Leadership Skills

Sub Topics: Leadership Skills

Culturally Responsive Placemaking – Embedding Equity in Place Management

As the importance of inclusive downtowns and city centers becomes increasingly apparent, many place management organizations struggle to appropriately embed equity in their operations. Using tangible and current examples, this presentation will illustrate how organizations can leverage organizational equity commitments into culturally responsive placemaking that thoughtfully increases their impact and community leadership position.

Ebony Walton Master Talk

Originally from Miami, Florida, Ebony Patrice Walton is a wife, mom, minister and self-proclaimed BID nerd. A 16-year veteran in the place management industry, Ebony currently serves as Associate Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the DowntownDC Business Improvement District and also supports its organizational development initiatives.

David Downey Master Talk

As President and Chief Executive Officer, David is responsible for the overall strategic positioning of IDA as a world leader and champion for vital and livable urban centers.

Kathleen Rawson Master Talk

Kathleen Rawson has more than 30 years of experience in both Hospitality and Destination Management. Before arriving at The Hollywood Partnership, Rawson served as CEO of Downtown Santa Monica, Inc.

Taking Action in Public Safety & Community Health Planning

Place management organizations often employ public safety and law enforcement systems as the primary mechanism for response to low-level crimes in their communities. In recent years, calls for defunding and decreasing law enforcement’s response to low level crime has left a service gap for place management organizations. This presentation examines the nuanced role and opportunities BIDs can take on to manage gaps and tackle these issues.

A New Director’s Guide to Thrive Your First One to Three Years

So, you’ve landed the position of President/CEO or Executive Director, now what? Join this session and learn from two professionals who have transitioned into leadership roles of urban place management organizations. Learn how to navigate your first year and set reasonable expectations for success for years to come.

So You Want to Be More Diverse? Diversifying the Place Management Industry from the Inside Out

Equity, diversity and inclusion are popular buzzwords, but how are organizations really implementing these initiatives? This roundtable discussion is about diversifying the place management industry from the inside out. We want to uncover the personal experiences of minorities and highlight organizational challenges and successes around increasing staff and board diversity as well as efforts to support minorities.

2021 Pinnacle Award Winner Highlights

Learn the behind-the-scenes of how these Downtown Achievement Pinnacle award winners worked through the pandemic to produce award-winning projects.

IDA Leadership in Place Management Certification Program Launch

After years of work to codify our profession, IDA’s Professional Development Committee, and newly created Leadership in Place Management (LPM) Commission, has launched the premier certification program for urban place management professionals. Join this session and learn more about the program and why it’s important to the urban place management profession and industry.

Adapting Public Realm Innovations to Post-Pandemic Downtowns

How can mixed-use downtowns build on learnings from COVID-19 to enhance the public realm and boost commercial vibrancy? This session explores opportunities for BIDs to adapt pilot projects developed in the last year (shared/pedestrian priority streets, temporary plazas and outdoor dining) into long-term initiatives to increase foot traffic, retail activation and entice office tenants to return to the workplace.

Kathleen Rawson Master Talk 2021

Kathleen Rawson has more than 30 years of experience in both Hospitality and Destination Management. For the past 25 years, Kathleen has served as the CEO of Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., a private/nonprofit company contracted with the City of Santa Monica to manage programs to enhance the vitality of the District. During her tenure, Kathleen has successfully transformed Downtown Santa Monica into the largest property based assessment district, by budget, in the State of California.

Kevin Plummer Master Talk

Kevin Plummer is the Immediate-Past Chairman of the Tampa Downtown Partnership. Formerly, Kevin served on the Board of the Executive Steering Committee of the Friends of the Riverwalk. He is a 13-year member of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, and oversaw six years of educational space renovations particularly with local architects Holmes Hepner and Associates and iConstructors, turning roughly 65K square feet of renovated space into active learning environments.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Placemaking: Reimagining How Business Improvement Districts Use Their Power

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have become an even more important and timely issue in 2020 for many cities and organizations. We have an obligation to look inwardly at ourselves, our organizations and at our peers who, knowingly or in ignorance, perpetuate systemic racism and inequality. During this time of necessary and overdue reflection, we will discuss how BIDs and other place management organization can reimagine the way they use their power.

Shock Absorber: Bouncing Back from Major Crises

2020 may be the year that tested our fortitude more than any other in a generation. Beyond COVID, it seems that downtowns everywhere have become the epicenter for other shocks such as environment damage, economic impacts and social unrest. Join the conversation as we explore how communities in different contexts have responded to various shocks to their system and how they built back stronger.

Bruce Katz Master Talk

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Previously he served as inaugural Centennial Scholar at Brookings Institution and as VP and director of Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program for 20 years. He is a Visiting Professor in Practice at London School of Economics, and previously served as chief of staff to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs.

Main Street Grand Forks: The Longest Table

For the past two years, beginning in 2018, the Longest Table has welcomed local Grand Forks, North Dakota residents to sit down for a free meal in a welcoming environment with people they may not have known, to foster stronger connections, exchange stories, discuss community challenges, and spur civic innovation. Through conversations with strangers around the table, attendees are encouraged to listen attentively, share openly, consider thoughtfully, and dream big.

2019 Holiday Placemaking Initiative

During the 2018 holiday season, we saw a competing town center in our region offering holiday event content that was distressingly similar to ours – Shopping! Dining! Skating! Santa! We quickly realized we needed to take steps to truly differentiate and improve on our downtown holiday experience to make our downtown THE holiday destination.

LiveNFK

LiveNFK is a combination of professional development seminars and social events that showcase Norfolk’s vibrant culture. Each of the activities is designed to help make a compelling case as to why Norfolk and the region is a fantastic place to live, work and stay.

BIG BIRTHDAY BASH

No parent wants to tell their child “no” to a birthday party, but in Memphis, a city where nearly a quarter of families live below the poverty line, parents may not have the resources to throw that dream birthday party. Watching families host small parties in our parks, we saw an opportunity to condense resources and throw the BIG BIRTHDAY BASH! Set on Mud Island River Park the event featured bounce houses, water slides, games, cake and more all for free and close to 2,000 people attended.

San Antonio Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead Celebrations

Historically San Antonio has been home to numerous Día de los Muertos celebrations that would be hosted in parallel. Seeing an opportunity for collaboration, community leaders gathered the independent hosts to put together a united Día de los Muertos event that would make San Antonio a top destination for a Día de los Muertos experience. Partnerships with Visit San Antonio as well as community corporate sponsorships support allowed for a heavy marketing strategy to areas outside of San Antonio.

Top Issues Council: Municipal Partnerships – A Toolkit for Municipal & Urban Place Management Organization Relationships

The Municipal Partnerships Top Issues Council examined the fundamental nature of working relationships between UPMOs and governments to identify the best practices for producing the most beneficial and enterprising partnerships. The report is a useful toolkit for understanding the scope and breadth of these relationships, including case studies and sample agreements from organizations around the globe.

Eliminating Redundancy: Interlocal Agreements to Define Roles

Downtown El Paso’s interlocal agreement, which is similar in content and format to the agreements signed between different public agencies, is renegotiated every five years, providing an opportunity to re-assess existing programs or address new problems. The final document is what Downtown El Paso Executive Director Joe Gudenrath calls “a give and take” between the City’s and the BID’s priorities for downtown on projects ranging from community outreach and marketing to sanitation.

Standard Contract Negotiation with the City

In 2014, the NYC BID Association, Small Business Services and City Law department produced a uniform contract agreement, which can be tailored to specific conditions via the exhibits tied to the contract. Beyond creating standardized language for contracting with the City of New York, the process also created greater cohesion among BIDs with differing budgets and resources as they worked together. By 2020, all 76 BIDs in the Association will be on the new standard contract.

Quality of Life Building Blocks Worksheet

The following table offers a side-by-side comparison of Santa Ana’s and Delray Beach’s downtown nightlife economies. By examining various quality of life building blocks and how they affect issues and solutions in these two emerging downtown nighttime economies, you will see how every district faces different challenges and devises different solutions. Using these examples as a guide, you can then use the questions provided to dissect your own emerging nighttime economy.

Vitality Defined

This session will present the first iteration of the IDA Vitality Index, powered by Stantec. The Index will be an interactive, online tool to benchmark the vitality of downtowns across the U.S. It includes select indicators of economy, inclusion and vibrancy to enable urban place managers to objectively quantify and benchmark their district’s strengths and weaknesses against peer cities. During the session, panelists will share the Index and discuss how districts can use this data.

Setting the National Agenda for Cities

Discuss the big-picture policy issues impacting cities, and the role of place management organizations in advocating for thoughtful solutions. Case studies from different countries involved in collective advocacy and organizing will review the national climate in their respective places, and open the floor for a discussion about key policy goals and priorities. This session will be a continuation of conversations from the IDA Ideas Forum and the Canadian National Policy Summit.

Empower Collaborations and Partnership Between Municipalities and BIDs

IDA’s Municipal Partnerships Top Issues Council examined agreements and best practices to identify the factors that enable true partnerships between a municipality and a place management organization. Learn about collaborative approaches BIDs and municipalities have taken to strengthen their relationships. See tools for creating champions, breaking silos and structuring agreements.

