Real Estate Development Advisory Archives - Page 2 of 4

Innovation Asset Assessment for Lehigh University

August 24, 2018 / Comments Off

Lehigh University identified its best opportunities for development that reflect the university’s programmatic and innovation strengths, as well as the real estate potential of the Lehigh Valley.

CHALLENGE

Lehigh University, a private research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, sought to strengthen its research capabilities by building its first innovation campus and redeveloping two additional non-core campuses. As a growing regional university in a tertiary market, Lehigh’s real estate group wanted to better understand the program alignment for an innovation campus and the market potential for real estate development and industry partnerships. HR&A worked with Lehigh’s real estate team to generate excitement and momentum for the redevelopment of its non-core real estate assets by crafting a feasible development vision and detailed strategies for development, funding, activation, and governance.

Solution

Through HR&A’s analysis of market potential, discussions with industry leaders in the Lehigh Valley, and collaboration with some of Lehigh University’s top academic researchers, HR&A recommended a holistic redevelopment approach.

The university would align its campuses around the development of new concepts and ideas, where each campus offers unique opportunities to entrepreneurs and researchers at every stage of business development – from basic research through start-ups and maturation. This work guided the university’s in moving forward with a clear vision and actionable strategies for each campus to foster innovation in Lehigh Valley and elevate the university’s standing as a premiere research university.

Impact

As of August 2018, the University is moving forward with a solicitation process to identify a private sector partner for a revenue-positive first phase of redevelopment.

Innovation District Roadmap for the University of Georgia

August 24, 2018 / Comments Off

The University of Georgia created a roadmap to focus the development goals, priorities, and feasibility of a future innovation district.

CHALLENGE

The University of Georgia, one of the country’s oldest public universities, is quickly becoming a premiere destination for higher-education. Seeking to further strengthen its position as a one of the top 20 public universities in the country, the university is creating a research campus to host its research and innovation activities. To understand the process and resources needed to create a research campus, the university’s real estate team hired HR&A to evaluate the operational and financial feasibility of such a project.

Solution

HR&A assessed the university’s innovation, technology, and research strengths and weaknesses through stakeholder interviews and a review of innovation districts and research centers at peer universities. Working collaboratively with a real estate task force, HR&A and the university used its extensive understanding of university processes, innovation ecosystems, and implementation strategies to create development guidelines for a financially sustainable innovation district. These guidelines identified strategies to develop through private sector partnerships, grow university research opportunities, and produce a convergent environment unique to the University of Georgia.

Impact

HR&A’s recommendations focused the task force’s future development of the district on the development of a convergent innovation center that would include space for productive uses open to for entrepreneurs, community members, and students. The convergent innovation center will be activated and programmed by a variety of university programs and activities that focus on economic development, industry partnerships, and entrepreneurship.

Revenue and Ridership Analysis of Commuter Parking & Transit-Oriented Development

August 23, 2018 / Comments Off

With HR&A’s parking and ridership forecast model, MARTA can confidently evaluate the financial implications of providing free commuter parking and transit-oriented development.

CHALLENGE

$2.8 billion in new transit funding, rapid regional growth, and an unexpected spike in ridership – due to the emergency closure of a major transportation artery – compelled MARTA to evaluate and identify the appropriate level of commuter parking capacity along its rail system. Station parking, which is free for commuters, represents a significant cost to MARTA, and replacement requirements for existing parking reduce the financial feasibility of building transit-oriented developments at stations – which could bring new riders and revenue to the system.

To better understand the appropriate balance between providing enough parking to meet demand and creating new transit-oriented development opportunities at stations, MARTA engaged HR&A to create a flexible modeling tool that allows the agency to evaluate the financial and ridership implications of supporting different levels of parking and transit-oriented development at each station.

Solution

HR&A developed a model to forecast the changes in demand for parking through 2040 at five MARTA stations. This model relied on regression analysis to identify the relationship between parking demand and observable conditions, then used regional transit planning growth projections to forecast demand. Working with transportation consultants Fehr & Peers, the team created a flexible, user-friendly evaluation tool from the model, which details the impact of transit-oriented development and parking scenarios on anticipated MARTA revenue and ridership.

