The tsunami of emptying houses of worship engulfing the U.S. and Canada requires place management professionals and volunteers to reach out to the faith community, understand the regulatory environment, and consider creative solutions to what is becoming one of downtowns’ top challenges.
Presentation
Type: Presentation
We Built This City! Industrial Area Place Management
Industrial and manufacturing districts adjacent to downtown areas are rapidly evolving neighborhoods; they are crucial for job creation, innovation and emerging industries. However, they face considerable pressure due to the success of downtown. How can we collaborate, advocate for common issues and learn from one another?
Just Right Rebrand – Unpacking Place Branding Journeys
Exploring a brand refresh for your downtown? Dive into three case studies illustrating a wide range of place branding approaches, each aimed at positioning your downtown as a vibrant destination and elevating your objectives.
Using Ambassador Collected Data to Drive Business Decisisons
Learn how data collected daily by Ambassador teams using state-of-the-art technology is crucial to informing program decisions in the public realm. Counting event attendees, downtown pedestrians, concierge services, litter collected, and more, drives the ever-evolving service mix to increase Ambassador impact.
Community-Centered Economic Inclusion
This session addressed lessons from a community-centered economic inclusion initiative in Detroit and Puget Sound. It focuses on bridging the gap between underinvested areas and regions of opportunity, offering a framework for inclusive economic revitalization and connecting business districts with local residents.
Preventing the Demise of Catalytic Downtown Projects
Catalytic projects are often stymied by community resistance. What does it take to gain support from city leaders and residents? What role do BIDs play? Learn about approaches to this work that are driven by data and consensus building to ensure public support is there to help you get past the finish line.
Combating Loneliness through Public Space Programming & Design
This presentation will assist place management professionals in incorporating considerations of loneliness into public space efforts. It will provide foundational knowledge of the concepts and resources necessary to understand how to measure the prevalence of loneliness in communities.
Creating Great Events with Little Time or Money
BIDs often pull off multiple events while doing marketing, placemaking, advocacy, and member engagement. Because of our reputation, we are often called upon to pull together an event quickly. We always manage to do it, and here are a few stories we lived to tell.
Let’s Set the Agenda, Shall We?
Discover how to collaborate with other districts in your city or region to develop and release a policy agenda. This agenda will sway candidates running for local office and provide policy solutions to sitting representatives and government officials.
Strategic Planning for Organizational Development & District Success
Uncover how organizations use their strategic plans to inform successful district formation and renewal, and discover how organizations leverage strategic plans to drive both internal organizational shifts and external focus.
Planning for Resiliency in Canadian Downtowns
The strategies and tools employed by municipalities and development organizations to enliven, diversify and strengthen their respective downtowns are as varied as the socioeconomic circumstances of the communities themselves. Learn from a variety of Canadian cities.
Public Art Programming & Collaborative Cultural Exchange
Learn about initiating public art programming, expanding your BID’s cultural presence, and large-scale traveling exhibitions and resource sharing.
Diversifying Revenue Resources through Membership, Sponsorships & Grants
Every downtown organization faces decisions about new ventures, special events and added roles that challenge the organization. When these ideas and innovations bring new financial resources to the organization, it is considered diversification. These activities can help shape and define the organization’s success.
Art Trails – Making Successful Places
Against the backdrop of the immense challenges that downtowns face, public art trails bring art out of the gallery to animate places and spaces, leading to huge economic, social and health and wellbeing impacts.
Premier Innovation Districts Stand Up!
Innovation Districts are vibrant, urban places that catalyze collaboration and drive competition. But what are the key ingredients to really sustain success and tout this coveted title? Listen to insights from leaders to see what it takes to be a premier innovation district.
Decoding Your Downtown – 6 Factors for Strategic Success
Explore the evolving landscape of downtowns, and the impact of suburban development, remote work and shifting demographics. Experts from various city sizes and disciplines will examine the vibrancy of downtowns in North America through the lens of big data and real-world experiences.
From Ancestry to Adventure: Trends in Legacy Travel
Today, 1 in 3 Americans believe that heritage travel is one of the most meaningful ways to connect with their roots and uncover individual identities. Learn key takeaways to inform a strategy that embraces the history of place through marketing and legacy tourism travel.
Mainstreet Dining Districts – A Toronto Case Study
Learn about the trials and tribulations of the collaboration between Toronto BIAs and the City of Toronto in designing Mainstreet dining districts. This initiative involved integrating bespoke patio designs, bike corrals, loading zones and community spaces.
Weaving Indigenous Culture into Our Downtown Evolution
Learn organizations succeeding in integrating indigenous values, traditions, and languages in public spaces to honor the past, heal the present, and celebrating the future. These partnerships are authentic celebrations of indigenous life, art, and progress.
AI – The Future is Here for UPMOs
The future is now! AI is on the brink of becoming a cornerstone of our world. Sooner than we think, AI will be defined as a fundamental component, not only to our lives and society, but also to our city centers, blending into the everyday operations and systems of districts.
Digital Downtown: Managing & Promoting City Centers through Website Excellence
Discover how your website can become your city’s “digital downtown”—a central hub that mirrors the vibrancy and dynamics of your physical urban spaces.
