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Ron Nyren

Ron Nyren is a freelance architecture, urban planning, and real estate writer based in the San Francisco Bay area.

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Resilience and Sustainability
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Attainable Housing
UL10: Ten Conversions to Residential Use
Multifamily buildings occupy structures with storied pasts. The rise of remote work and the continued housing shortage have led to a surge in the number of apartments being carved out of former office space—70,700 in 2025 compared to 23,100 in 2022, according to RentCafe. Developers are increasingly turning to structures with former lives—as offices or industrial or commercial buildings—to create multifamily housing that gives residents dwelling spaces that feel rooted in place and connected to the broader narrative of their communities.
December 1, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Capital Markets and Finance
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Universities and Educational Facilities
How University/Developer Urban Partnerships Are Evolving Amid Uncertainty
Molly Maybrun, chief development officer of local developer Fifth Space, and Wallace Whittier, senior real estate officer for University of California, San Francisco, spoke at the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting about their collaboration to build a new proton therapy cancer center at Fifth Space’s Dogpatch Power Station, a multiphase master-planned mixed-use development on the waterfront at the southern edge of San Francisco’s Mission Bay.
December 1, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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Multifamily
Offsite Evolved: Realizing the Promise of Prefab, Modular, and 3D-Printing Construction
“The primary advantage every modular project has, if you do it right, is time savings,” said Mark Donahue—principal, design, for Lowney Architecture—during the “Offsite Evolved: How Today’s Prefab, Modular, and 3D-Printing Solutions Deliver Proven Speed, Savings, and Scale” panel at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco. “You can, on a, say, 24-month construction project, save six to eight weeks.”
November 18, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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San Francisco
Canva Chief Evangelist Guy Kawasaki: 10 Principles for Innovation
Guy Kawasaki—chief evangelist at Canva, former chief evangelist for Apple, and bestselling author—summed up insights gleaned from his years in tech and as host of the Remarkable People podcast, interviewing such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Tony Fauci, Jane Goodall, and Steve Wozniak.
November 17, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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San Francisco
Building Urban Strength in the San Francisco Bay Region: Insights from the 2025 Lewis Center Sustainability Forum
The 2025 Lewis Center Sustainability Forum, held during the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco, explored ways that local leaders in planning, policy, and development are advancing urban strength and adaptability amid increasing climate and social stresses.
November 17, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Capital Markets and Finance
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Finance & Investment
The New Landscape of Commercial Real Estate Lending: Debt, Downtowns, and Data
While the full impact of the pandemic has yet to be realized, commercial real estate faces new uncertainties, including questions about the AI boom’s longevity, the spending strength of the U.S. consumer, and debt sustainability. In response to increased competition for quality deals, commercial real estate firms are restructuring their operations, using diverse data sources, accessing new capital, and forming new partnerships.
November 10, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Capital Markets and Finance
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Dallas-Fort Worth
PwC and ULI Report Reveals the 2026 Real Estate Trends Transforming Where We Live, Work and Invest
Drawing on insights from more than 1,700 leading real estate investors, developers, lenders and advisors across the U.S. and Canada, the report identifies key opportunities, risks and market shifts that will shape the industry in the coming year.
November 6, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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San Francisco
Reviving Market Street: Fresh ideas spark new hope for San Francisco’s historic corridor
For decades, civic leaders have tried to revitalize Market Street, San Francisco’s central thoroughfare, only to see their efforts founder. “I sometimes call it the great white whale of San Francisco,” says Eric Tao, managing partner at L37 Development in San Francisco and co-chair of ULI San Francisco. “Every new mayor, every new planning director, every new economic development director has chased that white whale.” This year, however, an international competition of ideas hosted and run by ULI San Francisco, with support from the ULI Foundation, generated fresh momentum for reimagining the boulevard. The competition drew 173 submissions from nine countries and sparked new conversations about the future of downtown San Francisco.
October 31, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Resilience and Sustainability
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Data Centers
Project Profiles: EcoDataCenter 1 Powers Its Servers with 100 Percent Renewable Energy in Sweden
Data centers have a reputation for high energy use. EcoDataCenter 1 in Falun, Sweden, offers an alternate model: its two data centers, DCA and DCB, derive all of their power from nearby renewable energy sources; 75 percent comes from hydropower and 25 percent from wind.
October 22, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Asia Pacific
Project Profiles: Upper House’s “Dancing Balconies” Reshape Brisbane’s Skyline
Across the Brisbane River from Brisbane, Australia’s central business district, the 33-story Upper House residential tower stands out in the city’s skyline with its “dancing balconies” and curving timber ribbons inspired by the prominent roots of Queensland’s native Moreton Bay fig tree.
October 6, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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San Francisco
ULI Meeting Tour Preview: San Francisco’s Mission Rock Mixed-Use Waterfront Neighborhood
A waterfront site across McCovey Cove from San Francisco’s Oracle Park had long served as a parking lot for Giants baseball fans—but little more. Today, the property is home to Mission Rock, an ambitious mixed-use development undertaken in a public-private partnership between the Giants, the Port of San Francisco, and global real estate development company Tishman Speyer. Attendees of the 2025 ULI Fall Meeting will have the opportunity to tour Mission Rock and learn how an unusually collaborative approach to development has created a neighborhood that goes beyond serving sports fans.