Impact

HR&A is now working with MARTA to expand the tool to the remaining 18 stations with parking facilities in the rail system. In addition, MARTA anticipates using the tool to support its negotiations with a development partner for the second phase of the Edgewood-Candler Station transit-oriented development project and future transit-oriented projects. The tool will help inform the optimal level of replacement parking required of the developer.

Multifamily Affordable Housing Strategy for the City of Detroit

July 20, 2018 / Comments Off

The City of Detroit’s Multifamily Affordable Housing Strategy provides a blueprint for related City policy, driving toward the goal of preserving and developing 12,000 multifamily affordable units by 2023

CHALLENGE

As Detroit’s housing market recovers from decades of disinvestment, some residents are unable to find adequate and affordable housing in the city. In some areas, demand is increasing for urban amenities and housing costs are rising. Elsewhere in the city, other neighborhoods face steep obstacles to regaining economic strength.

While the City’s Housing and Revitalization Department is actively promoting preservation and new development of affordable housing since the City’s emergence from bankruptcy in 2014, it did not have a formalized strategy for pursuing policies and programs to realize its equitable growth goals. Such a strategy would allow the City to proactively message its affordable housing goals to the market and track progress against those goals.

Solution

To guide the City’s future initiatives related to affordable housing development and preservation, inclusive growth, homelessness, and housing development in priority planning areas of the city, HR&A worked closely with the City to develop a public-facing housing strategy document that expressed the City of Detroit’s housing priorities and established a formalized plan for implementation.

HR&A reviewed our previous assessment of Detroit’s housing market, which tested the feasibility and impact of affordable housing policies and recommended those that would be most effective in Detroit. The knowledge developed in this stage of work was key in developing a strategy outline and coordinating the drafting of content for all initiatives with support from the City and partner organizations. Finally, HR&A oversaw the production of a document designed for public release. HR&A brought a unique combination of experience in national affordable housing policy analysis and a recent, in-depth understanding of multifamily affordable housing and the multifamily market in Detroit to the strategy’s development.

Impact

The city released its Multifamily Affordable Housing Strategy in the spring of 2018 with the goal of preserving 10,000 existing affordable units and developing 2,000 new affordable units by 2023. As the first strategy of its kind in Detroit in decades, the document will guide the City’s future work of ensuring new growth is equitable and that residents of all incomes have quality housing accessible to public transit, employment hubs, and other essential services. The City has already established an affordable housing loan fund and is implementing initial strategies arising from the study.

Read the Full Study

Joint Development Program and Affordable Housing Policy Analysis

July 13, 2018 / Comments Off

By assessing its existing programs, MARTA gained new insight on strategies to improve the effectiveness of its transit-oriented development programs and affordable housing policies.

CHALLENGE

Five years after adopting new guidelines to frame its approach to transit-oriented development, MARTA’s board of directors sought to assess the program’s effectiveness in promoting dense, mixed-use development with a great public realm, and to identify areas for improvement. Additionally, the board required a more precise understanding of how the agency’s affordable housing policy affected the viability of joint development deals, and how to attract a larger pool of national developers to its joint development solicitations.

Solution

To understand the baseline performance of MARTA’s programs, HR&A reviewed regional and local development trends and plans, identified the performance and pain points of the agency’s existing joint development, and benchmarked the agency’s TOD and affordable housing programs with peer city agencies. HR&A also analyzed MARTA’s property portfolio for future TOD potential, giving MARTA the ability to prioritize appropriate stations for pre-solicitation market studies, feasibility analyses, and community visioning.

HR&A recommended the agency establish an independent contracting and procurement authority for MARTA’s real estate office, which would simplify the solicitation program and enable the real estate office to work at the pace of private development partners. To unlock more creative funding sources for affordable housing and build support community revitalization goals, HR&A recommended the agency strengthen partnerships with regional housing and economic development organizations and local municipal development partners.

