ULI Washington Blog

By Jamie Gorski We heard from Zipcar & Buzzcar founder Robin Chase on her desire to live in a world where people care about sources and consider the consequences of their lifestyle, where individuals and companies thrive in a mutually beneficial and efficient system, and where opportunities to participate abound. In her keynote, Ms. Chase encouraged innovation by working together and making use of excess capacity, and suggested taking typical business models and turning them inside-out – creating businesses that share excess capacity on a platform with participation and shared … READ MORE

By Emily Washington Barbara Schaefer McDuffie, Director of Baker Tilly moderated a ULI Trends Conference panel on the ongoing redevelopment in Montgomery County’s White Flint. The panel featured Don Briggs, President of Federal Realty Investment Trust, Diane Schwartz Jones, Director of Permitting Services for Montgomery County, Bill Hard, Executive Vice President of LCOR, and Francine Waters, Senior Managing Director of Transportation and Smart Growth for Lerner Enterprises. They discussed their roles in the redevelopment process, representing the public and private sectors. Early on in White Flint’s redevelopment, both county officials … READ MORE

By Leslie Braunstein Housing the “gray tsumani” of aging baby boomers –call them “seniors” at your own peril – was the subject of a concurrent session at the ULI Washington Real Estate Trends conference. John K. McIlwain, ULI senior resident fellow/J. Ronald Terwilliger Chair for Housing, kicked off the panel by summarizing his detailed study Housing in America: The Baby Boomers Turn 65. Todd Harff of Creating Results, David Mayhood of The Mayhood Company, Bozzuto Management Company’s Julie Smith, and Perkins Eastman’s Dan Cinelli made the following observartions: When the … READ MORE

By Leslie Braunstein With 40 percent of today’s office space not being used and a decreasing amount of work that has to be done in an office by office workers, why bother with buildings at all? That was the question posed by ULI Washington Real Estate Trends conference keynote speaker David P. Lathrop, Director of Research and Strategy at Steelcase, Inc. Lathrop described his company’s research agenda, which is looking deeply into how human beings actually function in workspaces and in other aspects of their lives. He pointed out that … READ MORE

Teaming Up for a Common Regional Goal By Michael Polaski Prominent industry leaders came together for a panel discussion entitled “The New Regional Economy – Shifting the Paradigm in a Post Stimulus World” at the annual Urban Land Institute (ULI) Washington Real Estate Trends Conference held on April 10, 2013.  Moderator Robert McCartney of the Washington Post focused the discussion on the need for the public and private sectors to focus on creating a new regional economy and suggestions for how this could be attained. The session kicked off with … READ MORE

By Emily Washington At ULI Washington’s recent Trends Conference, Ellen McCarthy moderated a panel on the qualities that millennials demand as they begin starting families. The panel featured AJ Jackcon of EYA, Mary Filardo, of 21st Century School Fund, and Sharicc Boldon of Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance. The panelists all emphasized that many millennials who moved to the District as young singles wish to stay here as they start having families, but the private and public sectors must provide a specific set of services for this to be a viable … READ MORE

By Julia Davis At the ULI Conference, the panel, charged with discerning trends in the evolving office building, tackled a broad array of topics that concern the office of tomorrow.  Moderator Rod Lawrence with the JBG Companies posed the questions to the panel which included Tony Colonna of Skanska, Michael Hickok of Hickok Cole Architects, and Brad Flicklinger with CBRE.  The panel prefaced the discussion by saying that their predictions were made with a 30-year scope. We are seeing reductions in space by the GSA and law firms.  Is this … READ MORE

By Matt Blocher The opening keynote speaker, Anirban Basu, set the stage for an exciting kick-off for the 2013 ULI Trends Conference.  Based in Baltimore, which as we were reminded, is home to the World Champion Ravens, Anirban is a serious sports fan, so it was a pleasant surprise that weaved into the presentation were many applicable sports analogies. The first order of business was an overview of the global economy and the global financial markets.   With the tremendous amount of data that was shared, it was evident that the … READ MORE