innovation.

San Diego State University (SDSU) made the bold move to purchase a 135-acre site from the City of San Diego to create SDSU Mission Valley, a mixed-use, transit-oriented community that will help expand SDSU’s educational, research, and entrepreneurial missions. This site will include a 1.6 million square foot Innovation District, up to 4,600 residential units, a multi-use stadium, and over 80 acres of parks and open space. The entire project will increase career opportunities for SDSU’s 35,000 students, 54% of whom are students of color, and grow SDSU’s $5.7 billion annual impact on the San Diego region.

Quidel Corporation, a provider of rapid diagnostic testing solutions, cellular-based virology assays and molecular diagnostic systems, was announced in July of 2022 as the first partner in the Innovation District and a Founding Partner at SDSU’s Snapdragon Stadium. SDSU expects more private, public and non-profit-sector partners to be announced in the coming months, who will contribute to interdisciplinary hubs of research and innovation.

We collaborated with SDSU to refine a vision and business plan for the Innovation District and to guide refinement of a master plan for the district. We are currently supporting the procurement of a developer to construct as much as 500,000 square feet of space within the Innovation District, where SDSU will expand its research presence to anchor the new development.

SDSU Innovation District Quad and Public Realm, Image courtesy of SDSU.

Minimum standards for JPA-sponsored, California Middle Income Housing Conversion Transactions

September 30, 2022 / Comments Off

The housing supply crisis in California is being addressed through a wide range of critical yet complex public and private investments. But very few resources support new housing for middle-income households.

In the last two years, three California Joint Powers Authorities (“JPA”) and their developer partners, with approval from local governments, have originated more than $5 billion of tax-exempt bonds paired with property tax exemptions to finance acquisition of 9,000 apartments, which will be converted into affordable rentals for middle-income households. The total financing exceeds the current $3.7 billion annual allocations of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits for low- and very low-income households in California.

Our work with local governments across the state has been focused on ensuring that these investments maximize public benefits and meet local policy objectives. Our project evaluations help guide negotiations for this new type of transaction and illuminate the issues that local governments in California should consider before approving participation in these transactions.

A white paper, co-authored with the California Housing Partnership and CSG Advisors, guides our analysis approach and highlights the urgent need for local governments to carefully weigh the merits of middle-income housing JPA bond transaction proposals. As a result of this work, Assembly Member Ward proposed AB 1850 to establish minimum standards for JPA-sponsored middle-income conversion transactions.

Project evaluation examples include two for City of Long Beach, where we helped negotiate better terms for a 215-unit building conversion, the Oceanaire and new construction of a 580 units, the Midblock Civic Center.

Image courtesy of Oceanaire

Los Angeles County Development Authority Loan Program

April 10, 2019 / Comments Off

Since 1999, HR&A has helped the LA County Development Authority refine and administer its annual affordable housing developer Notice of Funding Availability (“NOFA”) loan programs. HR&A has provided financing reviews, loan underwriting, and project coordination, and other advisory services that have contributed to over 100 affordable housing developments across the county, including nearly 1,000 new affordable homes since 2021.

For the last two decades, we have served as LA County Development Authority’s (LACDA) technical partner in executing their NOFA loan programs — reviewing and scoring dozens of detailed competitive developer proposals, conducting due diligence reviews, assisting applicants and County staff to finalize deal structures, drafting complex loan documents, providing project financing review, conducting loan evaluations, assisting with loan underwriting, coordinating with counterparties, calculating back-end tax liability, analyzing proposed loan modifications and re-syndications, and training staff. In addition to this work, HR&A served as the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH)’s primary consultant for the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) Housing Program from 2007 – 2019 to deploy the County’s $116 million share of the MHSA Housing program, which provides capital and operating subsidy loans for service-enriched, permanent supportive housing for homeless Angelenos.

Through HR&A’s work for the LACDA, more than 100 projects have received funding from its programs, which has been critical to securing federal low-income tax credits needed for total project financing. The County programs HR&A has helped support offer new permanent supportive affordable housing, targeted to a range of populations — including seniors, families, and transitional-age youth.

Explore

Learn more about the NOFA loan program on LACDA’s website

Press

New Boyle Heights affordable housing La Veranda provides a permanent home — Calonews

Creating a Racial Equity Agenda for the United States Conference of Mayors

August 27, 2018 / Comments Off

The United States Conference of Mayors developed a comprehensive understanding of the programs, policies, and projects that are effectively advancing racial equity across the country.

CHALLENGE

Across the country, discriminatory policies and practices have created lasting disparities in social and economic outcomes across races. To work against this harmful legacy, the United States Conference of Mayors, with its strong tradition of leadership on issues of civil rights and social justice, is using its national platform to help mayors and cities understand and implement the policies and practices that can reduce racial inequities in cities.