Impact

MARTA demonstrated that its TOD program performs on par with peer agencies and identified actions to improve effectiveness. MARTA anticipates it will attract a greater pool of national development partners and improve development partnerships and outcomes.

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.

Land Disposition Strategy & Solicitation and Transaction Support for Mecklenburg County

June 13, 2018 / Comments Off

Mecklenburg County successfully secured a master redevelopment agreement to transform underutilized county-owned sites into vibrant mixed-use development.

CHALLENGE

In 2015, Mecklenburg County owned a set of valuable sites with significant redevelopment potential in Charlotte’s growing Uptown, but lacked a clear path to realizing policy goals on the sites, including the generation of revenue and delivery of open space, affordable housing, and new infrastructure. The County required analytical support and strategic guidance to understand the market and surrounding development climate, and move toward a plan for action around each of the sites.

Solution

HR&A led the County through a land disposition strategy planning process, providing recommendations for site disposition sequence and strategies that would attract a strong response from the real estate development community. Core work during this stage included: identifying the highest and best use program for each site, testing program alternatives to understand the impact of incorporating policy priorities included affordable housing and infrastructure improvement within each site, developing a valuation for each site and estimating the associated fiscal impacts to the County, and evaluating options for disposition timing and solicitation processes.

The County elected to move forward on disposition for two sites in the Second Ward. HR&A supported the drafting, marketing, and release of a Request for Qualifications and subsequent Request for Proposals for Brooklyn Village and Walton Plaza. Our team ensured that the development community was aware of the opportunity associated with these sites and that solicitation documents clearly conveyed the County’s goals for a public private partnership to deliver a significant new mixed-use program and key public benefits, including open space, affordable housing, and new infrastructure across 16 acres, which will transform this area of Uptown Charlotte.

IMPACT

The County’s solicitations received strong responses from local and national developers. HR&A guided the development of criteria for the County’s evaluation of proposals and performed an independent evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each, including a comparison of the economic proposals. Once the County selected a developer, HR&A supported negotiations of key business terms with the preferred development team, BK Partners, a collaboration between local developer Conformity Corporation and the Peebles Corporation. The County and BK Partners executed a term sheet in August 2017, and the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners approved a master redevelopment agreement between the County and BK Partners in July 2018.

Imagine Boston 2030

June 9, 2017 / Comments Off

Imagine Boston 2030, the city’s first comprehensive plan in 50 years, sets the agenda for future growth, investment, and development.

A historic, land-constrained city with a highly productive workforce and a fast-growing population, Boston’s greatest challenge is one that many growing cities are facing—how can it keep housing affordable, invest in infrastructure, and expand access to opportunity as it grows?

Imagine Boston 2030 is a plan to strengthen the city’s physical assets and encourage equitable economic growth. On behalf of the administration of Mayor Martin J. Walsh, HR&A used economic, demographic, real estate, environmental, and land use analyses, coupled with input from over 14,000 community members, to guide development of an innovative framework that will enhance and preserve Boston’s historic communities while accommodating long-term population and job growth. Working in partnership with Utile Design and supported by Inkhouse Communications, Greenberg Consultants, Hood Design Studio, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Nelson Nygaard – HR&A estimated the housing and working space needed to accommodate growth and developed a strategy that leverages the City’s physical assets, human capital, and regulatory and financial tools to achieve the City’s goals of affordability, inclusive growth, preparing for climate change, and investing in quality of life improvements.

Through our analysis, we identified three areas requiring customized approaches to growth, enhancement, and preservation—existing neighborhoods, the commercial core, and edge areas. HR&A helped the City to build consensus on a set of initiatives that combined this place-based planning with new policies —ranging from carbon neutrality to anti-displacement measures —to advance the plan’s underlying goals. By combining planning and capital investment with policy, Imagine Boston 2030 will enable the City to firmly guide development of new housing and investment in areas with the ability to support sustainable growth, while ensuring that the benefits of that growth are accessible to more Bostonians.

