Symposium

Inform

The Regional Symposium will bring local and national experts together to address the current state of policy, design and development in a public forum.

FOCUS: COMMUNITY
FEB. 3 – 4, 2018

ABOUT

Housing Northwest Arkansas will address issues of Attainable Housing at the regional level through an exploration of national housing issues and solutions.

This two-day event will feature presentations by national experts and an intense series of public presentations and moderated discussions by regional and national experts on housing policy, finances, design, development, and construction. The symposium will provide participants with a comprehensive overview of issues, challenges, and design exemplars in attainable, affordable, and mixed-use housing.

Northwest Arkansas is one of the most rapidly developing regions in the nation, with growing housing demands. The overview presented by this symposium will introduce innovative strategies for including attainable and affordable housing projects in local city planning goals.

SCHEDULE

KEYNOTE LECTURE / RECEPTION

Saturday, February 3, 2018
4:00 – 5:30pm
Record / 104 Southwest A Street / Bentonville, AR

The Honorable Shaun Donovan
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (2009-2014)
Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (2014-2017)
Harvard University Senior Strategist

CASE STUDY PRESENTATIONS / PANEL DISCUSSIONS / RECEPTION

Sunday, February 4, 2018
Venue: Vol Walker Hall
459 Campus Dr. / University of Arkansas Campus / Fayetteville, AR


9:30am Coffee
10:00am Welcome, Dean Peter MacKeith, Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design
10:30am Housing in Northwest Arkansas, an Overview of the Issues
Stephen Luoni, University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Matthew Petty, Fayetteville Alderman / The Incremental Development Alliance
11:00am Case Study Presentations
Garner Stoll, Fayetteville Development Services Director
Lisa Sturtevant, Lisa Sturtevant & Associates / The Urban Land Institute

11:45am Response and Panel Discussion
12:15pm Lunch
1:00pm Case Study Presentations
Esther Yang, Detroit Planning and Development Department
John Anderson, Anderson|Kim Architecture + Design / The Incremental Development Alliance

1:45pm Response and Panel Discussion
2:15pm Break
2:30pm Case Study Presentations
Kurt Creager, Urbanist Solutions
Ali Solis, Make Room

3:15pm Response and Panel Discussion
3:45pm Conclusion
4:15pm Reception
4:45pm Event Concludes

 

Presenters

Shaun Donovan
Harvard University

Shaun Donovan has dedicated much of his career to public service, most recently as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, serving from 2014 to 2017. He served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2014, chairing the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and steering HUD through the housing crisis. Donovan served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where he created and implemented the department’s New Housing Marketplace Plan to fund 165,000 affordable housing units utilizing active design strategies, green standards, supportive housing, public-private partnerships and integrated resiliency. Donovan served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at HUD during the Clinton Administration and served as acting Federal Housing Administration Commissioner during the Clinton/Bush presidential transition. Donovan has also worked for the Community Preservation Corporation in New York City, a non-profit lender and developer of housing, and in the private sector on financing affordable housing. He has researched and written about the preservation of federally-assisted housing, and was a consultant to the Millennial Housing Commission on strategies for increasing the production of multifamily housing. He worked at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and has worked as an architect. In addition to decades of urban planning and development experience, Donovan holds degrees from Harvard in Engineering, Public Administration, and Architecture. He has recently accepted a position at Harvard as part-time senior strategist and advisor to the president on Allston and campus development.

Shaun Donovan

R. John Anderson
Anderson|Kim Architecture + Design

R. John Anderson is co-founder and principal of Anderson|Kim Architecture + Urban Design. With over 30 years of experience in design and development, Anderson is well-versed in the practical realities of delivering complex large-scaled projects from design through entitlement and construction. Before Anderson|Kim, he directed planning and design for New Urban Builders, a firm that demonstrated how sustainable neighborhoods can be successfully delivered by a California production builder/developer. Anderson co-founded the Incremental Development Alliance in 2015 to mentor and train small developers through classroom-based and hands-on coaching tools that can be scaled across the country for the benefit of municipal clients and developers. Anderson is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and frequently lectures on implementation issues and technique in Smart Growth and the New Urbanism.

R. John Anderson

Ali Solis
Make Room

Alazne (Ali) Solis is President and CEO of Make Room, Inc., the nation’s leading organization working to address the rental housing crisis in America. Through Make Room, Solis works with public, private and nonprofit partners to raise awareness and advance solutions to end America’s rental housing crisis. As a political strategist, Solis has lead successful national campaigns in the areas of public policy, affordable housing, and economic development. She works with bi-partisan policy makers and mobilizes a wide network of professional partners to inspire systemic change. Her previous positions include Senior Vice President of Enterprise Community Partners, Senior Advisor to the Secretary at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Legislative Director and Sr. Policy Advisor to Board of Directors for NeighborWorks America. Solis earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Ali Solis

