Infrastructure Forum

ULI Infrastructure Forum – 2023 Spring Meeting

Tuesday, May 16, 2023
8:00 am EST – 12:00 pm EST

 

This spring, join ULI for an in-depth exploration of the intersection of building 15-Minute Communities, multifunctional infrastructure, and leadership strategies. REGISTER NOW! 

Spring 2023 Theme

Building 15-Minute Communities Leadership Strategies: How to Align Smart Infrastructure and Land Use Decisions with Real Estate Investments

Program Overview

8:00      Breakfast Reception and Networking

8:15      Welcome and Introduction – ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative

Speakers:

Billy Grayson, Executive Vice President, ULI Centers and Initiatives

Craig Lewis, Principal, CallisonRTKL, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Global Advisory Board Chair

8:20       Building 15-Minute Communities Strategy

Speaker:  Yvonne Yeung, CEO, SDG Strategies, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow

8:45     Case Studies Panel

  • Financing Infrastructure and real estate in transit-oriented communities

Speaker:  Dr. Morteza Farajian, Executive Director, Build America Bureau

  • Office to housing conversion to create a live-in downtown

Speaker:  Eric Tao, San Francisco Director, SPUR, Managing Partner, L37 Partners

  • Repositioning Malls to Mixed-use with mobility, water management, and community strategies

Speaker:  Erich Dohrer, Principal, CallisonRTKL

  • Low carbon energy solutions for high density and mixed-use communities

Speaker: Morrigan McGregor, Senior Vice President of Energy Planning and Development, Enwave

  • De-risk with green infrastructure in suburban corridors and urban growth centers

Speaker: Sameer Dhalla, Director of Development and Engineering Services, Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

Facilitators:

Kevin Augustyn, Senior Vice President and ESG Lead, Morningstar DBRS

Craig Lewis, Principal, CallisonRTKL, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Global Advisory Board Chair

10:15    Break

10:30    Leadership Strategies

  • Framework for thoughtful leadership – integrated model for managing, directing, and engaging in a fast changing world

Speaker: Jim Fisher, Professor Emeritus, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

10:45 Audience Strategy Session

Facilitators:

Bill Anderson, Principal CITECON, University of California, San Diego

Gullivar Shepard, Partner, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Lucia Garsys, Sr. Advisory of Comm. Partnerships, Hillsborough County Government

Paul Stevens, Principal, ZAS Architects

Renee Schoonbeek, Sr. Consultant Stations and Urban Dev., Arcadis Netherlands

Stephen Engblom, Faculty, Real Estate Dev., University of California, Berkely

Matthew Kwatinetz, Director, Urban Lab, New York University, Q Partners

11:20    Key Takeaways – Report Back

Facilitators:

Yvonne Yeung, CEO, SDG Strategies, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow

Kevin Augustyn, Senior Vice President and ESG Lead, Morningstar DBRS

11:50    Thank you and Adjourn

Speaker:

Billy Grayson, Executive Vice President, Centers and Initiatives, Urban Land Institute

If you have questions about the ULI Infrastructure Forum, please reach out to Yvonne Yeung, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow at 647-466-1176. 

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Speakers

Synopsis

The Infrastructure Forum brings together global leaders in infrastructure, land use, real estate, capital market, finance, economics, investment, legal, property management, market analysis, strategy management, sustainability, planning, urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, transportation, engineering and other professionals from public, private and non-profit sectors to examine the most pressing infrastructure, land use and real estate decisions of the 21st century.

The Americas is the among largest contributor to the global carbon footprint, where 1/3 is due to urban footprint, 1/3 is due to buildings, and 1/3 is due to industrial agriculture.  Within metro regions, community needs, multi-generational values, and capital allocation are changing. Flooding, drought, urban heatwave, food insecurity, and energy consumption have added pressure on communities. Transit investment, when not integrated with land use and real estate decisions, did not translate to reducing auto-dependency and VMT. Achieving 50 percent carbon reduction by 2030 requires real estate and land use professionals to reshape our world into people-centric walkable communities led by decarbonization and equitable public realm, regenerate our land and assets into carbon sinks, and humanize metro regions into 15-min communities.

At the ULI 2023 Spring Meeting, the Infrastructure Forum will focus on ‘Building 15-minute Communities and Transit-oriented Metro Regions TOCs: How Leaders can Align Smart Infrastructure and Land Use Decisions with Real Estate Investments.’  15-minute communities are compact development with mixed-uses and well-connected places where residents and businesses can walk to their daily needs.  It accelerates decarbonization, reduces ecological footprint, increases economic vitality, builds resilience, and advances social equity. Industry leaders will examine how to make smart, forward-focused alignment of infrastructure and land use decisions through multi-infrastructure delivery and co-benefits creation in 6 scalable real-estate prototypes covering:

  • Decarbonize metro regions with a network of 15-minute communities
  • Diversify urban central business districts CBDs into live-in downtowns
  • Densify suburban corridors into multi-generational mixed-use districts
  • Humanize tower towns into resilient retirement and child-friendly communities
  • Transform suburban mall sites into transit and trail-oriented mixed-use hubs
  • Activate exurbs as working landscapes of agrihood and nature-based solutions NBS

With a focus on implementation, the Infrastructure Forum will include a research presentation, a case-studies panel, and a leadership strategy workshop to explore how to engage/market, finance/fund, design/construct, operate/maintain infrastructure and real estate assets to extend economic life and performance, covering:

  • One environment infrastructure  – how to deliver parks, green streets, flood protection/stormwater management, environmental restoration, and utilities in one project
  • One community infrastructure: how to deliver education-social-health-culture-co-work space under one roof
  • One energy infrastructure – how to deliver micro-grid/DE, PV, EV, timber, and circular waste within one eco-district
  • One mobility infrastructure – how to deliver transit, micro-mobility, broadband, smart city system to provide one-trip experience
  • One vision infrastructure – how to structure a community-scale platform to combine resources, create co-champions to lead multi-sectors working teams and engage the community

Explore leadership decision framework covering:

  • Leadership – leverage co-leadership to lead forward motion
  • Market – leverage shared data to assess needs and stay current with policies/trends
  • Engagement – create community champions through engagement
  • Entitlement – co-create community-scale performance metrics
  • Design – develop interdisciplinarity design frameworks to bring the best in industries
  • Finance – structure financing partnerships to accelerate delivery, reduce uncertainty and costs

While the scalable prototypes will be focused on North American communities, this effort can be expanded to the ULI Asia-Pacific and ULI Europe or tailored to specific District Councils to create thriving communities around the globe.

If you have questions about the ULI Infrastructure Forum or FY’23 Curtis Infrastructure Program, please reach out to Yvonne Yeung, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow at [email protected] or 647-466-1176.

 

Forum Leadership:

Craig Lewis  FAICP, CNUA-A, LEED-AP

CallisonRTKL

North American Community Co-Leader

Global Market Leader for Urbanism + Landscape

Craig is the Community Co-Leader for North America and the Global Market Leader for Urbanism + Landscape with CallisonRTKL, a global planning, architecture, interiors, and landscape design firm. For more than 30 years, he has used an inter-disciplinary approach to plan and implement the growth and regeneration of urban places across the globe that are more livable, equitable, and sustainable. His international, award-winning work spans the range of city building including planning, urban design, placemaking, transit/transportation, form-based codes, and smart mobility. The work of Craig’s team has been recognized with awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the International Downtown Association, the American Planning Association, and numerous other regional and state organizations. Craig is currently the design lead for The Point, the redevelopment of the Utah State Prison in Draper, UT consisting of a 92 acre first phase that includes 6 million square foot of urban, mixed-use, transit- and trail-oriented development. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners (FAICP), a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited Professional, an accredited member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU-A), and an original signatory of the Charter of the New Urbanism. He serves as Chair for the Design Review Board in Davidson, NC and is the Chair of the ULI Curtis Global Infrastructure Initiative and is a Board member for ULI-Charlotte.

William Anderson  FAICP

Principal, CITECON

Lecturer, Urban Economics

University of California, San Diego

Bill’s focus is comprehensive city & regional planning, development economics, and implementation, working on projects in cities and regions throughout the United States and internationally.  He is a lecturer on urban economic development at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and serves as a senior advisor to clients on planning and development under the dba CITECON.   Bill’s professional experience includes Principal for City Economics at Arup; Principal/VP and Director of City & Regional Planning, Americas for AECOM; and a Sr. VP for Economics Research Associates.  With these firms, Bill has worked on economic planning engagements in thirty states and ten countries. His government experience includes serving as Director of City Planning & Community Investment (CPCI) for the City of San Diego; Deputy Executive Director of the San Diego Redevelopment Agency; and Deputy Chief Operating Officer.  Bill chaired the San Diego Association of Governments’ (SANDAG) Technical Working Group of the region’s planning directors, chaired SanGIS, and was a board member of the San Diego Public Facilities Financing Authority.  He directed adoption of San Diego’s City of Villages General Plan, which received APA’s prestigious Daniel Burnham Award for national excellence in comprehensive planning. It was California’s first large jurisdiction general plan adopted in compliance with AB32, the landmark climate law.  An FAICP, Bill was national President of the 38,000-member American Planning Association from 2013-15, President of the California Planning Roundtable from 2018-2021, is a Vice-Chair of ULI’s Urban Revitalization Council and serves on ULI’s Curtis Infrastructure Forum leadership team.   Bill received his B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Claremont McKenna College, and Master’s in City and Regional Planning from Harvard University.

Kevin Augustyn

Senior Vice President and ESG Lead

Credit Ratings, North American CMBS

Morningstar DBRS

Kevin Augustyn is a Senior Vice President and ESG Lead in the North American CMBS, Global Structured Finance Group at DBRS Morningstar. DBRS Morningstar is a credit rating agency and investment research firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. In his role at DBRS Morningstar, Mr. Augustyn covers several esoteric finance instruments and leads Morningstar’s effort to provide creditratings for CPACE (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy) loans on a national basis. He also serves on the firm’s ESG methodology subcommittee and leads other ESG initiatives.  Before joining DBRS Morningstar, Mr. Augustyn’s career has been focused on urban infill development in Chicago, leading teams responsible for the redevelopment of Piper’s Alley and the North Pier as well as the development of River East Center and other large projects.  He has over 25 years of real estate development and finance experience with several national real estate development firms and financial institutions including Bank of Montreal, Trammell Crow Companies, OPUS and CIII Capital Partners.  Mr. Augustyn began his career as a city planner, reflecting his passion for community economic development and historic preservation. His first professional assignment was to return to his hometown of Hammond, Indiana, where he served initially as the Land Use Planner and eventually as the Director of the Planning Department.  He has a long-standing interest in the private use of capital for the public good and corporate sponsored urban economic development programs.  Kevin is member of ULI Responsible Property Investment Council Member, and Board member of Illinois Green Alliance and an Advisory Board Member of YardhomeMN.  Kevin has a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and an MBA with a concentration in finance from Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, IL.

Stephen Engblom  AIA, NCARB, LEED AP

Faculty, Real Estate Development and Design, Resilience and Equity

University of California, Berkeley

Stephen Engblom, is an architect, urbanist, and real estate development expert with over 20 years of experience. He has worked on projects across the globe and a wide range of place types. Stephen most recently worked at CBRE, the world’s premier provider of integrated real estate and advisory services, where as Senior Managing Director and thought leader, he launched the firm’s Infrastructure and Public Enterprise practice. Prior to CBRE, Stephen worked for 20 years at AECOM where he grew from an urban design practitioner to a global executive vice president responsible for conceiving of and developing AECOM Cities, an integrated practice that focused on primary urban markets around the world. By working with clients to reframe their most intractable challenges, AECOM under Stephen’s leadership was able to develop integrated urban solutions that spanned planning, design, infrastructure engineering, and program and construction management. Over the course of 7 years, the Cities practice consistently surpassed its short-term and long-term goals. Stephen is a faculty member at the University of California Berkeley, a San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) board member, and is active in the Urban Land Institute (ULI) as a volunteer leader, panelist, and member. He contributes thought leadership to industry journals and lectures and teaches at universities and institutes worldwide. He serves on the Rice University School of Architecture Advisory Board. In 2022, Mr. Engblom was nominated as a member of the Lambda Alpha International: Society for the Advancement of Land Economics.

Lucia Garsys  FAICP

Senior Advisory for Community Partnerships

Hillsborough County Government

Lucia’s  broad public and private sector experience is grounded in land use, infrastructure, and public/ private funding. She has negotiated complex development agreements using pre-payment of impact fees, private debt financing backed by future development payments, and tax increment financing including a sales tax component. As a senior executive in Hillsborough County FL, she directed a billion-dollar cradle-to-grave capital and operating program; reformed the planning, entitlement and permitting functions; and transformed policies to retrofit suburban patterns into safe walkable communities capturing their identity and creating a sense of place. She consulted nationally on economic development conducting assessments and site location analysis; deployed robust community engagement for urban and suburban communities in land use, comprehensive planning, and redevelopment. In the mid-90’s, as a partner to the Kaunas Technological University, she introduced planning principles in re-emerging democracies of Eastern Europe that led to transparent land development in a half dozen cities. She served on the Board on the Built Environment for the National Research Council and its committees untangling complex national infrastructure funding issues. Lucia skillfully translates the technical underpinnings of a topic into public policy ranging from building a case for transportation referenda to the converting of septic to sewer in disadvantaged communities. Lucia served as Chair of ULI Tampa Bay, currently serves as its Governance Chair; and is called to serve on ULI’s Advisory Panels and key ULI initiatives. She is an advisor to the University of South Florida’s program on Urban and Regional Planning. Lucia is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners.

Matthew Kwatinetz 

Director, Urban Lab and Senior Real Estate Executive

New York University

Professor Kwatinetz is the Director of the NYU Urban Lab, where he is also a professor of real estate economics and inclusive economic development. He recently published NYC’s Affordable Housing Crisis in partnership with the AIA-NY and Center for Architecture. He is the founder of the advisory and impact investment firm Q Partners (“Q”). Previously, Kwatinetz was an Executive Vice President for NYC Economic Development Corporation, where he managed their 65M+ real estate portfolio. For EDC, Kwatinetz also ran PortNYC, the third largest US port, including the management of the negotiations, start-up and operations of the $600M+ NYC Ferry, the largest expansion of ferry service in US history. He served as the lead on NYC Mayor de Blasio’s Affordable Real Estate for Artists (AREA) program. As Q, Kwatinetz worked with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to create the Austin Economic Development Corporation. Q worked directly with Mayor Copenhaver of Augusta to found Augusta Regional Collaboration Project, a Georgia public development corporation. Other selected Q clients: the U.S. Department of Energy, NYC Department of Education, Real Capital Analytics, and the City of Shoreline. Kwatinetz is a former economic consultant for Penn Institute for Urban Research under Dr. Susan Wachter. Kwatinetz is the former VP of Economics and Finance at Kinzer Real Estate, supporting the University of Washington, Alaska Airlines and Starbucks Corporation. In 2018, he published Thriving In Place: Supporting Austin’s Cultural Vitality Through Place-Based Economic Development, sponsored by the NEA and City of Austin. Kwatinetz sits on the Urban Land Institute’s National Public/Private Partnership Council and is on the leadership team of ULI’s Curtis Infrastructure Forum. While in Seattle, Kwatinetz was named a Seattle City Artist and was then asked by Mayor Nickels to serve as the founding Vice President of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, he also co-founded the Seattle Cultural Overlay District Advisory Committee, and sat on King County’s Cultural Real Estate Task Force. He previously was the Chair of ULI-New York’s Technical Assistance Panel (“TAP”) program. He is a graduate of Deep Springs College, Harvard University (BA) and The Wharton School (MBA).

Renee Schoonbeek AICP

Senior Consultant Stations and Urban Development

Arcadis Netherlands

Renée is a results-driven urban planner with a wealth of experience in both public and private sectors in master planning, economic and community development. She leads Arcadis’ Community of Practice for Stations and supports the development of innovative solutions and value propositions for clients around the world. Renée is uniquely qualified in community-based planning, urban placemaking, and building public-private partnerships while delivering large complex projects and engaging stakeholders. From 2016 through 2022, Renee led the New York Planning and Urban Design Studio of CallisonRTKL (CRTKL), an affiliate of Arcadis. Before joining CRTKL in 2016, she was responsible for the development and implementation of a $27 million streetscape improvement project in lower Manhattan (NY). From 2007 to 2009 she served as the Assistant District Manager of Manhattan Community Board 4. Renee direct assisted the chairs of the Traffic, Waterfront & Parks and Landmarks Committees of the Board. Prior to her arrival in New York in 2007, she served as a Development Director of one of the largest real estate developers in the Netherlands, Bouwfonds Property Development (BPD). Previously, she owned and managed a planning firm based in Amsterdam with a focus on neighborhood revitalization and urban innovation. Renée is VP of Program for ULI Placemaking Council, ULI Europe Urban Infrastructure Council and part of ULI Infrastructure Forum leadership.

Gullivar Shepard  ASLA, SCUP

Partner

MVVA

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc

Gullivar Shepard is a Partner of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. Landscape Architects. While originally trained as an architect and a cultural anthropologist, he has been a landscape architect for 23 years and has long been a guiding force at MVVA by steering many of the firm’s urban-scale projects. Gullivar has held key leadership roles on large and complex projects where coordination between the natural, infrastructural, and urban context is of primary importance such as the CityArchRiver project in St. Louis, Brooklyn Bridge Park, and the Port Lands Flood Protection and Enabling Infrastructure Project in Toronto. Gullivar is the lead planner and designer for the Waterloo Greenway in Austin, TX. He is recognized for his skill in navigating programmatic requirements, regulatory and jurisdictional hurdles, and problematic site conditions to create rich public spaces. Gullivar’s interdisciplinary perspective always aims to bridge the technical systems-thinking and the cultural considerations of public space within the design process. His projects and research are a laboratory for innovative building methods, site design, communication tools, engagement, and project management. Gullivar received a Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he was awarded the Araldo A. Cossutta Annual Prize for Design Excellence. Since joining the firm in 1999, Gullivar has applied his integrated design approach to challenges such as ecological restoration, flood control, city zoning, transportation planning, utility planning and choreographing connections between parks and larger forces of urban development.

Yvonne Yeung  LEED AP, PMP, MCIP, RPP

CEO

SDG Strategies

ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow

Yvonne Yeung is the CEO of SDG Strategies, a global consultancy based in Canada, with over 23 years of public and private sector experience delivering high-quality, award-winning, sustainable transit-oriented communities and vibrant public spaces worldwide. Her work focuses on informing how cities can unlock the value of infrastructure to deliver healthy, equitable, climate-ready walkable neighbourhood through synergistic collaboration as a blueprint.  Appointed as ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow, Vice-chair of the ULI SDRC Product Council, member of ULI Infrastructure Forum Leadership, ULI Toronto Advisory Board and ULI WLI Women’s Leadership Initiative Champions, Yvonne authors ULI Infrastructure Leadership research publication and founded the “ULI Getting to Transit Oriented Communities Initiative,” leading strategic collaborations across global cities, promoting progressive city-building practices and collaborations between public and private sectors.  Specialized in team building, executive strategy, large-scale transformation and cross-sector implementation, Yvonne is the recipient of the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management MBA Award, and the American Society of Landscape Architects Honour Award. As an urban designer, planner, landscape architect, and sustainable neighbourhood development accredited professional, Yvonne has developed urban design implementation frameworks for Age-Friendly and Cognitive-Friendly Communities, Urban Mixed-use School Community Hubs, Digital Smart-City Integration, Strategic Partnerships for Community Infrastructure Integration in High-Density Neighbourhoods, Public Realm Strategy and Transit-oriented Communities Urban Design Implementation Framework. Her participatory-design work was profiled at the Design Exchange in Toronto and further evolved into an award-winning interdisciplinary tool for cross-sector development of precinct plans to unlock TOCs.  Her projects have won planning and design excellence awards from the Waterfront Centre in Washington DC, the International Grands Prix Du Design, the Canadian Institute of Planners, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and the City of Toronto Urban Design.

If you have questions about the Infrastructure Forum or FY’23 Curtis Infrastructure Program, please reach out to Yvonne Yeung, ULI Curtis Infrastructure Fellow at [email protected] or 647-466-1176.