The final Imagine Boston 2030 plan articulates how the initiatives and priority actions will be funded, led, and measured to ensure success—directly informing the City’s five-year capital plan. Concurrent plans like Climate Ready Boston, Go Boston 2030, and 100 Resilient Cities are other important avenues of progress for the plan’s goals, providing complementary strategies that build off Imagine Boston.

Menil Collection Neighborhood Preservation and Development

February 10, 2016 / Comments Off

Since 2012, HR&A has supported the Menil Collection in realizing its vision for a “neighborhood of art” in Houston’s urban core.

Founded by John and Dominique de Menil in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston, the 30-acre campus currently hosts four museum buildings that display modern exhibitions and select works from the Menil’s private collection of over 17,000 works of modern, contemporary, and African, Pacific Islands, and Pacific Northwest art, as well as two neighborhood parks.

HR&A was pleased to serve as a strategic advisor to the Menil Foundation to guide the organization through the development of a real estate and implementation strategy; provide solicitation and transaction support; and help secure economic development incentives from the City of Houston. The Menil engaged HR&A at the onset of its planning effort for a fifth museum building – the Menil Drawing Institute – and a new adjoining park, to prepare for the mission, financial, and managerial implications of the expansion.

HR&A advised the Menil through a series of strategic decisions regarding the density, program and phasing of new real estate development on its campus, ultimately supporting the Menil through a real estate solicitation for the first phases of new development. HR&A also crafted a neighborhood property business plan that would ensure the restoration of the unique aesthetic form and fabric of the Menil neighborhood, which is characterized by dozens of historic Arts-and-Crafts style bungalows and a network of open spaces.

Images Courtesy of: The Menil Foundation

Anacostia Waterfront Initiative

February 10, 2016 / Comments Off

HR&A guided the work of six nationally renowned planning firms to create the Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan. We also led the planning and implementation work for the Anacostia Waterfront’s newest district: Capitol Riverfront.

On behalf of the District of Columbia’s Office of City Planning, in partnership with city and federal agencies HR&A worked with urban design teams to create a development framework for a ten mile stretch along the Anacostia Waterfront. Our work included analyzing the opportunities and challenges for development, performing economic analyses to demonstrate the viability of the Framework Plan, building consensus for the vision among numerous public agencies, and coordinating substantial public outreach efforts.

The Capitol Riverfront is one of the District of Columbia’s most successful neighborhood transformation efforts in the last decade. This 350-acre neighborhood surrounding the Washington Navy Yard has attracted more than 12 million SF of mixed-use development and more than $3.3 billion in public and private development that is completed or currently under construction. There are currently 4,000 residents in market-rate and affordable housing living in the Capitol Riverfront, a daytime population of 35,000 workers, and new waterfront parks. The Capitol Riverfront BID estimates that 2.6 million people attended events at Nationals Park, the Navy Museum, and the Yards Park during 2012.

HR&A was the real estate and public policy advisor for the planning and development of the waterfront district surrounding the Nationals Ballpark, now known as the Capitol Riverfront.

Managed an urban design team to create a master plan for the Capitol Riverfront;
Prepared a development framework for The Yards, Forest City Washington’s ongoing development at the Southeast Federal Center site, immediately adjacent to the Ballpark;
Conducted a feasibility analysis of the development plans and identified the preferred alternative;
Supported the District of Columbia in creating a new Tax Increment Finance (TIF) district around the Nationals Ballpark, which provided $1.8 billion in financing for the completion of the Ballpark in 2008, further investment in public infrastructure, and a community benefits fund for neighborhood revitalization; and
Managed a developer solicitation process.

The Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan won an AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design in 2005. According to the Washington, D.C. Mayor’s Office, the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative has catalyzed over $8 billion in economic development investment to date. In October 2017, the revitalized southwest waterfront opened to the public as The Wharf – a mixed-use development by Hoffman-Madison Waterfront LLC.