Winter Issue 2022 - 54

" We've seen an increase in the number and prominence of chief equity officers in
municipalities around the country. "
-KACEY CORDES, U.S. BANCORP COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
chief equity officers to create equity scorecards
that guide decision-making around
even simple things like tax abatements and
zoning changes. Developers need to tune in
to these conversations and consider the best
ways to embed these aspirational goals. It's
the future of P3s.
McELYEA: Public/private partnerships are
often at a scale that's larger than typical
standalone private projects, so they can
more effectively address all of those goals at
once. It's harder for communities to implement
larger policy goals in a piecemeal way
across many individual private-sector projects
with distinct owners. When I'm working
on a large public/private partnership, I have
to coordinate with utilities and with the local
community on resilience, equity, environmental
justice, sustainability, and climate risk
mitigation.
What other trends deserve more
attention?
BARNEY: More and more, family offices as well
as family foundations are deciding to invest
in specific product types such as workforce
housing, as well as geographic areas that are
strategically focused-northwest Arkansas,
for example. One example is the investments
[Quicken Loans founder] Dan Gilbert has
made in Detroit. A number of family offices
have ESG [environmental, social, and governance]
goals and may play an outsized role
in partnering with the public sector to create
more green space, open space, affordable
housing, and transportation equity.
McELYEA: I'm excited about the use of
machine learning and powerful computing
to perform iterative modeling of projects.
Historically, architects and finance specialists
had to manually go through different permutations
of what a project might be. Because
public/private partnerships operate at a large
52
URBAN LAND
WINTER 2022
scale, however, they can draw on machine
learning, using all sorts of data to flexibly
address many different goals. This can really
help bring down the cost of planning, particularly
if cities do this in advance, before they
even issue a request for proposals. I know
of local municipalities that are using this
technology to plan out and then pre-entitle
publicly owned sites for the most efficient
uses, which brings down the total risk for the
private partner who will come in.
ROTHMAN: In public/private partnerships, the
voice of the community is very important.
Zoom and other forms of virtual engagement
enable a wider set of voices to be heard, and
they make it likely that more people who
might have good ideas about how a project
could be more supportive to the community
will speak up, not just the NIMBYs and
the YIMBYs [yes, in my backyard] who have
tended to show up the most at community
meetings.
CORDES: We need to be pushing as hard as
possible to diversify and expand the ranks
of developers, especially Black developers.
People of color must lead in community
development and then share in the economic
benefits. Cities can strongly suggest or
require that developers partner with a local
developer of color. If a community development
corporation has been trying for 25
years to reinvest in their neighborhood and
they haven't had the capital or the experience
to make it happen at scale, how can
we come together to support their vision of
what the community wants? Partnerships
where the local developer is really " in the
deal " with an equity stake are the most efficient
ways to build the kind of experience
that will catalyze wealth generation in the
Black community. UL
RON NYREN is a freelance architecture, urban planning, and real estate writer
based in the San Francisco Bay area.
Winter Issue 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Winter Issue 2022