Pushing Boundaries – Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Organization
Ever wish there was a playbook for organizational change and realizing a bigger vision for your district? This presentation explores lessons for UPMOs seeking to grow, innovate and adapt for new possibilities.
Where Local Talent Meets Economic Opportunity
A partnership out of University City District brings together industry, economic development and workforce partners to connect local under-represented talent into the booming life sciences manufacturing industry.
Demystifying Media Relations
Media relations is a small, but important part of an overall public relations or marketing strategy for your downtown. It’s also an area that feels elusive for many of us, particularly when budgets preclude hiring an outside firm.
Housing – Unlocking a New Era of Downtown Opportunity
Profound demographic and economic changes have set the stage for two decades of downtown opportunity. This has been triggered by unprecedented housing demand and an imperative need for downtowns to evolve into innovation ecosystems.
Hello, Retail, My Old Friend
As post-pandemic challenges continue, one trending recovery strategy involves retail – a downtown ecosystem staple. Landlords securing deals are leveraging ground floor retail as an amenity for upstairs tenants, advancing leasing.
Successful ESD/BID Safety Programs and Police Bureau Partnerships
Many cities with BIDs have under-staffed and over-stretched Police Bureaus. This presentation will explain how Downtown Portland Clean & Safe’s Public Safety Program works effectively with Portland Police Bureau to provide a presence of public safety, improve livability and reduce crime.
Events as Catalysts – Transformative Strategies to Support Business
Learn how to design and execute events that transform. Uncover ways to create meaningful connections between individuals and locations to foster a sense of belonging and harness the power of collaboration to ignite transformative outcomes.
Building Support for Multi-Modal Programs with Public-Private Partnerships
Post-COVID, many cities have lost ground on climate, Vision 0 and equity goals. This presentation delves into how the City of Seattle utilized public-private partnerships to navigate the resiliency challenges posed by the pandemic.
University Partnerships for Economic Development
Fairfax City Economic Development (FCED) has forged a partnership with George Mason University to implement impactful initiatives. Together, they aim to advance FCED’s objectives, focusing on business investment, real estate development, retail growth and government contracting, fostering a thriving local economy.
Collaborative Approach to Clean Streets & Social Impact
Learn about an innovative clean streets approach which provides job readiness skills, social impact and support in lifting underserved neighbors and individuals in the community who are experiencing homelessness – all while beautifying the BID and ensuring streets and sidewalks remain clean and open for business.
Content IRL – Creating & Connecting Your Digital Content
Learn how to make content creation and management work for you and your team. Dive into the strategy and process of how to create engaging social media posts for your district with a budget of any size.
Vacancy to Vibrancy – The Case for Office Conversions
A growing number of office-to-residential conversion programs have received international attention for their success at rapidly decreasing office vacancies while delivering much-needed downtown housing stock. Learn about innovative tactics to leverage adaptive reuse as the groundwork for a revitalized downtown core.
Programming Your Downtown for Increased Foot Traffic
Events are a long-standing tool in every downtown’s marketing tool kit and are taking on a new importance in a post-COVID world. Whether your district has “bounced back” or is still assimilating to a WFH world, events and programming can start conversations, reposition brands and most importantly – drive foot traffic.
Economic Benefits to Implementing Arts & Culturally Informed Activations
As part of COVID revitalization efforts, three unique programs were created in downtowns across the country –Seattle Restored (Seattle), Arts on the Ave (New York), and Pop-Up to Storefront (Austin) – that activated spaces with arts and culture at the forefront to boost local economies. Explore each program’s implementation and economic impact, tracking strategies that can lead to diverse small business retention in downtowns.
Diversifying District Revenues Through 501c3 Nonprofits
Diversified revenue streams are critical for robust, sustainable and successful place-based management districts. Many place-based management organizations maintain a 501(c)3 nonprofit entity. However, only some maximize the potential of creating vibrant districts through a comprehensive philanthropic strategy.
Authentic Marketing & Return to Downtowns
With the proliferation of social media and the ever-changing cultural dynamics, people are seeking authenticity and tune out promotional messaging. How do we find the right balance between promoting our districts and businesses while being authentic about the place? And add to that the challenge of reaching young professionals – a critical component to return to downtown.
Transforming Downtowns by Leading a Comprehensive Market Analysis
Spur development in your district with data and by leading collaborations with stakeholders to develop a strategy to build what their respective districts deserve. Walk away learning how to conduct a comprehensive market analysis for your district and how to use it to spur investment, development and recruitment by making it accessible to everyone.
“Boom Loop” through Public Realm Visioning and Collective Action
Guided by the “first of its kind” Public Realm Action Plan for Downtown SF, the Downtown San Francisco Partnership (DSFP) began designing and launching physical and programmatic improvements to reinvent how people relate to and use this historic – yet underappreciated – economic center.
Building Inclusivity – Cultivating Housing Production by First-Time or Low Wealth Developers
Inclusivity in downtown housing is usually framed as a question of who can afford to live in the finished product. But development is entrepreneurship, and for inclusive entrepreneurship, we think more about who’s selling than who’s buying. Who is pioneering strategies to nurture an inclusive pipeline of entrepreneurial new developers who come from marginalized communities and backgrounds? What can we learn from this work?