For the second year running on a sunny autumn evening, ULI New York on October 18 hosted its annual Awards for Excellence in Development Gala at Cipriani South Street. The repurposed ferry building provided an apt backdrop, with its Beaux Arts features and placid Hudson River views. Some 600 people there honored 15 finalist projects and their creators over dinner and an awards presentation with commentary and videos. Among the seven winners were the Bronx Children’s Museum, an adaptive reuse building within the 1925 shell of the Bronx Terminal Market’s powerhouse, and Wireworks – a mixed-use development in Newburgh, inside a long-abandoned former 19th century spring factory. Other honorees with healthy, low-carbon living and equity as top priorities were Vital Brookdale and One Clinton, a sleek mixed-use tower in downtown Brooklyn, encompassing residential and retail space and a new library. A sale of the library’s prior land helped fund the celebrated project. ULI New York salutes the 2023 finalists in seven categories for their creativity and imagination in conceptualizing and delivering these exemplary projects.

On a crisp, clear October evening, some 80 participants pushed off from the Battery Park City ferry stop to learn of planned projects for Staten Island’s North Shore prior to the release of several RFPs by NYC EDC in the coming months as part of its Action Plan for the area. Those aboard hailed from the worlds of finance, construction, engineering, academia, city government, real estate, consulting, law, and architecture to learn about the new initiative. The plan seeks to leverage a $400 million public investment on the North Shore waterfront to create a vibrant, mixed-use community. With a range of resiliency strategies, the plan promises up to 2,400 housing units, expanded waterfront access with 20 acres of continuous public open waterfront space, and over 7,500 jobs for North Shore residents and the broader Staten Island community, for an estimated economic impact of $3.8 billion. This strategic investment also targets 1.3 million square feet of new commercial space, a fully renovated Pier 1, and the redevelopment of a 35-acre stretch of waterfront (formerly the Homeport Navy base) and the Bank Street Site (the former New York Wheel site).

Over the 2-hour tour, participants heard NYC Economic Development Corporation President & CEO Andrew Kimball describe public investment and ongoing private developments over swathes of land between Stapleton and St. George. Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks lauded the visionary coastal plans including those for a greenway and upgraded pier on areas she frequented as a child. And EDC COO Melissa Roman Burch pointed out how the prior naval homeport will be repurposed into affordable housing. Over the subsequent walk through the former ‘Wheel’ site, attendees brainstormed about possible uses for a large, mothballed building with stunning views of Manhattan’s skyline. Ideas ranged from an open marketplace to a life-sciences center with connectivity over a planned greenway for walkers and bikers to new homes and other Staten Island developments. The conversation continued over a return at sunset and at a social hour at a local watering hole, as to what’s possible on one of the City’s largest parcels of underdeveloped waterfront land, minutes by ferry from downtown Manhattan.

In late October over 5,000 attendees descended on downtown Los Angeles for ULI’s annual Fall Meeting. Over four packed days they listened in on 70 panel discussions, took part in more than 20 building and neighborhood tours and participated in countless Council and Committee lunches and evening receptions. Topics that frequently surfaced ranged from ways to breathe new life into empty downtowns, to making our living spaces more equitable and inclusive, to repurposing space and materials from building demolitions to preserve artifacts and cut waste and carbon. Featured speakers included Clarence Anthony, CEO of the National League of Cities; Vincent Reina, Senior Advisor for Housing and Urban Policy at the White House Domestic Policy Council; and Maurice Conti, a futurist and AI expert who has worked with Tesla, Nike, Airbus and Disney. Next stop: April 9 to 11, 2024 in New York City, when our district council hosts ULI’s Spring Meeting for the first time in 10 years. Big things are planned!

Kicking off ULI New York’s Climate Week programming, the Women’s Leadership Initiative dug into ways that designers, builders—even contractors—are changing the materials, processes and services used in construction by taking into account their ‘embodied carbon’ – or the cradle-to-grave carbon dioxide they emit. Featured speakers at the sold-out panel discussion, hosted by Buro Happold, included Kate Ascher, professor, Columbia’s School of Architecture; Billie Faircloth, research director and partner at Kieran Timberlake; Julia Gisewite, chief sustainability officer at Turner Construction; and Sonam Velani founder, Streetlife Ventures, a firm that invests in sustainable cities. The first of 8 takeaways from the discussion follows:

1. Early design phase embodied carbon measurements are the pathway to reducing embodied carbon through the design process: Use whole building life cycle assessments in early design phases to understand where impacts are the greatest, said Billie Faircloth, FAIA, research director and partner at KieranTimberlake. Find embodied carbon ‘hot spots’…

         Read more takeaways here

In quick succession our Program Steering Committee in partnership with ULI Greenprint explored ways that developers, designers and financiers are tapping a range of traditional and emerging incentives to materially cut the amount of carbon in their buildings in ways that often benefit the bottom line. Featured speakers in a packed breakfast panel hosted by K&L Gates included Marta Schantz, co-executive director, ULI’s Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate; Lauren Brust Moss, senior vice president and chief sustainability officer at Vornado; Christopher Cayten, principal at CodeGreen and Shanta Tucker, director of New York’s Atelier Ten office. Below follows the first of 20 key takeaways from lively discussion: ]

1. Even if payback for energy consumption reduction in a building is years away, a green revamp can boost the perceived value among tenants for a faster ROI from rent hikes: For example, after Vornado reclad its PENN 2 building and added triple pane windows at considerable cost (for a more distant ROI), the larger windows it installed and lower heating and cooling costs that resulted favored rent increases since…

      Read more takeaways here

On a drizzly September evening, in a triangular-shaped downtown Brooklyn block between the Barclay’s Center, the Apple store and Atlantic Center, 25 members of ULI New York’s Young Leaders Group and their guests explored 100 Flatbush and 489 State Street with developer Alloy as their host.

The ‘Alloy block’ which will ultimately become a 5-building mixed use area boasts two firsts for New York City. In process are two passive schools and an all-electric skyscraper; a second mixed-use tower with retail and cultural space will follow. On the docket: space for 500 bikes but no cars to encourage human powered mobility.

Best of all, the 44-story tower that is nearing completion looks down on the iconic Williamsburg Savings Bank clock. Slated for completion in 2024, the rich blend of retail, residential and educational space with sleek designs shows what’s possible with creativity, verve and local community input.