Mary Ludgin is Heitman’s Head of Global Investment Research. She is a partner of the firm and holds a seat on its investment, valuation, and global management committees. Mary was a Global Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and she chaired ULI’s Chicago District Council.
Real Estate Development and Redevelopment
Sub Topics: Real Estate Development and Redevelopment
Seed Funds
Seed Funds are revolutionary financing tools that help cities implement urban plans using local investors. By sourcing, deploying, and incentivizing local allied capital, cities and their BIDs, DDAs, etc. can promote collateral implementation.
Capital City Development Corporation Participation Program
The Participation Program is designed to advance the aims of urban renewal and economic development in downtown Boise, as well as goals identified in the Boise City comprehensive plan, Blueprint Boise. These goals include activating dormant or disinvested sites, expanding utility infrastructure, improving user mobility and connectivity, and encouraging compact development.
City Building Boot Camp Tours
The City Building Boot Camp Tours were curated by the Regina Downtown BID and Regina’s Warehouse BID to highlight best practices in urban revitalization from other Canadian cities in the hope of inspiring current and future projects in the City of Regina.
Navigating the Return to Office – What Can Downtown Managers Do?
We’re still evolving the ways we live and work, and the issue of return to the office has had a lingering and profound impact on the future of our cities. While there is no one size fits all solution to the challenges the evolving office sector is having on our downtowns, there are proactive steps and an important role downtown managers can play. Explore a range of trends, challenges, and potential solutions to address a wide range of issues no matter the size or make-up of the downtown.
The Public Realm – An Economic Development Tool
The function and relevancy of traditional downtown commercial districts are in question due to emerging disruptions accelerated by the COVID pandemic. However, downtown districts are reinventing themselves by refocusing on the pedestrian experience as an economic tool to drive office leasing, workers, residents, and visitors back downtown.
Advancing Places: Understanding New Market Dynamics to Guide Organizational Response
For office-dominated districts, understanding local market dynamics will be critical to direct strategic planning efforts for place management organizations. Learn how new data management technologies are bringing order to chaos and influencing the design of a new generation of post-pandemic economic development initiatives.
Understanding New Market Dynamics to Guide Organizational Response
For office-dominated districts, understanding local market dynamics will be critical to direct strategic planning efforts for place management organizations. Learn how new data management technologies are bringing order to chaos and influencing the design of a new generation of post-pandemic economic development initiatives.
New Economic Engine – Private Sector University Housing
The private sector student housing industry has exploded as an alternative to campus living. The industry provides hundreds of thousands of beds, in communities of all sizes, in high value buildings adjacent to colleges and universities. These communities and residents have created significant economic growth and are transforming these areas.
Alabama’s Oldest School Becomes Its Newest
Barton Academy is considered the birthplace of public education in Alabama. As populations shifted from downtown, the building ceased operating as a school, and the future of one of the most historic buildings in the city was unclear. By May 2020, renovation of the national landmark was underway. Two hundred students were welcomed to campus on August 11, 2021. For the first time in 60 years, students walked the halls; for Black students, it was the first time ever.
Advancing Places: HUD Financing Opportunities
HUD’s Section 108 Loan Guarantee Program provides Community Development Block Grant recipients with the ability to leverage their annual grant allocation to access low-cost, flexible financing for economic development, housing, public facility and infrastructure projects. Organizations can use these funds to support central business districts, retail/office manufacturing, small business financing, mixed-use properties and business retention as a few examples
Workforce and Affordable Housing Initiatives
A group of professionals from a diverse set of professional backgrounds discuss strategies for creating Workforce and Affordable housing to ensure housing affordability in downtown districts.
Advancing Places: How To Fight Blight
Learn how every downtown faces the challenge of vacant and blighted commercial buildings. These problems often appear intractable and frankly beyond the reach of an urban place management organization. Learn how two cities decided to step up and tackle this problem head-on with a data-driven approach using both carrots (incentive outreach) and sticks (litigation). Hear about what worked well and what didn’t.
From Edge to Innovation Center: Paving the Way to Smart City
Linking innovation and technology to place has emerged as a compelling strategy for district growth and economic development. This panel provides a retrospective from secondary markets on the rise that are fast transforming into cutting-edge innovation districts. Panelists will discuss the role that transportation, catalytic tenants, educational anchors, technology and real estate play in the creation of a smart city.
