Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer among Four U.S. Mayors Named as Fellows by the Urban Land Institute Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership In Land Use

WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 10, 2012) – The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership has named Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and three other outstanding local community leaders to serve in fellowships for the Center through 2013. Fischer’s local team will join three others led by the mayors of Austin, Hartford, and Tacoma. The purpose of the fellowship program is to provide city leaders with the insights, peer-to-peer learning, and analysis they need to successfully build and sustain their cities.

“Mayor Fischer has launched an ambitious, collaborative visioning process to plan for the next 25 years of growth and redevelopment in Louisville,” said ULI Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. “We anticipate that he and his team will use their year in the Daniel Rose Fellowship in part to develop implementation tools to advance Louisville’s ‘quality of place’ by directing investment into its neighborhoods.”

“We are thrilled to be part of the ULI Daniel Rose Fellowship program and look forward to tapping into ULI’s amazing team of experts as well as the knowledge of our peers in other cities to help us tackle our local land use challenges to help make Louisville even better,” said Mayor Fischer.

The Louisville team will work with the other selected mayors and their respective teams to address the most challenging land use issues facing their communities. Over the upcoming year, Fischer and his team will work with leading experts in the real estate development, finance, and land use fields with the intention of tackling complex land use issues facing each community.

Fischer’s 2012-13 ULI Daniel Rose Fellowship team members are as follows:

• Patti Clare, Deputy Director of Louisville Metro Government’s Department of Economic Growth and Innovation
• Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, Deputy Chief of Staff & Chief of Strategic Initiatives, Louisville Metro Government
• Patrick Piuma, Director of the University of Louisville’s Urban Design Studio

The fellowship team will be assisted by Kendal Baker, Planning Supervisor in the Department of Economic Growth and Innovation.

The Daniel Rose Fellowship is the flagship program of the ULI Daniel Rose Center, established in 2008 by the ULI Foundation Governor Daniel Rose. The Center aims to empower leaders in the public sector to envision, build and sustain successful 21st century communities by providing access to information, best practices, peer networks and other resources to foster creative, efficient and sustainable land use practices.

According to Rose, the Center is unique in how it facilitates collaboration among leaders in land use “by bringing competent, honorable and knowledgeable” participants together from the public and private sector. Leaders explore community and development issues, while discussing solutions to regional land use problems. “Each has much to learn from the other. The more knowledgeable and better trained people are on both sides of the table, the more effective they (the working relationships) are. The most successful projects invariably reflect those relationships,” he said.

The 2012-13 Daniel Rose Fellows serve as the fourth class of the program, with each fellowship class serving a one-year term. The selection of fellows begins with the nomination of four city mayors. Each mayor then nominates three additional fellows to serve on their city’s fellowship team. The mayors’ team members are chosen from many fields including: city department heads, city managers, deputy mayors, chief executives of quasi-governmental agencies, executive directors of not-for-profit institutions, senior decision-makers at universities or other institutions with significant land use impacts, and leaders of appointed planning commissions.

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About the Rose Center for Public Leadership
Founded in 2008 with a major gift from real estate developer Daniel Rose, the Rose Center provides public officials with access to information, best practices, peer networks, and other resources to encourage and support excellence in land use decision making. The yearlong Daniel Rose Fellowship program provides the mayors of four large U.S. cities with ULI assistance on a local land use development challenge. Beginning in 2014, the Rose Center operates as a partnership between the Urban Land Institute and the National League of Cities.

About the Urban Land Institute
The Urban Land Institute (www.uli.org) is a nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the Institute has more than 33,000 members worldwide representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines.