In case you have not noticed by now, I am truly an advocate of infill development. I think my fascination with this particular development was highlighted in this interview by CNN with Richard Florida. In the video he highlights how America bounced back after the Great Depression. The recovery was due in part to the flight from inner cities to the suburbs. That flight was a gift and a curse in that it took our best and brightest, along with their wealth, to the emerging suburbs. We effectively built our way out the Depression. Fast forward 75 years, here we are again at a crossroads where everyone from the President to economists are trying to figure out how we recover.

“[We] must get back into the game…[we'll] be condemned to high unemployment and sluggish growth, if the 35% of the economy real estate represents is not engaged.” Patrick Doherty, Washington Monthly

What do I propose? I’m so glad you asked.

America can recover by rebuilding our cities.  The Urban Land Institute noted that there is a demand for attached housing to the tune of 25 million units by 2025; that translates into 3 million acres of infill sites scattered throughout America prime for redevelopment and new uses. If history is any indicator, we will recover-the question is how we will recover. Over the last decade we’ve seen a migration back to the city and the trend is continuing for a number of reasons. Some would argue because my generation, the Echo Boomers or Millennials, want to be near “life” and that tends be in urban centers. The game has changed. We no longer solely prefer the housing options our parents and grandparents had.

Progress has been made to raise awareness about the need to curb carbon emissions by changing the way buildings are built. I applaud the USGBC, Southface and others who are championing high performance building. I propose we shift gears. Now that we understand “green building” as means to curb emissions, we need to understand infill development as alternative to suburban sprawl. Many local governments don’t have policies in place that encourage infill development whereby developers opt for the lesser expensive suburban model.

“There’s a frequent obstacle: neighbors’ opposition to infill development and the extra density it adds. But neighborhood doubts can often be satisfied by collaborative planning and prospects of quality redevelopment near transit stops, as well as attractive makeovers of obsolete shopping centers and low-grade strip commercial corridors. Plus, downtowns, universities and medical centers are new magnets for quality redevelopment.”

From “Compact Real Estate: The Stimulus We Need” Citiwire.net

Construction jobs were halved in Florida, Nevada and Arizona. What if we took the charge to build more sustainable cities? What if we built out half of the 3 million acres with walkable, transit oriented developments? Millions would be put back to work. Instead of putting lipstick on a pig, yes, I’m talking about GM, let’s redirect those funds to help cities incorporate policies that incentivize developers to pursue infill developments.

There is a stimulus package for you.

Many consider Americans to be polling as angry, but anger isn’t the emotion driving the national public agenda right now. It’s fear. Anger is just the fiercer face of fear and right now, Americans are afraid of nearly everything.

Who could blame them? A sour job market is keeping unemployment at 10 percent, the nation is still stuck in two wars, one of which is looking more perilous and unwinnable. The cost of a college education continues to go up, but it’s value seems diminished with so many out of work college grads. Americans have piled up a mountain of personal debt, from underwater mortgages to credit cards, to student loans. It seems we all owe corporations some massive amount cash. Those same corporations sell us over priced homes, take tax payer bailouts, reap huge profits our backs, dump oil into the Gulf of Mexico and for good measure invade our privacy regularly.

In a climate of circuitous bad news and reasons to be fearful, it’s not surprising that the common response is anger. The Tea Party movement has a seductive libertarian streak, but what the right is doing is capitalizing on the overwhelming anger and fear in the populous. Afraid you will lose your job – punish the undocumented worker, worried about the deficit – punish the unemployed , punish the environment, call healthcare reform socialism, call the President Adolf Hitler. Scream and yell “drill, baby, drill!” who cares if there isn’t enough oil to cover our needs no matter how deep we go? Fear trumps change.

Yet there are greater existential threats, ones that this congress will not take on. The cap and trade bill, as you have no doubt already heard, is stalled in the Senate. Democratic Party leadership has decided to set it aside to fight for another day. Essentially the leaders of the Democratic party decided that passing cap and trade isn’t worth the political fight in a midterm election year. The Democrats are already set to lose substantial seats in the House and Senate and could lose control of one or both chambers. And so the Democrats have decided it is better to try and stem the tide of losses they face in November (despite having control of the executive branch) than to use their vast majorities while they still exist. This is the great danger of our current political climate, we are too scared to take on the biggest if our problems. Our elected leaders are more concerned about keeping their jobs, than they are about doing them. Climate change is real and it’s happening every day, little by little and if we don’t stand and fight to stop it, if we don’t stand and fight to solve this energy crisis, our children and our grandchildren will pay a horrible price for our failure. The great recession will barely be a blip in history if we don’t work to solve the very real problems our planet is facing today.

But in the grip of this recession fear is all we know, it’s all we understand. We’re not thinking about what might happen to our grand kids, we’re hoping we can keep putting food on the table for our children. We’re not scared about what’s coming out of our tail pipe. We are scared that we’ll lose our house.

If our politicians, who do not face those same fears are still too afraid of losing their well subsidized jobs to take action against the greatest threat man kind has ever foreseen, then it’s time the fight for smarter climate policy move away from the political sphere and into the drawing rooms of America.

It’s time for the designers, artisans and builders of America to fight for sustainability in every project they undergo, whether that project needs to meet a LEED certification or not. The time for half measures and talk are over. We, the professionals of this nation are alone in this fight. We must assert our values in the work we do everyday, because no politician or political body will do it for us.

The pundits all say it. The skeptics believe it, they all say that America can never be a “green” nation. We will never lead the world in sustainability. America will fall behind because she doesn’t care about the environment she only cares about rabid consumerism, after all the “green” brand has already been bastardized beyond recognition anyway….

Enough.

Of course green will never scale. Green will never scale because “green” doesn’t mean anything. “Green” is a movement, a way of thinking, it’s not a product. There wasn’t a “mobility” movement that spurred the automobile to scale, there wasn’t an “information” movement that got a computer on every desktop in America. These were incredible products of immense value to their customers to the point where most Americans can’t fathom the idea of living without a car, a computer, or (multiples of) both.

When skeptics tell you “green won’t scale” tell them “you’re right.” But also tell them what will scale. What will scale is a superior class of building accessible to all. Tell them that what does scale are profitable retrofits of existing buildings. The conversion of buildings from energy sucking, health depriving, creativity sucking, productivity killing cinderblock dungeons to life affirming, productivity enhancing, health improving, energy neutral spaces that people are actually thrilled to live and work in every day will scale.

Enough defending green. Start providing such a vastly superior product it doesn’t have to be defended.

Green means defending Al Gore. “Green” means fighting with Glenn Beck. Green means having your building being spoken of in the same breath as organic home remedies. Green means fighting about how many degrees it was in Antarctica this winter or the distance between polar ice chunks…meanwhile our building stock still sucks.

Forget green. Make it better, better does scale.

“There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once upon a time in a land far away…

The last decade is not that far removed to start a fable but one thing is for certain, there were some characters and plots that took shape-for better or worse. What should we expect of the next year, decade? A foundation for the coming years was being laid in the latter part of the decade that hinted we may be seeing an era of personal accountability, corporate responsibility and community engagement. It’s evident in almost every aspect of our lives; from the All-State commercials on responsibility to Subaru contributing apart of every vehicle sale to a charity of your choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HNKqffU3Cc

If you’ve read my other blog posts, each is sprinkled with a sense of optimism and cautiousness. I don’t doubt we have what it takes to create a more just, equitable society but am often leery of the human element. Given the right opportunity, visions of sustainability, curbing climate change and any other worthy cause can go out of the window. Take a look at the weeks that followed 9/11. Everyone was patriotic; American flags were on nearly every lawn, car and bumper sticker. At that time, I felt a sense that our States, well, were United. Though quite horrific, those events have fallen into memory and serve as a guidepost that marked a decade. Do we move on or dwell on the past you ask? We move on with the same conviction that together we are stronger than any challenge our nation faces.