The organization engaged HR&A to survey existing racial equity programs in cities and create a set of recommendations for how it could help member cities proactively make meaningful change in their policies and practices.

Solution

To understand their most pressing challenges, we interviewed mayors and staff from 13 cities. The collective feedback showed that some cities are incorporating racial equity through place-based initiatives, programmatic initiatives, and policy change. Additionally, cities are seeking help from external partners to directly address race in their communities. We learned the importance of mayoral leadership and that clear definitions of equity are needed to translate commitments into practice. Synthesizing our findings, we outlined the ways that the U.S. Conference of Mayors could serve as an important convener for mayors and a source of best practice and technical assistance.

Our deepest insight emerged from our conversations with economic development departments. Unlike many social services, these functions are siloed from conversations on racial disparity even though they are charged with decisions that impact the physical, demographic, and economic realities of communities. This insight helped us design a program that would connect these departments with training, resources, and technical assistance to embed equity into daily practice.

READ THE BRIEF

Joint Development Guidelines for Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Corridor

July 13, 2018 / Comments Off

LA Metro is supporting the economic and physical development of Los Angeles communities through its Transit-Oriented Communities Program.

CHALLENGE

In 2008, Los Angeles County voters showed their overwhelming support for Measure R, which solidified a groundbreaking plan to double the length of the commuter rail system by 2035. To ensure that this major investment in the rail network produces wide-ranging benefits in the communities that it serves, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) launched the Transit-Oriented Communities Demonstration Program, a comprehensive approach to facilitating joint-development on the land it owns around transit stations.

As part of the program’s implementation, Metro engaged HR&A to support the development of program and design guidelines that incorporate broad community objectives – like community development, economic development, and multi-modal mobility – into joint development projects along the Crenshaw/LAX light rail corridor.

Solution

To define the appropriate scale and character of supportable development at each station area, HR&A analyzed market demand for key land uses at each station and tested the financial feasibility of potential development scenarios through pro forma financial modeling. Our financial feasibility testing placed a significant emphasis on potential opportunities that would likely result with the introduction of rail transit.

Also, to incorporate community input and feedback, HR&A attended and facilitated a series of community stakeholder meetings at each station area.

After using HR&A’s recommendations to develop overarching vision and design guidelines, Metro issued final development guidelines for the Fairview Heights and Expo/Crenshaw station areas in June 2016.

IMPACT

Building upon the development guidelines, Metro issued a Request for Proposals for a joint-development opportunity at the Expo/Crenshaw Station and selected a subsidiary of Watt Companies, a nationally recognized real estate investment and development firm, for a six-month exclusive negotiation agreement.

The Watt Companies’ initial proposal included many of the program elements recommended by HR&A – affordable housing for residents at the very low-income level, nearly 50,000 square feet of community-serving space, as well as retail spaces targeting locally-owned businesses.

Capacity Building for the National Disaster Resilience Competition

July 10, 2018 / Comments Off

The National Disaster Resilience Competition institutionalized the practice of resilience in cities across the country.

CHALLENGE

To confront increasing physical vulnerability to the effects of climate change and decreasing public funding available for infrastructure and community development, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Rockefeller Foundation partnered to transform resilience building policy and practice through the National Disaster Resilience Competition. In 2014, President Obama allocated $1 billion in HUD funding to competition winners, which were selected from places that suffered presidentially-declared disasters between 2011 and 2013.

Solution

HR&A supported the Rockefeller Foundation’s management of the program, providing technical support for 67 cities, states, and counties as each prepared competition submissions. This work ensured that the projects and programs would respond to a broad array of climate-related risk, and address social, economic and environmental challenges. HR&A also designed and delivered a capacity-building program for participants that provided individual technical support to teams to guide them through proposal development; regional “Resilience Academies” that brought together a network of experts to support teams in assessing risk and developing strategies and projects to address them; and tools and other resources to help interpret HUD guidance.

IMPACT

The competition enhanced local, state, and regional resilience techniques by offering resources and encouraging partnerships to amplify potential financial and social benefits activated by federal funds. In 2016, HUD announced the 13 winning cities, states, and counties of the $1 billion competition. Funded projects include state watershed, coastal protection, community flood grant, and public housing resilience pilot programs; and coastal wetland and rural river resilience efforts among other projects.
Following the awards, the Rockefeller Foundation engaged HR&A to incorporate workshop teachings into a permanent resilience curriculum, which was deployed across the world through the Global Resilience Academy.

Solicitation & Transaction Management for the Salesforce Transit Center

June 13, 2018 / Comments Off

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority successfully procured a facility management and programming partner for the $2.26 billion Salesforce Transit Center.

