Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use Names Charlotte, Detroit, Houston and Sacramento Mayoral Teams as 2010-2011 Daniel Rose Fellows

WASHINGTON (October 28, 2010) – The mayors of Charlotte, Detroit, Houston, and Sacramento, plus 12 additional local land use leaders from these cities, have been selected as the 2010-2011 class of fellows for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use.

The mission of the ULI Rose Center is to encourage and support excellence in land use decision making. By providing public officials with access to information, best practices, peer networks, and other resources, the Center seeks to foster creative, efficient, practical, and sustainable land use policies.

The flagship program of the ULI Rose Center, the yearlong Daniel Rose Fellowship, provides participants with leadership training and professional development opportunities, and it benefits their respective cities by offering technical assistance on a local land-use challenge. The Rose Fellowship is focused on leadership, integrated problem solving, public-private collaboration, and peer-to-peer learning. By combining a core curriculum of real estate market economics and creative public finance tools with topics such as urban demographics, infrastructure and sustainability, the fellowship provides discussion sessions that address the current decision-making climate facing cities.

Each of the four mayors is leading a team of three additional fellows, including public- and private-sector representatives, from their respective cities. The mayors were selected based on a strong track record of land-use leadership, diversity of city location and market types, and their potential to position their cities on a sustainable path for economic prosperity in the years ahead.

“The slow pace of economic recovery is continuing to take a toll on our nation’s cities. This is undercutting America’s overall economic stability, because the nation’s economy is largely based on the strength of its metropolitan areas,” said ULI Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. “ULI looks forward to working with the new class of Rose fellows to help them overcome obstacles posed by the current economic environment, reposition their cities for long-term prosperity, and establish a course for success that can be applied to other cities.”

The 2010-2011 ULI Daniel Rose Fellowship teams are as follows:

• Charlotte: Mayor Anthony Foxx, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department Director Debra Campbell, Charlotte Transportation Department Director Danny Pleasant, and North Carolina Transportation Secretary Gene Conti.
• Detroit: Mayor Dave Bing, Planning and Facilities Group Executive Karla Henderson, Planning and Development Department Deputy Director Marja Winters, and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation Vice President Olga Stella.
• Houston: Mayor Annise Parker, Housing and Community Development Department Director Jim Noteware, Houston Chief Development Officer Andy Icken, and Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority President & CEO George Greanias.
• Sacramento: Mayor Kevin Johnson, Assistant City Manager John Dangberg, Hodgson Company President John Hodgson, and Sacramento Area Council of Governments Executive Director Mike McKeever.

The ULI Rose Center was created in 2008 with a $5 million endowment by Daniel Rose, chairman of New York City–based Rose Associates, Inc., whose career has involved a broad range of professional, civic, and nonprofit activities. Rose Associates is a leading developer and manager of more than 30 million square feet of major office towers, commercial retail centers, mixed-use complexes, and high-rise residential buildings throughout the East Coast.

According to Rose, the Center is unique in how it facilitates collaboration among leaders in land use by bringing participants together from the public and private sector. “Each has much to learn from the other,” he said. “The more knowledgeable and better trained people are on both sides of the table, the more effective they are. The most successful projects invariably reflect those relationships.”

ULI has assembled a team of eight urban development and design leaders from around the nation who will be serving as faculty for the 2010-2011 Rose Center Fellowship cities: Hilary Bertsch, associate principal at Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects in New York City; Carlton Brown, chief operating officer at Full Spectrum of New York City; Andre Brumfield, urban design and planning principal at AECOM Design + Planning in Chicago; Antonio Fiol-Silva, principal at Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC in Philadelphia; Calvin Gladney, managing partner at Mosaic Urban Partners, LLC in Washington, DC; Con Howe, managing director of CityView’s Los Angeles Fund; Mark Johnson, president of Civitas, Inc. in Denver; and Marilee Utter, president of Citiventure Associates, LLC in Denver.

The current class of Daniel Rose Fellowship teams follow the inaugural 2009-2010 class, led by the mayors of Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia and Phoenix.
“The Rose Fellowship has been a tremendous asset for us,” said Philadelphia Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Alan Greenberger, a 2009-2010 fellow. “It has given us an opportunity to step back and think about a particular land-use problem with outside expert help. That is very difficult to achieve in the public sector, when all of our time is extremely pressured. Through this fellowship, we were able to travel to other cities, interact with colleagues, and hear from other experts in fields that are related to what we’re doing. That is not an opportunity that comes often in the daily course of life.”