As a 30 year old American, this new direction is somewhat of a culture shock. Many in my generation were raised on the premise of “more, more, more” being the standard for success. We believed that having the biggest house, car, bank account and TV signified status or “making it” – I don’t think that will be the case as we move forward. I’m not suggesting we don’t want to be successful in our respective careers but the way we measure success has no doubt changed. In James Bedell’s “Why We Will Save The World”, he noted that “people are the new profit” and that “less is the new more”. I couldn’t agree with James more.

“So goes GM, so goes the country.”

The US automobile industry was pushed to the brink of disaster before an overhaul began. I personally didn’t support the auto bailout or any other federal intervention but was aware that without it, it could have easily tilted our country in another depression-easily. So what of capitalism? I’m not an economist but am of the opinion that the human element trumped reason on this one.

Moving forward our industries must evolve and commit to investing in R&D, infrastructure and education. Watching CBS Sunday Morning’s recent coverage of the last decade showed that the US created 0% jobs (zero) in an entire decade. Our labor market is suffering because we haven’t worked to create new industry domestically and trade policies have effectively shipped American ingenuity abroad for production and redistribution back to us.

With a defunct energy policy, declining dollar, lackluster labor and housing markets, the push is now toward sustainability, efficiency, buying local and community engagement. What happens when our GDP is growing, our communities are stable, CO2 emissions decrease and rail becomes a viable transportation alternative in the states? If our economy is to grow, history shows us that we’ll need innovation to push the limits of what we can accomplish. As those innovations come to market, legislation will be slow to understand the affects they’ll have on the public long after fortunes have been made and fortunes lost, hence the financial crisis.

I advocate growth, change, prosperity and hope. However, I’m well aware that what goes up must come down. America will recover. We will prosper again and again, we will become complacent.

I look to the past for clues and I’m cautiously optimistic we’ll get it.

**

Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

“Commercial real estate is perhaps the most compelling investment opportunity in the United States right now, it is a $5 trillion business where one percent is minority.” Quinton Primo III of Capri Capital Partners L.L.C. “  ~ from Black Enterprise

Under Construction

The real estate industry, from a development perspective, is singly the least diverse industry on the planet.  You could also say one of the most vital. There are proportionally more minority accountants, doctors and lawyers than minority management-level commercial real estate professionals (less than 1% of 125,000 – source REAP).

I think part of that rests in the fact that it’s primarily controlled by a few white males. Literally, a small fraternity controls the majority of the world’s real estate. There is some historical significance to this as most property was held by white owners and has been passed down throughout generations. It largely remains that way today. One percent of real estate wealth is held by minorities. No wonder heavily populated urban areas suffer  steeper declines compared to more diverse cities. Women are also significantly underrepresented in commercial real estate as well.

The essence of real estate development is identifying a need and filling it. Whenever I hear someone say, “This area needs a supermarket,” or “We really need a drug store,” I can only think to myself how many would-be developers exist who could benefit from mentoring.  It’s a catch 22: you need minorities in development to mentor other minorities in development, but if the numbers of minorities aren’t increasing, the gap will only continue to widen. By 2030, it’s projected that America will have to build another 200 billion square feet of space to accommodate growth for an expected 70 million, and a great majority of that growth will be from non-whites.

As urban renewal becomes more pronounced, we’ll need a cross-section of real estate minds to address our ever-changing demographics. Chances are your community – no matter the cultural makeup – was developed by someone who does not look like you or share the same value systems you do; a need was identified and filled. Many communities are accustomed to being part of a charette. However, what communities are not used to is being apart of the implementation process once suggestions are made and adopted by a given city.

I think we should inspire, educate and empower community level leaders with the resources they need to redevelop their own communities. The response was quite astounding on Ava Bromberg’s new model that seeks to leverage strip malls into vehicles of economic activity. For example, Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC) is the largest community development organization of its kind and demonstrates the power of community engagement – they have a portfolio of over $350,000,000.

Detour: Level Playing Field

The need is much greater than many realize but the conversation has largely been non-existent because so few are affected. I’ve chaired several industry committees and have witnessed, personally, the underrepresentation of women and minorities within the industry. On any given day, you’ll find a number of minorities who practice residential real estate. They often lack the knowledge on how to structure projects and thus pass them on to someone who has the knowledge capital to deliver a project. This isn’t an indictment, we need skilled professionals in real estate but the lack of information sharing has reached critical mass.  Just as social media has allowed communities to be formed online, I believe communities can be rebuilt offline utilizing a similar platform – create the conversations, share solutions and implement the best ideas.