Heather Hiles Master Talk
Heather Hiles is an expert in technology, learning and talent development, with a 30-year track record of creating and scaling nonprofit and for-profit organizations that have improved millions of lives. Hiles is the founder / co-founder of SFWorks, EARN, The Hiles Group, Pathbrite, Calbright College and Black Ops Ventures.
Downtown Los Angeles Virtual Tour Platform
The DTLA Virtual Tour platform is an innovative tool developed by the Downtown Center BID to showcase the Downtown Los Angeles real estate market, its most significant properties, public spaces, and development projects, to investors, developers, brokers, and prospective commercial and residential tenants. With a dynamic combination of interactive technology, digital mapping, high-definition photography, and drone video footage the DTLA Virtual Tour offers both a bird’s-eye view of downtown.
Advancing Places: Connecting with Downtown Neighborhoods
We often inherit a complicated relationship with the neighborhoods adjacent to the traditional downtown core. Those adjacent neighborhoods are sometimes very different in history and composition – the buildings are likely older, the land is less developed, and the community less affluent. The neighborhoods may be separated from downtown by historic and political barriers, including racist and exclusionary policies and years of broken economic development promises.
Advancing Places: Real Estate Tools and Incentives for Investment and Attraction
For professionals in urban place management and economic development, there is a need to understand the different types of real estate tools and incentives to attract investment and businesses to your district. This session will outline the basics of tax increment financing (TIF), rebates, historic tax credits, new market tax credits, opportunity zones and various type of grants.
Advancing Places: Understanding Your Place in Economic Development
Knowing where your organization fits into the overall economic development strategy of your community and knowing your role is important. Join us as this experienced panel of place management and commercial real estate professionals share insights and tips on how to navigate your community as well as the real estate development community to create a win-win in bringing business to your district.
Advancing Places: Housing Attainability
Every community needs housing options that meet a diversity of incomes and lifestyles. Downtowns, city centers and neighborhood districts throughout North America are working to make attainable housing a reality for people seeking an urban lifestyle. Urban place management organizations of all sizes and resource levels can play a role in encouraging more housing at a variety of price points and of varying styles.
Advancing Places: The Future of the Office
The pandemic-induced work-from-home experiment has altered perspectives on work, flexibility and the office. When COVID-19 is no longer a lingering health concern, workers will not be expected to come into the office for tasks that can be done from anywhere. What purpose does the office serve in the future and how will that purpose impact the way occupiers think about their portfolio footprints, location strategy and office layouts?
Advancing Places: Capital Market Insights, Real Estate and Economic Forecast
The pandemic-induced work-from-home experiment has altered perspectives on work, flexibility and the office. When COVID-19 is no longer a lingering health concern, workers will not be expected to come into the office for tasks that can be done from anywhere. What purpose does the office serve in the future and how will that purpose impact the way occupiers think about their portfolio footprints, location strategy and office layouts?
Advancing Places: Economic Development Foundations
Successful economic development approaches can sustain a healthy, diverse and prosperous district economy. This session will explore major trends in economic development and see which approaches local leaders and officials are utilizing in their organizations. Panelists will explore the various stages of the economic development process and explore the myriad of practices associated with successful district economies. Regardless of your experience, walk away with an updated toolbox of financing tools and economic programs to strengthen your district through development agreements, tax credit programs, revolving loan programs and redevelopment initiatives.
Project Spotlight: Activating Retail and Real Estate in Your Community
Project Downtown, the master plan for Wichita, is a 15-year community vision and blueprint for development. The plan was founded on market economics with industry experts providing sound economic forecast information for development. The second project in this presentation is the Open on Main pop-up retail initiative which seeks to increase activity on Main Street, encourage more permanent tenants in the downtown core, and allow shop owners to test retail concepts and strategies.
Downtown-Adjacent Neighborhoods: Opportunities, Threats and the Current Moment
With the urban renaissance of the last two decades, many downtowns are now bordered by districts that have evolved either into extensions and/or competitors to the traditional core. In this session, panelists will explore the ways in which UPMOs have been addressing this phenomenon through the three ‘lenses’ of retail, connectivity and equity, while also placing it within the context of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and other current events.
Taking a Leadership Role in Affordable Housing
The affordable housing crisis is forcing downtown workers to live farther and farther away, reducing our competitiveness as a jobs center. Downtown organizations are in a unique position —due to our skills, partners, constituencies and clout— to take a leadership role in creating workforce housing. Come hear creative examples that you could implement in your community.
Maurice Jones Master Talk
With deep experience in both public and private sectors, Maurice A. Jones became LISC’s fourth President & CEO in 2016. He previously served as the secretary of commerce for the Commonwealth of Virginia, deputy secretary for HUD, commissioner of Virginia’s Department of Social Services, deputy chief of staff to former Virginia Governor Mark Warner and, during the Clinton administration, director of the CDFI Fund.
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.
Downtown 2.0, Livingston County Commercial District Assessment
The Downtown 2.0 Commercial District Assessment, a comprehensive plan for the County and its nine downtowns, identified shared downtown challenges and established a set of clear strategies and tactics for the County to collectively address business attraction and sales growth, capital investment, and redevelopment.
Downtown St. Pete Development Guide
Not only a economic benchmark report, this documents delves into topics such as the adjacent residential neighborhoods and education. It was designed to memorialize our progress as an urban center and provide a road map to our community leaders for thoughtful growth into the future. Through our research in this project, we were able to forecast public and private investments approaching $8 billion will be spent in our city center.
P.U.M.A.’s Global Trends Report: Pandemic July 2020 Update
In late 2019, P.U.M.A. and IDA jointly released the 2020 Global Trends Report highlighting opportunities arising from converging shifts in demographics, lifestyles and a new category, “disruptive forces,” that are shaping our cities. Little did we know that months later we’d be in the midst of the disruptive events of our lifetimes – the pandemic that has wreaked havoc on public health and economies, and the American protests for racial justice that could accelerate dramatic social change.
Top Issues Council: Housing Attainability – How UPMOs Can Support A Diversity of Housing in Their Districts
Every community needs housing options that meet a diversity of incomes and lifestyles. The Housing Attainability Top Issues Council report demonstrates how urban place management organizations of all sizes and resource levels can play a role in encouraging more housing at a variety of price points and of varying styles.
The Changing Face of Economic Development: Land Use, Sustainability, and Housing
Millennial demographics, internet-fueled lifestyles, and a sharing economy (rides, workplace) alter land use and tax generation priorities for cities. Retail is no longer just about retail, with “place,” authenticity, and “trips,” becoming the defining components of a successful town center. Concurrently, the state is driving cities to change land use processes based on climate control and affordable housing mandates, while providing development incentives through new incentives and districts.
Public-Private Land Acquisition Strategies
Land acquisition costs often make or break residential development projects. Therefore, creative strategies that combine private and public funds to acquire targeted properties can help achieve a community’s redevelopment goals, while adding critical housing stock. Oftentimes, urban place management organizations have a unique position that can connect landowners, developers and agencies with access to funding to make these projects work.
Loan & Tax Abatement Program
Through its Development Loan program, Memphis’s Center City Development Corporation offers a low-interest loan product designed to support smaller commercial developments. It offers a low-interest loan of up to $200,000 for permanent building renovations and new construction within the Central Business Improvement District. The product is not a construction loan; rather, it is permanent financing that can be used to take out a construction loan.
Housing Attainability in Downtown Portland
In recent years, housing costs in Portland have been rising as the city becomes increasingly attractive within the State of Maine and as compared to other regions nationally. There has been little development of new housing affordable to current Portland residents and very little construction of new housing at all between 2007 and 2014. To address the issues of housing availability and affordability the City of Portland adopted a host of strategic policies and initiatives.
Inclusive Place-Based Economic Development
In 2015, Charlotte’s downtown association, Charlotte Center City Partners, was invited by neighborhood advocates to catalyze a multi-year partnership effort to transform the Historic West End of Charlotte corridor. However, in West End, long-tenured residents and businesses threatened by rising property values feel this pressure acutely as they face predatory investors and find very limited affordable housing options for those who wish to move but stay in the neighborhood.
Driving Retail Growth with Holiday Pop Up Shops
With over 50,000 square feet of retail space available in a six-block radius, the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs, CO stepped in to attract new temporary, pop-up businesses during the holiday season as a means not only filling vacancies, but attracting customers to help preserve the retailers that still remained.
Economic Development 201 for Downtown Organizations
A presentation building on the fundamentals of downtown economic development, focusing on how to build outside partnerships and curate funding resources.
Economic Development 101 for Downtown Organizations
A presentation on the fundamentals of downtown economic development, its importance, and the difficulties a downtown organization might face in planning for economic development. This presentation is meant for districts looking to get started with economic development programs.