For the 2013 ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, 149 teams from 70 universities in the United States and Canada developed solutions for a site in Minneapolis’s Downtown East neighborhood, near the new Minnesota Vikings stadium.

The Hines jury met on February 19 and 20, 2013, to evaluate the entries and named the four finalists that advanced to the next stage of the competition.

Meet the 2013 Jury

Jury Chairman F. Barton Harvey III

Former Chairman
Enterprise Community Partners
Baltimore, Maryland

After ten years in corporate finance and investment banking, Bart Harvey joined legendary developer Jim Rouse in 1984 and helped build an idea into one of the largest nonprofit housing and community development organizations in the country, raising more than $10 billion from private sources and providing over 250,000 homes to low-income Americans. He was chair and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners Inc. from 1994 to 2008.

Under his leadership, Enterprise led the effort to create a national standard for sustainable development, changing the way affordable housing is done today. By allowing only fixed-rate, long-term financing, defaults have been minimal and the organization prospers today. But he remains most proud of “those heroes in America I was blessed to know as community leaders, battling difficult odds to make their communities better. They do more than I could imagine, and it was a joy to be able to help them accomplish their goals.”

Harvey has served on numerous civic, housing, and national boards including Fannie Mae’s under its conservatorship; was appointed by the U.S. Congress to the Millennial Housing Commission from 2000 to 2002; and continues to serve on environmental, housing, and social service nonprofit boards. He is the recipient of the Urban Land Institute’s J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, was named the National Housing Conference’s National Housing Person of 2008, and is in the Affordable Housing Hall of Fame, among other honors.

Stuart Ackerberg

Chief Executive Officer
The Ackerberg Group
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Stuart Ackerberg is the chief executive officer and owner of the Ackerberg Group, where he is responsible for generating new business along with quality control for development, acquisition, property management, leasing, and construction services. Prior to forming the Ackerberg Group, he served as general partner, president, and chief operating officer for Birtcher Financial Services and was vice president for Heitman Financial Services Ltd.

Recently, Ackerberg created a nonprofit development corporation, Catalyst Community Partners, and serves as its chairman of the board. Catalyst Community Partners, a 501(c) 3 corporation, is a social venture organization focused on creating prosperity for underperforming communities through real estate redevelopment and enterprise creation. The organization effects change by providing continual, quickly executed, high-impact, and concentrated investments along underperforming commercial corridors.

Ackerberg is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, a member of Lambda Alpha International, and a director of various nonprofit and for-profit boards. He attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a bachelor of science degree with an emphasis on economics and real estate. Ackerberg and his family reside in the western Twin Cities at Indigo Acres, a “spiritual retreat.” Also at Indigo Acres, he and his wife, Romy, operate a breeding and training facility for American Saddlebred show horses.

Gerdo P. Aquino

President/Principal
SWA Group
Los Angeles, California

Gerdo Aquino is the president of SWA Group, an internationally recognized landscape architecture, urban design, and planning firm based in California. SWA has been in practice for 50-plus years, has worked strategically in over 60 countries, and is composed of more than 200 people nurturing a critical dialogue of design and urbanism that works for cities around the world.

Based in Los Angeles, Aquino is an accomplished landscape architect and urban designer whose focus on the public realm heightens his position on the importance of collaborative ideation between communities and consultants. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the University of Southern California and a coauthor of a recently released book by Birkhauser titled Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA.

Aquino received his master of landscape architecture in 1996 from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and his undergraduate degree was from the University of Florida. He was the cofounder of AsiaGSD at Harvard Design School in 1994 and is an active lecturer at professional organizations and academic institutions around the world.

John Breitinger

Vice President − Investment and Development
United Properties
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Breitinger is responsible for retail development, acquisitions, and dispositions projects for United Properties. He also oversees research and planning for United Properties’ retail investments and in this capacity has developed a number of proprietary research techniques, tools, and business practices that the firm uses to inform its investment activities and to support both its customers and its shopping center operations.

In 1998 Breitinger formed Midwest Retail, a vertically integrated operating division, to acquire, develop, own, and operate grocery-anchored neighborhood shopping centers. Midwest Retail currently owns 17 shopping centers in southern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado. Upon joining United Properties in 1993, Breitinger organized the Investment Services Division to offer a broad range of capital markets expertise and investment sales services to third-party clients. Prior to joining United Properties, he was a principal in Jackson-Scott & Associates, a shopping center management and leasing firm that was acquired by United Properties in 1993.