Kurt Creager
Urbanist Solutions

Kurt Creager has worked in affordable housing and community development in both the public and private sector for over 30 years. His recent career has focused on place making and community building through mixed-income and mixed-use development projects. Creager founded Urbanist Housing Solutions, a consulting company that works to integrate affordable workforce housing into transit oriented development and specializes in mixed-income and mixed-use community development and sustainable master-planned developments. His public-sector experience includes directing the Portland Housing Bureau, leading the Department of Housing and Community Development in Fairfax, Virginia, the Vancouver Housing Authority, and the Housing and Economic Development Department of Metropolitan King County in Washington state. He worked as the Housing and Community Development Director at Otak, an award-winning urban design, architecture, planning and engineering firm, and worked in academia as executive director of the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family at Arizona State University. During his career, Creager has served on the board of the Housing Development Law Institute, on the advisory board for Affordable Housing Finance Magazine, as an Urban Community Advisor for the Urban Land Institute, President and member of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials in Washington, D.C., and President of the Washington Coalition for Rural Housing. He has been an entrepreneurship trainer for Rutgers University and the Public Housing Authority Director’s Association in Washington D.C. Creager attended Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government State and Local Public Executives Program and the University of Washington’s Cascade Management Institute at the Graduate School of Public Affairs, and holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental planning and architectural graphics from Western Washington University.

Anne Fougeron

Lisa Sturtevant
Lisa Sturtevant & Associates

Lisa Sturtevant has been involved in research and analysis of local economic, demographic and housing market conditions for over 15 years. She currently serves as president of Lisa Sturtevant & Associates, where she provides insightful, high-quality analysis for local governments, non-profit organizations and private sector clients. Her consulting firm specializes in comprehensive housing market analyses, affordable housing needs assessments, program and policy evaluation and development, and in-person and web-based training on using local data. Her company focuses on developing and building consensus around comprehensive housing strategies for meeting local housing needs. Sturtevant also currently serves as a senior visiting fellow to the Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center for Housing. Her previous positions include Vice President for Research at the National Housing Conference and Associate Research Professor and Deputy Director of the Center for Regional Analysis at the George Mason University School of Public Policy in Virginia. She has served in the Arlington County, Virginia Department of Community Planning, Housing and Development and as an adjunct professor at George Mason University and Virginia Tech. Sturtevant earned a PhD in public policy from George Mason University, a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland, and a BS in mathematical economics from Wake Forest University.

Lisa Sturtevant

Esther Yang
Detroit Planning and Development

Esther Yang is the Eastern District Design Director for the City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department. Yang has over a decade of experience combining design and social justice, focused primarily on affordable housing and community development. She is particularly interested in promoting integrated approaches and improvements that will empower individuals, communities, and cities. Her previous positions include Deputy Director at the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City within the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow at the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation in the Bronx, Consultant to Enterprise Community Partners, and Adjunct Professor for the School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas. Yang earned a Masters of Architecture and a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from the University of Virginia.

Esther Yang

Garner Stoll
Fayetteville Development Services

Garner Stoll is Director of Development Services for the City of Fayetteville. He previously served as Assistant Director at Neighborhood Planning and Zoning for the City of Austin, Texas, where he helped create “Imagine Austin,” an award-winning comprehensive plan to guide the city’s future growth and development. Stoll has also worked as Planning or Community Development Director for the cities of Boulder, Colorado; Lincoln, Nebraska; Lawrence, Kansas; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Parker, Colorado. His professional experience in cities experiencing rapid growth gave him insight into rethinking the functions and procedures of planning departments, and has given him special appreciation for transportation, comprehensive, downtown, and neighborhood planning, as well as the development of greenways, trails, and open spaces. Stoll earned a Master’s Degree in Regional and City Planning and a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology, both from the University of Oklahoma.

Garner Stoll

Stephen Luoni
UA Community Design Center

Stephen Luoni is Director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC), an outreach program of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Under his direction since 2003, UACDC’s design and research have received more than 100 awards. Luoni’s work at UACDC specializes in interdisciplinary public works projects combining landscape, urban, and architectural design across Arkansas. Luoni is a recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants, and has served as a review panelist for the NEA and a resource team member for the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. He has taught at the University of Florida, and as visiting professor at the University of Minnesota, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Oklahoma. Luoni earned his Master of Architecture degree from Yale University, and his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Ohio State University.

Steve Luoni

Matthew Petty
Fayetteville Alderman and the Incremental Development Alliance

Matthew Petty is serving his ninth year as Alderman in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he is Chair of the Transportation Committee and Chair of the Advertising and Promotion Commission. Petty is founder and Principal of Infill Group, a livability company which develops small-scale residential and mixed-use real estate projects and performs financial, entitlement, and site design consultation. He teaches workshops for the Incremental Development Alliance, where he shares his deep understanding of American zoning and development codes and infrastructure planning processes. He works to identify and overcome barriers to missing middle development and placemaking, and helps cities simplify the development process and change transportation planning culture. Petty previously worked as a Development Associate for the University of Arkansas Community Design Center where he conceptualized projects, built partnerships, and pursued funding. Petty earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Political Science from the University of Arkansas.

Matthew Petty

EVENT

Symposium proceedings will be published online.