I’m pulling back the curtain to say the secret is out – anyone can develop real estate, it’s not an elite club meant for a few. The question then becomes a matter of how to connect the many dots. I’ve met with some prominent minority developers with businesses that range from a few million to a few billion dollars, but none of them offered solutions to lift up the next generation of real estate leadership. Social media has allowed for the brokering of ideas a world over; Aribra seeks to accomplish a similar feat in the built space. Is this about economic benefit? Absolutely not. It’s about taking our communities back. A lot of people bemoan capitalist organizations that effectively strip other countries of their natural resources. This could happen for any number of reasons; some are political, some are not. Whatever the reason, there is no need for our communities to be exploited by developers, most who don’t live there and are solely looking for economic returns instead of leveraging already existing assets.

The following are organizations that have sought to address the issue of diversity in commercial real estate.  I’ve found them to have successful inclusion programs.

a. CCIM’s Cultural Diversity Education Program (CDEP)

b. Project REAP [Real Estate Associate Program]

c. Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW)

It’s our time.

From Time | The ‘Vacancy’ Blight: Finding New Uses for Empty Stores

Last spring, Manon Slome was walking down a street in New York City when she noticed something odd: “Store after store was closed. When stores are empty it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ It was a feeling of siege.”

Plenty of people in America could make the same observation. Nationwide, 10% of shopping center stores sit empty, according to the real-estate analytics firm Reis. That’s the highest percentage of vacancies since 1992 — what you get when you mix a bad recession with a commercial real estate bust (thanks to years of overzealous building).

Slome is now among the people doing something about it. After her springtime walk, the museum curator started contacting building owners, suggesting they let her use their empty space for art exhibitions. She landed her first storefront in June: a former tackle shop was soon home to photographs, paintings and videos on the bad economy and — in homage to the space’s former use — fishing. Says Slome: “It’s art coming in to fill the vacuum.”

The repurposing doesn’t stop there. Around the country, property owners and managers are trying out new uses for empty stores. Spaces that used to house Radio Shacks and Linens ‘N Things now serve as libraries, auction houses, TV studios, even block-long billboards to advertise other stores and brands.

Such endeavors are not going to solve the retail real estate glut. Only a realignment of supply and demand for long-term leases will do that. But in the short-term, getting creative with commercial space keeps storefronts filled, which helps keep properties secure and community spirit intact, and may even bring in a little money for would-be landlords to offset costs like utilities, taxes and maintenance.

Consider the work of Marc Feldman at Developers Diversified Realty, an Ohio-based company that owns nearly 700 retail properties across the country. He and his 15-person team are charged with finding non-traditional uses for available spaces at a time when some 9% of the firm’s units sit idle. Among the temporary uses they’ve landed on: health clinic, campaign office, auction house, county library, swap meet and soundstage for a car commercial shoot. “It doesn’t make up for the rents those retailers were paying, but it definitely provides revenue that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” says Feldman. “Even if it’s just for a day or a week, it goes to the bottom line.”

Steve Birnhak has another idea: turning empty storefronts into billboards. The company he founded, New York-based Inwindow Outdoor, connects property owners with advertisers willing to pay for window space, conveniently located right at the eyelevel of anyone walking or driving by. The ads go from floor to ceiling and are pretty hard to miss. One recent Chicago project advertised Intel over the entire facade of a now-defunct Comp USA store.

Cities are getting in on the act, too. At the end of October, San Francisco will launch Art in Storefronts, a collaboration between the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco Arts Commission that will fill 20 unused storefronts in four neighborhoods with the work of local artists. The goal is twofold: to spruce up areas that have seen high vacancy rates and to help support artists in a down economy.