Breitinger is a full member of the Urban Land Institute and is a member of its Small-Scale Development Council. He also serves as the vice chair of the ULI Minnesota District Council. He is a member of the Commercial Institute of the National Association of Realtors, the Minnesota Shopping Center Association (MSCA), and the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). Breitinger is a trustee for the Washburn Center for Children, a social services agency in Minneapolis, and serves on its development and facilities committees. He is also a former member of the faculty of the Commercial Institute of the National Association of Realtors, where he taught real estate investment courses.

Breitinger graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor of science degree in marketing in 1981.

Andre Brumfield

Director − Midwest Region, Planning and Urban Design
Gensler
Chicago, Illinois

Andre Brumfield is the regional director of planning and urban design at Gensler in Chicago. With more than 17 years of professional experience, Brumfield has focused on neighborhood revitalization, urban redevelopment, and long-range, citywide master-planning efforts through the fields of urban design, master planning, and architecture.

His work emphasizes the rebuilding of distressed neighborhoods, urban nodes, and commercial centers. Brumfield has addressed urban design and planning issues in a variety of projects including downtown mixed-use projects; community redevelopment; large-scale, high-density urban infill projects; brownfield redevelopment; and regional master-planning efforts.

Examples of his work include the Park Boulevard Revitalization Plan and Lakeside Master Plan in Chicago; the 30th Street Corridor/A.O. Smith Master Plan in Milwaukee; and his involvement in the Detroit Works Project. At present, Brumfield is working with the Chicago Housing Authority to assist with its ambitious project to assess and craft a new long-range plan for a mixed-income development on the city’s public housing sites. He continually seeks opportunities to revitalize the country’s most distressed and economically challenged neighborhoods and communities.

Brumfield received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Washington.

Robert Engstrom

President
Robert Engstrom Companies
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bob Engstrom, a residential community developer, is currently concentrating on foreclosure recovery programs that involve the acquisition, total rehabilitation, and resale of single-family foreclosure homes. This program of 65 homes involves public/private partnerships with the city of Brooklyn Park, Ramsey County, and the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. Recent landmark developments include the Fields of St. Croix, Minnesota’s first conservation community; Cloverdale Farm in Lake Elmo; and Territorial Place in downtown Stillwater.

Engstrom is one of 11 life trustees of the Urban Land Institute, a member of the board of directors of the Sensible Land Use Coalition, Envision Minnesota, and the ULI Sustainable Development Council, as well as the executive committee of ULI Minnesota.

He is a pioneer in the planning and development of townhouse and open space communities and the developer and builder of Summit Place, a three-block urban restoration and new-construction neighborhood in the Cathedral Hill Historic District of St. Paul. In 1992, Summit Place received the Urban Land Institute Award of Excellence, the most prestigious national land use recognition. Previous developments include Highpointe, the Woods at Elm Creek, and White Oaks of Elm Creek in Champlin; Chatterton Ponds, Deerwood, Wildflower, the Woodlands, and Great Oaks in Eagan; and Woodbury Crossing, which includes the Natural Science Academy and Math and Science Academy Charter Schools.

In 2004, Engstrom was named “Champion of Open Space” by the Embrace Open Space organization, the only developer to receive this recognition. In the June 2004 issue of Urban Land, he was featured in the Community Builders Profile, sponsored by the J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. In 2006, he was inducted into the Minnesota Youth Soccer Association Hall of Fame. Recently, he received the Moe Dorton Award of the Sensible Land Use Coalition for public/private land use planning and development. Also, in 2010 he received the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts award of Notable Achievement.

Todd Mead

Principal
Civitas
Denver, Colorado

Todd Mead is a design principal with Civitas, a collaborative of landscape architects and urban designers based in Denver. He has led many complex design projects across the country, including San Diego River Park, a 400-block derelict neighborhood on the north side of St. Louis, and a vision plan for the Washington University Medical Center. Mead’s work brings the rehabilitation and reinterpretation of natural landscapes to parks and green infill redevelopments as a means of making healthier places that are fundamentally urban and celebrate their social, economic, and ecological context.

Mead has a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Colorado at Denver. At present, he is leading urban regeneration projects in Greenville, South Carolina, and San Diego that focus on place making and integrating natural and urban landscapes with diverse economic and cultural conditions.

Alexander Nyhan

Vice President, Development
Forest City | Washington
Washington, D.C.

Alex Nyhan is vice president of development for Forest City | Washington. He has worked in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors—both in the United States and in Latin America—and has established a niche in complex public/private real estate development projects, having been involved with more than $2 billion of public/private partnerships in government and the private sector.

In addition to participating in real estate development activities, Nyhan has advised the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the city of São Paulo, the government of Puerto Rico, and the government of the District of Columbia.

