New York Regional Trends 2006

The Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Now imagine the chairs filled with dark suits; now you have a good picture of the event yesterday.

I got to attend part of yesterday's ULI New York conference on "Regional Trends 2006" in the Allen Room in the Time Warner Building - the most spectacular view ever. I got there after lunch, so missed the whole hour on transportation kicked off by Doctoroff. The session immediately following lunch was on capital markets, way over my head. But the other discussions about in-fill development in the urban core and suburban nodes and the discussion called "Industry Leaders" with representatives from Conde Nast, New York Times, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup (because they "create the environment in which we all practice" according to Michael Buckley) were really interesting.

Notably, some of the emerging themes were:

Community involvement is a winner - Everyone agreed that community involvement has become more sophisticated, and that all projects benefit from engaging communities earlier rather than later. This is not altruistic in any way; rather, it is a strategy to keep the process moving smoothly. However, it was clear that the developers were genuinely listening to the community, and they appreciated the fact that communities were better at articulating what they wanted, rather than relying on the knee-jerk adversarial approach to new development. Because of this, developers were more willing to take initiative in engaging the community much earlier in the process, rather than slogging through an outreach/approval process towards the end.

New York Market is dependent on transportation - the booming development districts for the New York region, which is "priced to perfection," will be Queens West and Midtown West, and not so farther afield Jersey City. Developers all agreed that this was largely dependent on the government's ability to build transportation, the public transit kind, as quickly as possible and in collaboration with other city agencies, community groups and private entities. Developers wished that transportation authorities would recognize their greater role in land-use, instead of looking at it from a sole-system perspective.

Transportation in New York is regional - instead of different local groups trying to defend their turf and clamoring for budget dollars in their locality, everyone agreed that all transit and transportation authorities needed to be collaborative and move beyond geo-political boundaries. The Port Authority was one entity that was specified over and over again. Transportation - essentially, connectivity - was a huge factor in determining the viability of new developments, whether residential or commercial space.

A commitment to the environment and sustainability - All developers discussed pursuing some type of sustainability goal, the leading element being any energy-saving mechanism that can be built into the program. EPA regulations are no longer scary, but still a pain in the butt, though everyone recognizes their necessity. Those who are market leaders in pioneering green building acknowledged new technologies available even as their buildings may await occupancy.

All in all, despite the initial premise centered around cap rates, I left the day much more optimistic about the state of development in New York than I have felt before. Sure, the majority of these folks are obviously out there to make a profit, but it's great that they recognize how public and community parties fit together and can benefit while they are making their buck. When you have profiteers talking to their peers about how they are on the side of "Jane Jacobs" vs. Robert Moses and how neighborhoods need to be strengthened and how energy-conservation is their number one priority, surely these are signs that the tides are turning.

Incidentally, I just noticed that ULI's blog is called "The Ground Floor." Drat. We had a project in the works called just that.