There may eventually be another benefit, too, says Lisa Pagan, who runs San Francisco’s business improvement districts program. “The hope is that this may help people look at individual storefronts in a more positive way,” she says. Translation: get enough art lovers to traipse up and down a certain block and maybe some of them will start thinking about what a great place it would be to rent a storefront for their business.

Full | The ‘Vacancy’ Blight: Finding New Uses for Empty Stores

I woke up this morning and went about my normal routine but today was different. I could feel it building inside me. A sense of hope springing forward as I began to think about the generational challenges we are faced with and why this generation, our generation is ready for them. I look at what we can do, and what we are already doing and I realize that we will overcome not just this economic crisis, for those come and go. But we will overcome the crises of education, of health care and of energy within our lifetimes. Before I start to sound like too much of a salesman for the current administration, I want to share why I think our generation-the new professionals are uniquely suited to the age we were born into.

1. People are the new profit. If you read the commentary on web 2.0 and the future of the internet there is no end to the hand-wringing that goes on among the older set. The old saw goes “that’s great, but how do you turn a profit?” It’s not that we are a generation of socialists unconcerned with profit and loss, it’s that profit isn’t the driving force behind our motivations. Facebook began in a dorm room as an experiment in connecting people on campus. Google strove to create the better search engine. Netflix changed the way we rented movies. The list goes on, but profit wasn’t the driving force behind any of these ideas at the start, in the beginning it was about solving consumer’s problem. These companies have created new verbs, “google it”, he “friended” me, oh just “netflix” it. Fundamentally changing the way we do things, by solving a problem, rather than selling a bill of goods.

2. Small is the new big. If there’s one concept our generation is reflexively against it’s the concept of “too big to fail” entrepreneurship is something we all have a stake in now. We are a generation that maintains blogs and tweets to the world. We are our own ventures, our personal and professional lives are no longer as separate as they once were. For our generation ideas move as fast as you can type and hit the send button, so work happens wherever, whenever. Perfect for when the problems are global in scale and complex in nature.

3. Forget the suit, just bring your brain. The people at companies changing the world come to the office in sneakers and a sweatshirt. Power isn’t the currency anymore. We’ve changed the game, now it’s ideas and collaboration that build the better mousetrap.

4. This isn’t an age thing. Our generation is the most blind ever. Race, color, creed, gender, these matter less than what you bring to the table as a person and as a professional it doesn’t matter how old you are, it doesn’t matter where you grew up. Our generation looks to leaders like Google, like Ecko, like Apple, you know what all of their leaders have in common? Nothing, and that’s exactly how it should be.

5. Not afraid to dream. Rare is the person of our generation who can’t quote Star Wars, or didn’t watch Sesame Street and the Muppets as a kid. Those kids grew up and gave us Lord of the Rings, and Pixar and Slumdog Millionaire. We’re a generation that’s not afraid to dream big, we’ve been doing it since we are little. The naysayers see us a generation afraid to grow up. They’re wrong. We’re a generation that remembers what it is to dream, what it is to want something better, and will always work to make it happen.

6. Apathetic we are not. Young people fueled a political campaign and elected a president. Faced with eight years of leadership that completely rejected the values they hold dear this generation rose up and elected a new face to the scene. He might have been untested, but it was his ideas and rhetoric that drove President Obama to the oval office. His campaign’s ability to make every voice matter, to make every volunteer action important and open the halls of power to the masses that made him this generation’s choice for the Presidency. President Clinton had to beg young people to go vote, President Obama was their champion.

It’s not that I am arrogant about who we are and where we’re going, it’s not that I hate the ‘boomers or resent having all of these problems to solve. It’s that I think our generation is uniquely suited to problems that lie ahead. Ones where millions of brains will be needed to fundamentally shift our way of life from waste to sustainability, from consolidated power to diverse networks, from me to us. Our generation will spend the better part of our lifetimes calming the seige of global warming, ending the world’s carbon addiction, finding better ways to educate our kids and making sure we can all grow up healthy. We will lead the nation to a brighter day, one brilliant idea at a time.

I wrote this some time ago as a personal blog post. I was inspired at the time. As a new contributor to Aribra I thought it would be a way to introduce myself. Here are some of my reasons to have tremendous hope for our future.