Nyhan holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Beth Pfeifer

Director of Development
The Cornerstone Group
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Beth Pfeifer joined the Cornerstone Group in 2006, bringing to the team a wealth of knowledge in both residential and commercial building design and project management. She uses her skills to oversee development projects from initial conception through construction completion. This process includes working with architects, engineers, contractors, sales and marketing teams, cities, counties, and community policy groups to ensure that the Cornerstone Group’s projects meet the goals and needs of the communities they serve.

Prior to joining Cornerstone, Pfeifer worked as a project manager and project architect for DJR Architecture. At DJR, she was responsible for the design and construction of multifamily housing projects ranging in size from 40 to 80 units, retail and commercial buildings, and developments with budgets ranging from $5 million to $20 million. She was responsible for managing the design, staffing, budget, team coordination, and construction of these projects.

Especially skilled in project management, Pfeifer is able to ensure that projects move forward in an orderly and timely manner while coordinating all of the various components of the development process.

Pfeifer holds a bachelor of architecture from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a licensed real estate agent and also a member of the Urban Land Institute’s Young Leaders Group; she also served on the Minnesota board of directors for the American Institute of Architects as both a board member and a committee chair. Pfeifer sits on the board of Transit for Livable Communities, and is focused on providing a multidisciplinary, world-class transit system for the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area. She resides in Minneapolis.

Pablo Vaggione

Director
Design Convergence
Madrid, Spain

Pablo Vaggione is an independent urban specialist with more than 15 years of experience. His cross-sector and multidisciplinary approach provides cities and actors in urban development with strategically integrated thinking to respond to the challenges of sustainable urbanization.

Vaggione is the lead author of the upcoming UN-HABITAT Guide for City Leaders on Urban Planning. He was the principal adviser to the city of Madrid application that received the World Leadership Award in 2007. Between 2007 and 2010, Vaggione served as the secretary-general and chair of the scientific committee of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP), a professional organization of planners from 70 countries. In 2004, he founded Design Convergence Urbanism (DCU), a collaborative platform of independent urban experts practicing in urban policy, planning, and design.

DCU has been engaged in projects for local governments, donors, and developers in Brazil, China, Laos, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam, among other locations. Vaggione has provided advice to leading international development organizations, private sector corporations, and research centers, including the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNESCO, Siemens AG, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Vaggione has a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a postgraduate certificate in environment and sustainable development from the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Tim Van Meter

Partner, Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP
Denver, Colorado

Tim Van Meter, a firm partner and founder of Van Meter Williams Pollack LLP, an architecture and urban design firm in San Francisco and Denver, is a leading architect and urban designer whose work has focused on green architecture and sustainable urban design for the last 20 years. Van Meter heads the firm’s Denver office, which he established in 1999. He has led the design team on many of the firm’s complex and award-winning architecture and urban design projects in Colorado, Hawaii, Texas, New Mexico, and California. He is experienced in a wide range of architecture and urban design projects at various scales, focusing on transit-oriented development, neighborhood design, mixed-use urban infill, adaptive use, and high-density and affordable housing.

On the national level, Van Meter is an urban design adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Program. He also was cochair of CNU XVII, the 2009 national conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism. He is a licensed architect in Colorado, California, Hawaii, Texas, and Utah.

A graduate of the University of Colorado School of Environmental Design, Van Meter has traveled extensively worldwide, studying design, planning, and environmental issues and their effects on urban communities and landscapes. He is a community design consultant for numerous communities and organizations, and has extensive experience achieving consensus through the public process. He lectures on issues of urban and sustainable design and development across Colorado’s Front Range and throughout the West and Hawaii as well as for the Universities of Colorado, California, and Hawaii.

Van Meter’s design work has been awarded, honored, and published by organizations such as the American Institute of Architects; the Urban Land Institute; the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU); the Environmental Protection Agency; the American Planning Association; the United States Green Building Council; and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is the coauthor of Colorado Urbanizing: Experiencing New Urbanism, which was published for the 2009 CNU XVII in Denver.

Barbara Wilks

Partner
W Architecture and Landscape Architecture
New York, New York

Barbara Wilks founded W Architecture and Landscape Architecture in 1999 to create a design-oriented, multidisciplinary practice focused on urban issues. With special expertise in urban design, public, and institutional projects, Wilks practices as both an architect and a landscape architect. She has received many design awards for her work, including four recent national awards. She is honored to have been elected to the College of Fellows, American Institute of Architects, in 1999, as well as to the College of Fellows, American Society of Landscape Architecture, in 2010.

Wilks also sits on the architectural advisory committee of Cornell University. She has been a board member of the National Association of Olmsted Parks, and an advisory board member for the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Wilks has lectured and taught as a visiting critic at the University of Maryland, Cornell University, Catholic University, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited locally and nationally. She contributes to several publications, and has curated exhibitions on public open space.