HR&A is proud to announce our selection as lead consultant for Imagine Boston 2030, the comprehensive plan that will define a vision for the future of Boston leading up to its 400th birthday. HR&A will lead an interdisciplinary team of planners, designers and engagement experts, including planning and design partner Utile Architecture + Planning, to develop and deliver Boston’s first citywide plan in 50 years.

“A successful civic engagement component for Imagine Boston 2030 is critical to creating a future for the City that incorporates all of our residents. HR&A and Utile appreciate the diversity of Boston’s people and their viewpoints, and they will help us build a stronger city that’s grounded by ideas from the people of Boston.”

–Mayor Martin J. Walsh

 

Imagine Boston 2030 will provide opportunities for residents to inform and shape citywide conversations about quality of life, and develop implementable ideas to address the city’s biggest issues. A team of community engagement experts will ensure proactive involvement from diverse constituents through a variety of innovative community engagement channels, ranging from social media and mobile polling to in-person conversations convened and led by local organizations.

Guided by feedback from residents and City staff, HR&A and its strategic planning partners will develop a vision plan with goals for the future of Boston’s positive physical change, shared prosperity, coordinated public investment, and a healthy environment and population. The team will work with residents and the City to develop implementable, placed-based initiatives, including identifying timelines, targets and funding sources for attainment of plan goals through 2030 and beyond.

HR&A is honored to help plan the future of one of America’s most well-loved cities, and we’re ready to imagine the possibilities of Boston in 2030. Follow Imagine Boston on Twitter @ImagineBos, Instagram, Facebook and our blog.

HR&A expands our leadership team in Washington DC with the addition of Phillip Bush as Principal.

 

 

 

 

 

“We gladly welcome Phillip Bush to HR&A. Phillip is a nationally-recognized leader in community development and resilience planning. His presence expands our capacity to meet the needs of our clients.”
– John Alschuler, Chairman

 

At HR&A, Phillip Bush will manage multiple projects within HR&A’s resilience and community revitalization practices. Currently, he is leading Climate Ready Boston, a comprehensive climate change adaptation plan for the city and its regional systems, on behalf of the Green Ribbon Commission and the City of Boston. He is also engaged in the Rockefeller Foundation’s capacity building initiative and HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition, where he works with 40 state and local governments on the predevelopment of resilience projects. As part of HR&A’s DC office, Phillip is co-lead for a multi-disciplinary team working for the DC Housing Authority to develop a mixed-use and mixed-income redevelopment plan for Greenleaf, a 15-acre 493 unit public housing site located in Southwest DC.

“I was very familiar with the high quality of HR&A’s work from collaborating with them over the years. I am excited at the opportunity to join the growing DC office and resilience practice, and to work with some of the most experienced and capable practitioners in our field”
– Phillip Bush, Principal

 

Phillip joins HR&A from Enterprise Community Partners where he began as a Freddie Mac Fellow developing proposals in response to federal and local opportunities for community revitalization and supported the establishment of the National Community Stabilization Trust. Phillip had the opportunity to make impactful changes on the frontier of affordable housing, resiliency and community development. He identified and assessed affordable housing transactions, developed policy recommendations, awarded grants to innovative communities, developed financial structures to leverage private capital with public funding, and led teams that provided assistance to local governments and non-profit agencies.

For over thirty years, HR&A has provided strategic advisory services for some of the most complex neighborhood, downtown, campus, and regional development projects across North America and abroad. With the addition of Phillip Bush to the HR&A team, we look forward to continuing to support the economic development and public policy goals of our clients. He can be reached at pbush@hraadvisors.com.

Caroline McCarthy, Managing Principal in HR&A’s Washington, DC office, was recently inducted into Lambda Alpha International, a global land economics society. Caroline has more than seven years’ experience with HR&A, supporting the growth of the New York and Washington, DC offices. Currently, she is leading HR&A’s work as part of a five-member consortium operating the National Resource Network (the Network). A core component of the Obama Administration’s Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) initiative and funded with a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Network develops and delivers innovative solutions to help cities address their toughest economic challenges and is currently working with nearly 40 cities across the United States. Other consortium members include Enterprise Community Partners, Public Financial Management, New York University, and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA).

As a key partner in the direct technical assistance component of the program, HR&A has conducted in depth assessments of city economic development capacity, recommended actions to improve location economic conditions, and provided a range of expertise to help cities advance catalytic economic development initiatives. For example, HR&A is leading the creation of a Health District Development Plan for Meridian, MS that will help the city better leverage its two anchor hospitals to attract additional residential and commercial development and support the continued revitalization of its historic downtown.

The importance of anchor institutions, particularly in the health care sector, has emerged as a key trend in the Network’s work in several cities. Building on this theme, the Network, NYU Wagner, and the Urban Institute recently released a report, entitled Striking a (Local) Grand Bargain that analyzes how cities and anchors work together and proposes new ideas on how these important relationships can be improved. Caroline and other consortium members discussed key findings from the study and experiences working with local governments on a panel called Insights from the Field: Strategies to Support Economic Turnaround at the 101st ICMA Annual Conference in September.

HR&A Principal, Jee Mee Kim will be moderating a panel discussion titled “Diversity in the Planning Profession” on Friday, October 30th at the American Planning Association New York Metro Chapter Annual Conference. This topic is a timely one as the APA NY Metro Chapter updates their 2001 study titled “Lagging Behind: Ethnic Diversity in the Planning Profession in the APA NY Metro Chapter Area”. At the time the study was conducted, it was revealed that the planning profession was not keeping up with the increasing diversity in the NY Metro Chapter area. The update of the study is part of a broader initiative to gauge how the profession has changed in the last decade, as well as identify barriers to recruitment and retention of people of color in the planning profession in the NY Metro Area.

As part of the larger initiative to discuss diversity in the profession, the panel is comprised of an accomplished group of women who represent leadership in the planning community. Panelists will share their personal stories and opinions on diversity in the planning profession, the challenges they faced in achieving their goals, and the opportunities they encountered during their careers. As cities and communities in NYC and across the country become “majority minority,” in what ways do planning, design, and policy need to shift to reflect this demographic reality? The panel is comprised of:

• Jee Mee Kim, Principal, HR&A Advisors – Moderator
• Maria Torres Springer, President, NYC Economic Development Corporation – Panelist
• Purnima Kapur, Executive Director, NYC Department of City Planning – Panelist
• Maxine Griffith, AICP, Executive Vice President, Columbia University – Panelist

Jee Mee’s passion for planning is evident in her work. She brings over 15 years of experience addressing issues such as growth, sustainability and resiliency in the urban environment. Her successful work for the City of New York through projects such as OneNYC, New York Rising Community Reconstruction, and the Coney Island Creek Tidal Barrier Study reflect Jee Mee’s commitment to sustainable, neighborhood-sensitive development.

Date: October 30, 2015
Time: 10:30 A.M.
Location: Lerner Hall, Columbia University, 2920 Broadway New York, NY 10027

HR&A is proud to participate at Rail~Volution, an annual conference dedicated to catalyzing livable communities through transit and transit-oriented development (TOD) on October 25th-28th in Dallas, Texas. The annual conference brings together over 1,000 planners, transit officials, consultants, developers, lenders, community stakeholders, non-profit organizations, academics, elected officials, health advocates and housing advocates to share the most cutting edge information in their fields. HR&A President Eric Rothman and Partner, Stan Wall, will both participate in panel discussions at this year’s conference.

On Tuesday, October 27 from 10-11:30 am, HR&A President Eric Rothman will moderate a panel titled “Financing Equitable TOD Shouldn’t Make You Nervous”. This panel will focus on how public officials and developers have utilized financing tools and policies to ensure that transit-oriented development projects provide and preserve affordable housing near transit. Eric and an esteemed group of panelists will use insights and examples that have worked to show how the financial puzzle can be solved. Other panelists will include:

• Ryan Tobin, Director of Real Estate Development, Denver Housing Authority, Denver, Colorado;
• Dan Lofgren, Principal, Cowboy Partners, Salt Lake City, Utah;
• Amy Rowland, Field Director, National Development Council, Salt Lake City, Utah; and
• Sherman Roberts, President and Chief Executive Officer, City Wide Community Development Corporation, Dallas, Texas.

Also on Tuesday from 2-3:30pm HR&A Partner Stan Wall, will contribute to a panel titled “Finding the Value, Capturing it and Putting it to Work”. As the former Director of Real Estate and Station Planning at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Stan will discuss how the organization captured value for the transit system through its development program using several key projects as case studies. Other panelists include:

• Sean Brooks, Manager of Real Estate and Property Development, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, Oakland, California (Moderator);
• Dan Bower, Executive Director, Portland Streetcar, Inc., Portland, Oregon; and
• Albert Hernandez, PE, Assistant Director Engineering, Planning and Development, Miami Dade Transit, Miami, Florida.

HR&A is particularly excited to participate in this year’s Rail~volution conference as it’s hosted in Dallas, just blocks away from our newest office. Please reach out to Eric Rothman or Stan Wall if you plan on attending – we would love to connect!

The Rebuild by Design Competition, an initiative of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, was an innovative response to the extensive damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. The initiative was launched in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and primarily sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation.

HR&A led a multidisciplinary team supported by Cooper, Robertson & Partners. The team developed the Commercial Corridor Resiliency Project proposal, and was the only finalist team led by urban economists. The team examined three highly vulnerable sites, which had been impacted by Superstorm Sandy and are representative of the physical and economic conditions found throughout the affected region. The HR&A team developed a “design toolkit” which could be implemented in the selected sites, and additional sites with similar challenges – maximizing the usefulness of the team’s efforts.

HR&A was also a key consultant to the OMA team, leading economics and policy analysis for a Comprehensive Urban Water Management Strategy for Hoboken, New Jersey and neighboring areas. The strategy includes a four-pronged effort to: resist future storm surge with new coastal defenses; delay and store precipitation with a citywide green infrastructure network; and discharge floodwater via an enhanced network of stormwater pumps. The team received $230 million for the first phase of implementation. Identification of Hoboken Station as being at-risk for future flooding helped secure $146 million for flood-proofing along the Long Slip Canal from the Federal Transit Administration.

HR&A also led the economic strategy for a team led by PennDesign/OLIN, which developed “Hunts Point Lifelines,” a peninsula-wide strategy for resilience, including a perimeter levee that incorporates recreational access to the waterfront, a network of cleanways that function as both stormwater mitigation and roadway improvements, and an independent district energy grid that ensures continued food access during storm emergencies. The team was also selected to receive $20 million from HUD and $25 million from the City of New York for further study of these concepts.

HR&A is proud to have been involved in this creative and critical resiliency work. A PDF copy of the book can be downloaded here.