The Power of International Partnership

Ahead of Mayflower 400, the downtown orgs in Baltimore, MD and Southampton, UK have “twinned” with each other after meeting at the World Towns Leadership Summit in Berlin. With a mirrored history of waterfront regeneration, the two organizations have identified common themes and shared, knowledge, ideas, staff, and artists. The Japan Area Management Network will review its new collaboration with Singapore and South Korea on common issues and opportunities resulting from the summit in Tokyo.

Downtown Hays Pavilion

Through a partnership with the City of Hays, two academic institutions, and Commercial Builders; DHDC was able to design, fund, and build a beautiful structure for their community. The Downtown Hays Pavilion transformed a vacant lot into a place for people to enjoy downtown. Activating this unused space expands an existing park into a versatile public-use facility. The Pavilion serves as the center of downtown, bringing community groups, local businesses, and residents together.

NYC BID Trends Report – Telling the Story of NYC BIDs

The annual NYC BID Trends Report targets multiple audiences, serving both a promotional and educational role for the public and NYC BIDs themselves. SBS collects, analyzes, and features program output data, budget information, and highlights of exceptional programming in this report each year. The report highlights the overall impact and financial data for all BIDs and expense and output data organized by comparable BID cohorts. The report also provides financial and output data from individual BIDs.

Garment District Rezoning

The Garment District Alliance, which represents Midtown Manhattan, recently played a leading role in a plan that culminated in a New York City Council vote in December 2018 to remove a neighborhood zoning overlay, releasing millions of square feet of space from outdated, use-restricting regulations. The Alliance’s budget will be increased by $2.5 million for ten years to fund programming that improves quality of life and economic vitality for all in the area.

Winter Walk SF

Winter Walk SF was an effort to replace above ground construction with a holiday themed pop-up activation. The Union Square BID developed a concept for the construction moratorium period. It was based on creating a flexible, contemporary urban space that invited shoppers and visitors, was easy to maintain, opened up new lines to the stores and allowed extensive programming. The final design included an allowance for food vendors, green turf, and lighted benches for people to enjoy the open space.

City of the Future: 2018 Gilbert Heritage District Redevelopment plan

The purpose of the 2018 Heritage District Redevelopment Plan is to serve as a visioning document which focuses on attracting uses that will stimulate growth and complement the area’s identity. The plan identifies and prioritizes short, middle, and long-term goals, provides tactics to achieve goals and objectives, provides recommendations for documents such as the Heritage District Design Guidelines, and delivers the very first master plan to guide development of town-owned land in the district.

Tami Door – Baltimore

Tami Door is the CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership. She joined the Partnership in 2005 after serving as executive vice president of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest regional chamber, and as vice president of a five state division of NBD-First Chicago. She is the co-founder of Denver Startup Week and The Commons on Champa.

The Value of U.S. Downtowns and Center Cities: Third Edition

A strong downtown is critical for a successful city and region. This groundbreaking study articulates the inherent value a downtown provides to the greater city, highlighting a downtown’s unique and impactful contributions while accounting for 100+ key data points based on economy, inclusion, vibrancy, identity, and resilience. With three years of data, IDA grouped each of the center cities into one of three downtown tiers: Emerging, Growing and Established. 

Kate Joncas Master Talk

Seattle Mayor Murray named Kate Joncas Deputy Mayor of Operations in June, 2014. Previously, Kate had been the President and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association since 1994. Kate has over 30 years’ experience in downtown revitalization in the private, public and nonprofit sectors in communities around the world. Ms. Joncas is the Past Chair of the International Downtown Association.

David Dixon Master Talk

David Dixon leads Stantec’s Urban Places Group, an interdisciplinary practice committed to helping cities and suburbs alike manage the accelerating pace of social, economic, and environmental change for community benefit. During his master talk at the 62nd Annual Conference & Tradeshow in Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 7-9, 2016, David explored the challenges in building an equitable city.

Dan Koh Master Talk

Daniel Arrigg Koh is Chief of Staff to the City of Boston. In this capacity, he advises Mayor Martin J. Walsh on key issues and helps him execute his vision for the city and its 18,000 employees. During his master talk at the 62nd Annual Conference & Tradeshow in Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 7-9, 2016, Dan discusses the use of data in improving city services, place management and city building.

Rosanna Durruthy Master Talk

Rosanna Durruthy is the Head of Global Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at LinkedIn. She brings broad, cross functional, human resources leadership experience in attracting and developing high performing talent as the diversity leader at companies like Cigna, Vivendi Universal (Seagram) and Merrill Lynch. At LinkedIn, Rosanna’s focus is on empowering all employees, members and customers to realize their full potential.