Diary of a Sustainable Developer: Prologue
October 19, 2017 | Biophilic Immersion, Carbon-Free Advantage, Cities, Compact Development, Ecosystem Management, Equity, Green Infrastructure, Guest Blogger, Urban Transformationby
Until the summer of 2016, I spent the first 25 years of my career in the non-profit sector advocating, teaching, lawyering, writing and entrepreneuring for social change as sustainable communities. I built two successful non-profits from scratch, both Boston-based and dedicated to greening low-income neighborhoods and the cities that have too often neglected them; ran a foundation focused on technology, civic engagement and community development; taught for almost a decade at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the nation’s oldest and largest planning program, and as chair in smart growth and sustainability at the University of Colorado Boulder business school; wrote two books on the subject; and, was president of Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, which the New York Times called the best business school to attend “if you want to change the world.”
Oh yea, I forgot. I also helped Pete and John launch the Innovation Network for Communities and Urban Sustainability Associates a decade ago, which later gave rise to the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, Nupolis and eventually their latest project, Life After Carbon (I've registered my complaint about their title; carbon is, after all, essential to all living things. . . Enough said). Full circle.
When I turned 50, almost three years ago, I decided that, if and when the opportunity arose, and with sustainability now more or less mainstream, at least as an idea, I would try my hand at the for-profit world, take what I have learned and taught and apply it as a sustainable real estate developer, believing this is no oxymoron but instead, given the state of things, a mandate, a call to action. Words into deeds, this time with an equity stake.
My friend and colleague David Zucker, a Denver-based developer whom I had met in 2009 at a conference I co-hosted at CU Boulder on urban development and climate change, gave me my opportunity when he invited me in early 2016 to help him take on an ambitious development project in Boulder, a 15-acre site that lay vacant for decades along East Arapahoe, a major commuter corridor chock full of employers and a morass of light-industrial uses but lacking workforce housing or thoughtful urban design, hardly a problem unique to Boulder.
At East Arapahoe we propose to build 340 units of housing, 40 percent of which will be below-market rate, plus 16,000 square feet of affordable commercial space targeted at small businesses and non-profits who, like so many Boulder residents, are being priced out of the market. Of course, the project aims to be green and climate-friendly, with bike racks and PV panels aplenty. In Boulder, this almost goes without saying.
Some experience under my belt, and only a few battle scars, last spring I helped organize a large team to compete for another Boulder project, the redevelopment of the 5.5-acre, city-owned Pollard Jeep site at 30th and Pearl in the heart of Boulder Junction, the city’s nascent transit village, across the street from Google’s brand-new Boulder headquarters. In August, our team was notified that we won the project, beating out three other teams from around the country.
Like the East Arapahoe project, the Pollard project will be green, transit-oriented, mixed-income and mixed-use, with more than half of the 304 housing units priced below-market and 20,000 square feet of permanently affordable commercial space. We also hope to make the project fossil-fuel free -- all-electric with near net-zero building design. From Pollard's SUVs to Boulder's showcase TOD. It's almost poetic.
With two large projects underway, my experiment in for-profit real estate development has begun in earnest. I plan to use this blog as a chronicle of my and others' experiences, a place to reflect, reveal and occasionally rant regarding what I see as both the challenges and opportunities, risks and rewards, of joining a social entrepreneur’s mission, values and ideas with the hardscrabble reality of getting good projects built in places like Boulder.
More Shutkin: Affordability is the New Sustainability and All Things Are Connected