September 29, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Adaptive Use and Building Reuse
ULI Award Winners: A Postmodern Masterpiece’s Second Act
Designed by noted architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee and constructed in 1984, 550 Madison Avenue has a curved roof pediment that reminded enough people of Chippendale furniture to earn the nickname “the Chippendale Building.” Globally recognized as an influential postmodern masterpiece, it once served as headquarters for AT&T and later Sony, then became the youngest edifice to be designated a New York City landmark. The Olayan Group purchased it in 2016 to rework the single-tenant tower into a multi-tenant, mixed-use office building that prioritizes occupant wellness and environmental sustainability.
September 23, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Urban Land Contributors
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Ron Nyren
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Beth Mattson-Teig
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Michele Lerner
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Hannah Miet
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Sibley Fleming
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Shraeya Madhu
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Ben Johnson
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Karen Jordan
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Kara Kokernak
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Peter David Cavaluzzi, FAIA
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Brett Widness
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Patrick J. Kiger
Bill Vitek
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Design and Planning
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Awards
Project Profiles: Singapore’s First Net-Positive Energy Nature Park
Once the site of an abandoned quarry, Singapore’s Rifle Range Nature Park now serves as a buffer zone protecting one of the island nation’s last primary rainforests, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, from encroaching development and human activity. Located to the reserve’s south, Rifle Range is Singapore’s first net-positive energy nature park, harvesting more energy than its annual operational requirements.
July 7, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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Residential
Product Council Outlook for Residential Development: What lies ahead for the housing market?
Five experts from ULI’s Residential Neighborhood Development Council discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for homebuilders; what buyers and renters want from their neighborhoods, and how they value sustainability and resilience; what state and local housing policies are effectively encouraging housing construction; and other trends.
June 23, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Multifamily
UL10: Ten Affordable Housing Developments
10 inventive designs put housing within reach of low- and moderate-income individuals and families
June 13, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Urban and Regional Planning
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Office
Mile-High Momentum: How Denver Is Reinventing Its Downtown
As it contends with the same post-pandemic challenges that confront other urban cores nationwide, downtown Denver is leveraging public/private partnerships to bring back vitality. At the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado, five leaders involved with the city’s revitalization shared recent successes and plans for Denver’s future.
June 10, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Capital Markets and Finance
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Hotels and Resorts
A Bumpy Road Lies Ahead for the U.S. Hotel Industry
The hotel industry in the United States faces complex challenges in 2025, according to Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group. During the “State of the U.S. Hotel Industry” presentation at the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado, Freitag highlighted the challenges facing the hotel business amid macroeconomic uncertainty.
May 14, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Issues and Trends
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Obituaries
Remembering Dana Crawford, Pioneer of Historic Preservation and Urban Revitalization
Developer sought to improve people’s lives through her work.
May 12, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Resilience and Sustainability
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Development and Construction
Urban Land Armchair Tour: A 25-Year Journey from Runways to Resilience for Denver’s Central Park Neighborhood
When Denver’s Stapleton International Airport closed in the mid-1990s, community leaders saw a chance to create a new, 4,700-acre (1,900 ha) community just six miles east of downtown. The project’s original developer, Forest City Stapleton (sold to Brookfield Properties in 2018), kicked off an urban transformation that is now nearing completion 25 years later. Known for extensive resilience strategies to reduce the effects of drought, flooding, and extreme heat, Central Park’s 12 neighborhoods are home to nearly 35,000 residents, with 60 parks as well as extensive pedestrian and bicycle trails.
April 4, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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Mixed-Use
Urban Land Armchair Tour: Denver’s McGregor Square Where Baseball Meets Mixed-Use
The Colorado Rockies’ ownership leased a parking lot adjacent to Coors Field in order to construct McGregor Square, a 3.2-acre (1.3 ha) mixed-use development that serves baseball fans, tourists, and the broader community.
February 24, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Resilience and Sustainability
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Design and Planning
ULX: 10 Resilient Developments
10 projects model ways to prepare the built environment for climate stresses and shocks
February 20, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Issues and Trends
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Philanthropic Impact
ULI Western New York, Local Stakeholders, and Advisory Services Program Seek to Revive Buffalo’s Historically Black Jefferson Avenue Corridor
A group of experts representing ULI visited Buffalo, New York, last November to make recommendations for reviving the city’s Jefferson Avenue Corridor, the main thoroughfare of a historically black area that has suffered a decline in commercial, social, and civic activity and engagement as the result of decades of disinvestment and a recent racially motivated shooting.
February 7, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Multifamily
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Long-Term Affordable Housing That Highlights Community-Building in Sydney Suburbs
In the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, two not-for-profit organizations—Fresh Hope Communities, the public benevolent institution entity of churches of Christ in NSW and ACT, and Nightingale Housing of Brunswick, Victoria—came together to develop a building that contains 54 units renting at 80 percent of market rates as well as two community-focused commercial spaces. The Churches of Christ Property Trust has provided a 99 year lease for the land, which allows the units to remain affordable far beyond a more typical 10-year period.