CHALLENGE

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority was established to design, build, operate, and maintain the world-class Salesforce Transit Center in downtown San Francisco. Intent on maintaining its compact team and clear focus on transit, the Authority sought a private-sector partner to manage the facility’s 90,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, rooftop park, robust public art program, and significant digital advertising assets.

The Authority’s leadership engaged HR&A to identify the appropriate public-private partnership structure and solicitation process that would attract the right partner for this iconic piece of American infrastructure.

Solution

Working closely with the Authority’s leadership, the team defined a set of principles for a public-private partnership structure that would enable the Authority to maintain ownership of the transit center, generate an economic return, retain oversight of center operations, minimize risk associated with operations and maintenance of the non-transit program, and most importantly – provide a world class experience for the 50,000 daily riders, workers, and shoppers who will visit the transit center.

With these principles in place, HR&A drafted and released a solicitation, and marketed the opportunity to local and national real estate development, facilities, open space, and digital media management firms. The team guided the Authority’s evaluation committee through the respondent review, interview, and selection of the preferred asset management team.

To ensure the agreement terms incentivized performance and a timely ramp-up to stabilization of operations, HR&A worked with the Authority’s legal counsel through negotiations.

IMPACT

After attracting a number of strong proposals and selecting a preferred asset manager, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority executed an asset management agreement meeting all of its criteria with an interdisciplinary team led by Lincoln Property Company.

Defining the Economic Impact of WeWork

April 19, 2018 / Comments Off

Challenge

As part of an initiative to shape the future of work and cities, WeWork was interested in demonstrating how the WeWork community creates an economic ripple effect for people, businesses, neighborhoods, and cities.

Solution

To quantify the economic benefits of WeWork to a range of stakeholders interested the company’s growth, HR&A developed the first detailed economic and fiscal impact analysis of WeWork communities in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The analysis focused on WeWork’s value-add to each partner and its crucial role in growing each city’s innovation economy, small business sector, and entrepreneurial community. HR&A built on this by assessing neighborhood-level demographics and market trends, and creating illustrative profiles of WeWork’s members. Finally, HR&A developed projections to estimate how WeWork’s expansion could impact other cities across the U.S.

IMPACT

Our study found that WeWork would be among the largest private-sector employers in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, supporting 50,000 jobs across the three cities. For each member, one additional job is created somewhere else where in the city, in total representing nearly 1% of each city’s workforce. A subsequent report, WeWork’s Global Impact Report 2019, expanded to track impacts the impacts of the company worldwide. Findings from both studies will be incorporated into WeWork’s Future of Work initiative and will continue to support outreach to policymakers as WeWork expands.

Los Angeles Economic Development Framework

February 10, 2016 / Comments Off

HR&A worked with the City Administrative Officer and Chief Legislative Analyst of the City of Los Angeles to evaluate and recommend a new approach to citywide economic development.

Following the recent dissolution of Community Redevelopment Agencies throughout California and the lingering effects of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously in support of a new framework for the City’s economic development structure. HR&A prepared this framework with the following recommendations for a new public-private structure to deliver economic development services:

A new Economic Development Department to support the City’s businesses, industries, and communities; direct production of a citywide economic development strategy; manage and facilitate the distribution of federal and state resources; and consolidate certain economic development functions from existing City entities, including workforce development.
A new independent Citywide Economic Development Nonprofit partner, operating under contract with the City, to manage the City’s strategic real estate assets; advance major economic development and public-private real estate projects; manage the City’s off-budget finance entities; and provide expert research, analytic, and transaction negotiation services.
A Deputy Mayor for Economic Development charged with ensuring coordination among the Mayor’s office, the economic development department , the independent economic development non-profit, other related City departments, proprietary agencies, and external economic development stakeholders.

This new framework will provide the organizational platform required for the City to create new jobs, attract new businesses and industries, maintain global competitiveness in the 21st Century, and grow its tax base.

The report’s recommendations are based on the HR&A team’s analysis, which was completed in three months of intensive work. The analysis included interviews with more than 80 key stakeholders, including executives and staff from the Mayor’s office, City Council, City departments, proprietary City agencies, nonprofit and community-based organizations, and private industry leaders; an online survey distributed to more than 160 economic local development entities; detailed organizational reviews of 19 City departments and proprietary agencies; and in-depth case studies of economic development organizational models employed in eight other U.S. cities.

To date, the City Council has approved formation of, and allocated the inaugural-year budget for, a new Economic and Workforce Development Department, and Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed a new Deputy Mayor for Economic Development in 2013.

Image Courtesy: Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles