Ron Heckmann

Ron Heckmann is a corporate positioning and media strategist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, www.heckmanncomms.com

A first-time gathering of ULI product council members—drawing attendees from councils focused on multifamily housing and affordable and workforce housing—convened at the 2018 ULI Fall Meeting in Boston to marshal ideas from some of the industry’s leading minds. For near-term action, participants sounded a call for creating a national playbook for local and state-level implementation, a compendium of strategies employed successfully in jurisdictions across the United States that could be adopted elsewhere.
Developers are undertaking new solutions and adjusting old ones to demonstrate that storm-related and sea-rise resilience can be leveraged into user amenities and community benefits, making dollars stretch further.
ULI San Francisco has released a report titled Tackling Sea-Level Rise: Best Practices in the San Francisco Bay Areabased on a yearlong research effort. The report aims to help Bay Area governments, developers, landowners, and others to plan appropriately for sea-level rise, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission estimates could inundate potentially 280 square miles (725 sq km) of property by 2050.
How do you create built environments that actually improve health? Panelists at the ULI Fall Meeting said that successes in improving health need to be shared while meeting financial and investment objectives. “Once you see these principles at work, it makes such an impact that there’s no going back,” said Susan Powers, president, Urban Ventures LLC.
Master-planned communities and suburban models that once dominated homebuilding are shifting to include walkable, compact town centers.
As panelists demonstrated at the 2014 ULI Fall Meeting, owners and developers are generating new demand for office space by repositioning entire neighborhoods and developing new mixed-use buildings to meet the needs of office users.
Every company needs good succession planning, said panelists at the 2014 ULI Fall Meeting, but real estate is one of the worst sectors at practicing it.
ULI San Francisco, in conjunction with the district councils in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Orange County, and San Diego, has issued a 22-page report recommending a comprehensive set of tools to promote economic development and build sustainable and healthy communities.
Development and redevelopment of urban neighborhoods requires a public/private partnership in which the city—led by a supportive mayor and city—can leverage significant revitalization beyond the initial investments.
Many school districts in the U.S. are reporting low test scores, and for real estate developers creating new communities in those jurisdictions, one answer is to look at alternative educational programs and charter schools.
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