As communities and cities across the country face mounting land use and environmental challenges, Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP) and Melissa Schrock, HRP’s executive vice president of mixed-use development, are working to ensure urban redevelopment is a force for positive change.
Schrock has had an extraordinarily varied professional career that has taken her from working as a young architect on stadia and arenas to establishing her own real estate advisory firm in Paris to her current role of piloting HRP’s mixed-use division.
Now leading some of HRP’s most impactful projects in Boston, Philadelphia, and Alexandria, Virginia, Schrock is focused on strategic urban redevelopment opportunities that involve repurposing legacy assets of the industrial age into sustainable, dynamic hubs where people live, work, and thrive.
Discovering Her Passion
Schrock’s story began with a profound interest in design and innovation. Born in Columbus, Ohio, but growing up in various parts of the country, Schrock was exposed to creative aspects of architecture and design from an early age. Her mother’s endeavor to design their family home in Fargo, North Dakota left an indelible mark on her creative background, inspiring her to pursue an architecture degree.
After completing her undergraduate degree at The Ohio State University, Schrock relocated to Los Angeles where she had the opportunity to work on several large, urban-scale projects, including iconic sports venues such as the Cincinnati Bengals’ Paycor Stadium and the Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles.
She saw firsthand how architects weren’t really in a position to consider the impacts these massive projects had on the urban environment. “Our goal was to make the most stunning building or the coolest destination, and we were really good at doing that, but we weren’t really tasked with considering the impact those buildings had on the city holistically, as that was not our role” Schrock said.
Discovering her true passion took time and a nearly-decade-long stint of living abroad in Paris, where Schrock had her first foray into real estate, working in an advisory capacity to international high-net-worth individuals interested in acquiring residential properties in France. Living and working in such a dense yet very livable environment, with a reliable transit system, an extensive network of public open space, and naturally amenitized mixed-use neighborhoods, helped Schrock to realize that she was really passionate about good city planning, design, and development.
Schrock knew she would need to develop new skill sets to make such a dramatic mid-career shift, so she went back to school in her late 30s, obtaining dual master’s degrees in City Planning and Real Estate Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating, she settled in Boston where she began working in development project management, spending time at both Samuels & Associates and Boston Properties. She gained valuable experience and held positions of increasing levels of responsibility working on multiple large, urban, mixed-use projects totaling over 4 million square feet on some of Boston and Cambridge’s most coveted sites.
Schrock’s commitment to improving the urban environment and people’s lives eventually led her to an opportunity at HRP.
A Shared Vision
HRP’s CEO, Roberto Perez, often describes the company as an environmental company married to a real estate development company. This unique focus on improving the environment, the business model of remediating and reimagining industrial sites, and a holistic approach to sustainable redevelopment that prioritizes community, environment, and economy were compelling to Schrock.
“HRP is such a good platform for someone with my interests because we acquire expansive sites that have been severed from their surrounding urban context, for sometimes more than a century, and we get to wholly reconceive them into new, vibrant and sustainable urban districts,” Schrock said. “It’s both a real challenge and an opportunity to reintegrate these sites back into their neighborhoods, but the end result can make a lasting, positive impact on cities and communities.”
Innovation and Sustainability
Tackling the types of brownfield sites that HRP acquires isn’t something every developer wants to do. Schrock describes HRP as “educated risk takers … because we have in-house expertise in abatement, deconstruction, remediation, and regulatory approvals.” Each of these areas of focus is necessary for the unique sites in HRP’s portfolio.
Launching and leading HRP’s mixed-use division, Schrock is guiding the sustainability and resiliency measures that are being incorporated into HRP’s mixed-use projects. In Boston, where HRP is transforming the former Edison Power Plant in South Boston into a 1.7 million square foot mixed-use district, the redevelopment strategy includes rebuilding and elevating the existing seawall and raising the grade to account for anticipated sea-level rise. The project also entails the preservation and adaptive re-use of 4 historic turbine halls, reducing the embodied carbon impact by 16 percent, constructing buildings that minimize or eliminate fossil fuels as an energy source, and providing nearly 6 acres of public open space complete with shade plantings and water features to help reduce the urban heat island effect.
Schrock understands the importance of resiliency and ensuring cities can address the impacts of climate change. “This is table stakes for us,” Schrock declared. “We have to be sustainable.”
In Alexandria, the Planning Commission and City Council both unanimously endorsed HRP’s “Coordinated Sustainability Strategy,” the first of its kind in that jurisdiction. The plan, hailed by lawmakers as a model for future projects in the city, outlines key strategies for a comprehensive approach to sustainable design at HRP’s Potomac River Generating Station redevelopment project.
Turning an abandoned coal-fired power plant that once powered the nation’s capital into a vibrant, mixed-use, and people-oriented neighborhood is a big project in and of itself. HRP is exceeding local regulatory requirements by targeting 3 percent on-site renewable energy generation, 25 percent operational energy reduction over Alexandria’s Green Building Policy, and 10 percent embodied carbon savings.
Creating a Lasting Legacy
With each project, HRP and Schrock continue to redefine what redevelopment means and are working to leave behind a legacy of more resilient communities and a healthier environment.
Yet, Schrock recognizes that others are needed to fulfill and carry on this legacy. In addition to her passion for city building, Schrock is also committed to giving opportunities to others at HRP to make their own mark. Having navigated multiple industries with limited diversity throughout her career, Schrock has intentionally built a demographically diverse team at HRP that leverages a wide range of past professional experiences, backgrounds, and more. This purposeful team development has created a “stronger team, stronger firm, the work product is better, and you get better results,” Schrock explains. “I want to make sure we’re training and empowering the next generation of professionals to take the reins.”
Schrock’s aspirations for a better future are clear. “I want to look back and see that I’ve been part of creating great places in resilient cities. Great places not only for the users of our sites, but also for the surrounding communities. Dynamic and sustainable places where people want to be and come back to again and again,” Schrock describes.
HRP and Schrock’s innovative approach and passion for creating vibrant urban spaces are helping to shape the future of urban redevelopment, enabling our cities and communities to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
Click here to learn more about HRP and its transformational projects.