January 28, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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Office
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Reimagining Victorian Heritage for the Modern Workplace
In the heart of London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, a complex of five Victorian-era structures—previously housing a seed merchant company, a brass and iron foundry, and a Nonconformist chapel, among other uses—have been restored and adapted into a single, cohesive office building with ground-floor retail and dining space. The three-year restoration preserved the property’s industrial heritage and provides flexibility to meet the needs of today’s workforce.
January 22, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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ULI Asia Pacific
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Regenerating China’s Urban Villages
Shenzhen’s Nantou Ancient City project represents a groundbreaking approach to revitalizing China’s historic urban villages in a way that preserves their cultural heritage and community fabric. After China’s government designated Shenzhen as a Special Economic Zone in 1980, the city’s more than 400 urban villages grew rapidly to provide informal housing for an influx of migrant workers. The result: high-density residential areas that maximized rental income but often compromised on fire safety and hygiene standards.
January 15, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Issues and Trends
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ULI Leadership
Melville Charitable Trust Grants ULI $75,000 to Seek Real Estate Solutions in the Affordable Housing Crisis
The Melville Charitable Trust awarded $75,000 to the ULI Foundation to support the development of 10 Principles for Addressing Homelessness: A Guide for Real Estate & Finance. Awarded in October 2024, the one-year grant is the trust’s first donation to the Urban Land Institute (ULI). It will let ULI’s Homeless to Housed (H2H) initiative create a comprehensive guide intended to connect real estate leaders with not-for-profit housing and service providers and collectively identify ways of catalyzing the production and preservation of more deeply affordable housing that is both cost-effective and rapidly deployable.
January 10, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Mixed Use and Multi-Use
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Once a Film Roll Packing Plant, Now a Sustainable Mixed-Use Community
In the Belgian municipality of Edegem, just a 20-minute bike ride from Antwerp’s city center, a brownfield site that once stored camera film has become a biodiverse, sustainable mixed-use residential and commercial neighborhood.
January 8, 2025
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Ron Nyren
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Awards
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Public Buildings - Libraries and Museums
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Warsaw’s New Cultural Landmark Sets History in Stone
For two hundred years, the Warsaw Citadel at the heart of Poland’s capital was a restricted military and administrative area, cut off from public access. With the recent opening of the Polish History Museum, as well as the new Polish Army Museum, the 19th-century fortress’ 74-acre (30 ha) grounds now serve as a multifunctional cultural and educational facility and park that preserves and showcases the country’s heritage.
December 17, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Development and Construction
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Architecture – Design
UL10: Modern Museums
10 museum buildings strengthen ties to communities and the public realm
December 16, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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New York City
Outlook for Downtown Rejuvenation
Four experts discuss how to rebuild urban cores by bringing the public and private sectors together to create thriving downtowns that entice remote workers to return to the office and broaden the mix of uses.
December 9, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Awards
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: A Coca-Cola Bottling Plant Becomes an Entertainment and Cultural Hub
The transformation of Indianapolis’s historic Coca-Cola bottling plant into the Bottleworks District represents one of Indiana’s most ambitious adaptive use projects.
December 3, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Finance & Investment
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Multifamily
ULI Global Awards for Excellence: Pioneering Affordable Housing Preservation in Austin
With insights and research from a ULI Technical Advisory Panel and ULI’s Terwilliger Center, the Austin Housing Conservancy fund, a revolutionary approach to preserving workforce housing, was born. Now known as the Texas Housing Conservancy, the fund became the nation’s first to combine a nonprofit investment manager, Affordable Central Texas, with an open-end private equity fund.
November 19, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Capital Markets and Finance
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Recreation and Entertainment
Convention Centers Integrate with the Urban Realm to Stay Competitive
Covid-19 may have caused a precipitous decline in convention crowds in 2020, but it did not halt long-range plans to overhaul and expand convention centers in a number of key U.S. cities. Today that foresight is bearing fruit with grand new facilities able to host larger industry and trade gatherings than ever before.
October 29, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Design and Planning
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Infrastructure – Parking and Parking Facilities
UL10: Urban Parking Solutions
The following projects include an underwater bicycle garage; a university parking structure that includes a gaming lounge and food hall; a surface lot reimagined as open space with parklike amenities; an underground cafeteria repurposed for cars; and parking decks wrapped in artistic, semitransparent enclosures that reflect local culture.
August 20, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Placemaking and Placekeeping
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Urban Design
A Sense of Place—Revitalizing Downtowns Through Smart Placemaking
Can third spaces help downtowns bounce back from the pandemic?
July 30, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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Inside the ULI Foundation
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ULI Leadership
Tom Toomey to Lead ULI Foundation as New Chair
Thomas W. Toomey, chairman and chief executive officer of UDR Inc., will become the new chair of the ULI Foundation on July 1, 2024. A longtime ULI member and chair of the ULI Global Board of Directors from 2017 to 2019, Toomey brings extensive leadership experience and a deep commitment to philanthropic support for ULI’s mission.
July 22, 2024
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Ron Nyren
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