Patrick L. Phillips

From 2009 to early 2018, Patrick L. Phillips served as the Global Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). ULI, which currently has more than 200 employees and a budget of nearly $75 million, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has offices throughout the world. As Global CEO, Phillips worked with ULI’s member leaders to lead all aspects of ULI’s strategy, mission delivery, resource allocation, and fiscal performance. Phillips, a longtime member of ULI, has had a career in the economic analysis of real estate and land use that spans more than 30 years. Prior to taking the position as the top staff executive at ULI, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of ERA AECOM (formerly Economics Research Associates). In that role, he coordinated all aspects of ERA’s organization, strategy, business development, and service delivery. His own consulting practice focused specifically on the intersection of private investment and public policy. To further expand ERA’s reach and impact, Phillips guided the successful sale of the company in 2007 to AECOM, a globally renowned provider of professional technical and management support services to a broad range of industries, including land use, transportation, environmental and energy. His work at ERA AECOM focused on development strategy, development economics and feasibility analysis, and transaction-related services for real estate investors and developers, public agencies, financial institutions, universities, and non-profit organizations. This involved all major categories of urban land use, with an emphasis on the market, economic, and financial aspects of a new generation of downtown and suburban mixed-use projects. Under Phillip’s direction, ERA provided consulting services for such notable development projects as Mockingbird Station in Dallas, Atlantic Station in Atlanta, and the repositioning of Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza; as well as public planning projects for the Hudson Yards in New York City and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Phillips has often advised public agencies and non-profit organizations on issues related to public-private partnerships for economic development. He is a frequent speaker on urban development issues, and is the author or co-author of eight books and numerous articles. In 2005, Phillips led a nationally prominent economic development team as part of the ULI advisory services panel making recommendations on post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Patrick teaches at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design Executive Education Program and at the Carey Business School of Johns Hopkins University. His academic training includes a graduate degree in public management and finance from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

The ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, held in Seattle this year, is as thought provoking as it is fun, providing a chance to reflect in a broad sense on how the next generation of land use professionals will be planning, designing, and developing our cities. Find out which team won this year and learn about the approach it took to an inner-ring Seattle suburb.
While many markets and property sectors continue to struggle, there is a general feeling that the worst is over. This point in time—when the wind is no longer in our face, but not yet at our backs—might be considered our industry’s “Sputnik moment.” Read what ULI Trustees state as the short-term priorities for ULI to ensure its relevance to members and reinforce its position as the global authority on responsible land use.
Affordable workforce housing will play a key role in the post-recession economy, said ULI chief executive officer Patrick Phillips at a workforce housing forum hosted earlier this month in Orlando by the ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing. Listen to what Phillips sees as signs of life in the housing recovery and what the challenges are to providing the right mix of housing.
The year 2011 marks 75 years of leadership in land use. But, while this is a milestone anniversary, it is a time to look forward to the next 75 years. Our decisions on what and where to develop will be guided not by a plentiful supply of land throughout urban regions, but by how best to use the land that is left. Dramatic changes are necessitating a major overhaul in what and where we build. Read about the forces of change that Patrick Phillips, CEO of ULI, sees now in place.
Over a two-week period this fall, I had the opportunity to attend two ULI meetings, in two very different cities, with two equally different formats: a ULI Europe Leadership Retreat in Istanbul, Turkey, followed by the 2010 ULI Fall Meeting and Expo in Washington, D.C. The backdrop for the two meetings could not have been more different. Read about what they shared despite being such seemingly different events.
The year 2000 was the midpoint of two decades in which urban cores were being rebuilt as places to work and live. While this downtown growth has resulted in a remarkable shift in how we view our cities, it’s but one aspect of the evolution in urban growth that is going to intensify in the years ahead. Read what Patrick Phillips, chief executive officer of ULI, sees as the lessons we’ve learned and what forces of change are now in place for going forward.
The forces of decentralization remain far stronger than those of reconcentration, but this is common in politically fragmented regions like Greater Washington. As a result, financing to address the region’s infrastructure needs in order to better serve residents and workers - on the outer edges as well as close in - remains the metro area’s most formidable challenge.
The real estate industry has reached a pivot point, one at which land use is as much or more about the management and redevelopment of existing space as it is about new development. This emphasis on rebuilding and reusing the old and obsolete illustrates how the “use of land” cited in ULI’s mission encompasses existing buildings and what happens in them, how they are operated, and how they perform over time. Nowhere was this more apparent than at ULI’s recent forum on financing tools for energy-saving retrofits, held in New York City in early June.
The retail real estate market currently suffers from an oversupply of space—the result of overbuilding before the financial crisis struck in 2008—plus a dearth of retailers now willing and able to fill space. Consumer spending is down for the foreseeable future as the buying public remains wary of returning to the days of large credit-card debt. While welllocated retail destinations may continue to thrive and maintain national retailers, plenty of others are going to keep losing tenants. In this environment, town centers and mixed-use centers may have an edge over their mall counterparts.
The future of cities could be considered the centerpiece of the Urban Land Institute’s entire program of work. How and where we will live and work and how we will get from one place to another in the decades ahead are issues that will shape urban growth patterns and change our approach to planning, design, and development.
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