In recognition for his leadership in New York City HR&A Chairman, John Alschuler, received Coro’s Lewis Rudin Award for Civic Leadership at the Coro Awards Gala held Wednesday, April 22, 2015. This award recognizes New Yorkers who share Coro’s commitment to making the city a better place for all who live and work here. Coro also honored Suri Kasirer, the Honorable Donald H. Hips, and the Honorable Ritchie J. Torres.

Coro is a community of over 2,000 graduates who, for 30 years, have worked to improve cities nationwide by developing a network of local and regional organizations willing to create internship and project opportunities for program participants. Participants come away from Coro with a deeper knowledge of how policy is shaped, the skills to lead change in their organizations and communities, and a network of engaged and influential alumni to help them reach their goals. This award continues John’s longstanding relationship with Coro.

In accepting his award, John spoke about his appreciation for his colleagues and for the City of New York, saying, “We are deeply lucky and fortunate to practice our professions at a time of this great resurgence.” This event is a culmination of John and HR&A’s longstanding relationship with Coro. HR&A has hosted fellows for over a decade, many of which have joined HR&A staff after the program, and leading up to the gala John met with current Coro fellows to discuss leadership in urban development and New York City.

Friends of The Underline, together with Miami-Dade Transit and Miami-Dade Parks, Recreation and Open Space Department, have selected a team led by James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) to develop a vision and master plan for Miami-Dade County’s planned new feature park, The Underline. HR&A is thrilled to be on the team, which was selected from a pool of 19 applicants, and looks forward to collaborating with JCFO to transform this underutilized corridor into an iconic linear park and urban trail.

The future vision for the 10-mile Underline corridor, which runs below the Miami Metrorail from the Miami River to Dadeland South Station, is to create a vibrant linear park that will enhance connectivity, mobility, and recreation for hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors. HR&A will work with JCFO to frame a vision for how The Underline may activate surrounding real estate to encourage future development at key nodes. Our work will include a high-level review of soft development sites along The Underline corridor, identifying key opportunity areas and collaborating with JCFO to illustrate the potential for development at key locations along the corridor. HR&A will also examine potential public-private implementation concepts, framing a plan for successful implementation and long-term success.
For more information on the project, visit www.theunderline.org.

HR&A is proud to participate in the APA National Planning Conference in Seattle, Washington. The annual conference brings together planners, design professionals, and urban advocates from around the world to discuss the development of vital communities by advocating excellence in planning, promoting education and citizen empowerment, and providing the tools and support necessary to meet the challenges of growth and change.

HR&A Partner Paul Silvern will participate on a panel titled Public-Private Partnerships and Park Development on Tuesday April 21st. This session will cover the evolution of Public-Private Partnerships (P3’s) from the 1980s through today; the decision making process and impact of P3s on park planning, design and development; the planner’s role in P3 models; and the future of collaborative governance in park systems. P3s have emerged in the last few decades to support urban parks as public dollars have decreased. They are increasingly sophisticated – some taking on comprehensive management and operations in addition to fundraising – and bring much-needed financial resources. They reflect the complexity and challenges of urban park operations today that require new approaches to managing nature in densely populated areas, mitigating the effects of climate change, addressing diverse user needs, programming parks in communities at all socioeconomic levels, creating new sources of revenue, and working across sectors such as water, transportation, public health and human services departments. Paul will highlight our work on Brooklyn Bridge Park as an example of linking parks to adjacent development as a long-term funding strategy.

HR&A Partner Amitabh Barthakur will be participating on a panel titled Planning Retail that Can Really Happen on Sunday April 19th. Recognizing that retail space can activate and enliven the surrounding streetscape, planners often look to incorporate ground floor retail into their planning efforts. Oftentimes however, specific spaces are designated for retail uses without first taking into account market demand, area demographics, retail/restaurant operational requirements, project financial returns, conflicting ownership objectives and public sector incentives. This panel will shed light on what today’s retailers and developers are looking for when it comes to parking requirements, store layouts, public sector incentives and other key criteria. It will also highlight the ways in which those requirements need to fit within often conflicting municipal regulations. The panel will feature store designers who have worked with a diverse array of clients, as well as developers and economic development professionals that have lead retail revitalization efforts. Amitabh will talk about how market and demographic data can be best interpreted in a manner that relates to retailer requirements, can manage stakeholder expectations, and can lead to a retail tenanting strategies that can actually be implemented.

We hope you can join us at APA in Seattle!

In November 2014, the Open Society Foundations retained HR&A to manage a wide-reaching citizen engagement effort for Talking Transition DC – an experiment in innovative civic engagement, policy, and grassroots organizing centered around the mayoral transition. In November 2014, voters elected Muriel Bowser as the next mayor of Washington, DC. Shortly thereafter, Talking Transition DC kicked off. Talking Transition D.C. built on the success of Talking Transition NYC, which followed the November 2013 election of Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City.

Talking Transition D.C. sought to transform the typically insular, closed-door process that occurs between Election Day and Inauguration Day into an opportunity for broad civic discourse, giving Washingtonians a substantive opportunity to shape the agenda of Mayor Bowser. Talking Transition DC used a variety of strategies to accomplish this, including a field survey, a full-day town meeting, and a series of policy papers.

In partnership with DC Vote, DC Working Families, National Institute for Civil Discourse, and the Urban Institute, HR&A designed and oversaw the Talking Transition Survey. In a series of twenty-three questions, the survey asked District residents how they felt about a range of issues including housing, jobs, education, and internet access. Washingtonians had the opportunity to say whether things were “good,” “bad,” or “ok,” and whether things were “getting better,” “staying the same,” or “getting worse.” In December 2014 and January 2015, a team of 20 DC Working Families canvassers hit the streets to find out how Washingtonians felt about the most pressing issues facing the District during this time of transition.
Over 8,500 Washingtonians made their voices heard, and the results are clear:

• Over 45 percent of survey participants said that they had not voted in the 2014 mayoral election –demonstrating that Talking Transition engaged Washingtonians who do not always participate in the political process;
• Residents across DC were most concerned with housing affordability and social services;
• Residents in Southeast DC tended to respond more negatively than those living in Northwest.

The report, along with the results of the town hall and policy papers, were presented to Mayor Bowser in early March. To read the report, and see the other materials produced from Talking Transition, DC please visit http://talkingtransitiondc.com. Read more in the Washington Post, The Washington Informer, and DCist.

HR&A is proud to participate in the Greater & Greener 2015: Innovative Parks and Vibrant Cities Conference in San Francisco, California. The annual conference brings together more than 1,000 park leaders, planners, design professionals, and urban park advocates from around the world to discuss urban park issues from health, public education, livability and social cohesion, to economic development and urban resilience.

HR&A Partner, Candace Damon, will be participating on a panel titled Collecting Data, Informing Decisions on Monday April 13th. This panel will focus on how technology is serving socially and environmentally vulnerable communities. Candace will highlight our recent work with the Open Society Foundation on Talking Transition in NYC and in Washington D.C. where we transformed the typically insular, closed-door process that occurs between Election Day and Inauguration Day into an opportunity for broad civic discourse. She will also discuss our project for the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in California. For the City of Santa Monica, we helped design and develop a new online public engagement tool that solicits input from citizens and stakeholders to reimagine the future of the Civic Auditorium and its site through a user-friendly, online interface.

HR&A Director, Elissa Hoagland Izmailyan, will participate on a panel titled Earning Income with the Entrepreneurial Park on Tuesday April 14th, where she will discuss strategies for creating financially sustainable parks that not only generate revenue, but also contribute to the economic health of their communities. Elissa will highlight recent work on Hance Park in Phoenix, for the Green Line Parks and Commons Initiative in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and on Shelby Farms Park in Memphis.

HR&A is a strong supporter of the Greater & Greener Conference and the City Parks Alliance.