Better Together

By Linda McIntyre, AICP

Real estate development is often described as a game. Sometimes it seems like planners and developers are competing against each other in a contest that only one side — the "greedy developer" or the "rigid planner" — can win. When that dynamic governs the process, the project — and therefore the community — can lose out. But it doesn't have to be that way. If planners and development teams can broaden their perspectives and work together as partners, the process can work better for everyone — including the public that planners are committed to serve.

Austin, Texas, uses renderings like this one — illustrating a slightly more urban-type development that would be appropriate along major corridors — to communicate its goals clearly with developers and the public. Rendering © Opticos Design.

5 Strategies for Effective Communication With Developers, From Planners Who've Found a Better Way

1 Understand the Developer's Time Lines and Pressures

Developers' biggest concern is usually financial. Martin Scribner, AICP, the director of development services for the city of Maricopa, Arizona, also has experience in private-sector development. Without that background, he says, it can be hard for planners to understand the exigencies of cash flow under which developers operate.

"It's not something that's usually taught in planning school," he says. "I think that, if more planners had a better understanding of how much money developers are required to put up front, and how much has to be paid back, prior to them seeing a dime of profit, relationships would be better."

That front-loading of risk can have a big impact on the outcome of a project, says Bryan Stumpf, AICP, president of the Indianapolis-area firm 11th Street Development, who has also worked in public-sector planning. "Even in an easy project, [developers] typically have at least $200,000 at risk," he says, and for more complex projects or those in greenfield areas that haven't yet been subdivided, the upfront cost can easily top $1 million, even in smaller markets.

Timing works differently for developers and planners. Planners operate under regulatory requirements that dictate the timing of public meetings and votes, and require advance notice. The impact of these time frames on developers can be considerable; to them, time is literally money.

Stumpf describes an example of this for a project that required a planning commission vote on a subdivision. He had been working with the planning staff of the town, but when the issue came before the planning commission, the vote was delayed until the next meeting.

That was typical, even though the commission had no specific concerns about the project and the planners supported an earlier vote. "The delay of a month didn't really matter to them, it cost them nothing, but it cost me $16,000. I like to put money into the parts of a project that people can see, use, and enjoy, not to things like this!"

Scribner and Stumpf, who worked on some of the same projects when Scribner lived in Indiana, say that, from a developer's perspective, project milestones comprise a kind of matrix. The stages of development, representing the "life cycle" of property from the purchase and assemblage of land to redevelopment, are plotted across as rows, and specific tasks associated with each stage, from acquisition to disposition, are plotted vertically as columns. Each stage requires an outlay of money, as well as the various tasks, to increase the value of the property.

Stumpf says he tries to engage planners, and educate them about his perspective, as early in the process as he can. "If planners are not told about our concerns, they can't address them," he says. The public meetings that happen later in the planning process, he adds, are not well suited to discussions of complicated abstract issues like these.

2 Be Clear About What Isn't — and What Might Be — Negotiable

Planners are guided and constrained by all kinds of laws and regulations, including state and federal environmental, transportation, or other regulations that apply to some kinds of projects.

A predictable set of rules can provide welcome clarity to developers, says Brian Dale Ray, a planner and landscape architect working in the Atlanta area, who also has experience in development. That was the case, he says, when he worked in northern Virginia, a jurisdiction with a complex approval process. In that kind of climate, he says, "There were no amateurs." Clients who came to his firm for help with zoning actions knew the system, what they could do to mitigate risk, how the local and regional markets worked. The downside of that approach can be an oversupply of one type of a tried-and-true, easily approvable project, even if that kind of project is increasingly out of step with the community's evolving wants and needs.

Sometimes complexity is intentional. "There are communities where timing of approvals is part of their growth management strategy," says Stumpf.

"The process is intentionally made difficult, costly, and time consuming as a way to slow down growth."

Sometimes, though, it's just the default mode. "It's hard for planners to admit when a code [we've] been using and abiding by isn't working," Scribner says. But flexibility can advance planners' goals as well as developers'. Dale Hall, AICP, the vice president for development at Falcon Design Associates in Stockbridge, Georgia, says that less experienced planners "sometimes read a code and tell us, 'this is what the code says, you have to do it.' They might not understand how the puzzle pieces fit together, and the need to be flexible."

In this fast-growing part of Georgia, south of Atlanta, development has traditionally taken the form of single-family houses on large lots. Most residents have to drive into the city to get to work, see a Braves game, or have dinner at a hot new restaurant. Those trips are unpredictable — they can take 40 minutes if traffic is light, or more than an hour and a half if it's heavy. It usually is, even though an enormous amount of money has been spent, at the direction of the state, on road improvements. But low-density housing and road projects still get strong support from local officials.

Some new residents don't see more of that as the answer. The "millennial factor" is having an impact, says Hall. Not everyone has to drive to an office these days, and not everyone wants to get into a car to do something fun. His firm is working on a 160-acre mixed use development with ground-floor offices, a mix of rental and condo units above, and an entertainment zone.

But bringing it to fruition required navigating a complex web of rules set up to give the community more of the same. "No ordinance allowed us to do that project," says Hall, and while the county planning department liked it, some officials were skeptical and didn't support the proposed location. The developers worked with the city-level planners, who understood that it would be successful; the target market of young professionals meant less impact on schools, and the mixed use character and location, near I-75, meant that traffic impacts would be minimal. They worked together to deal with annexation rules and novel planned unit development design guidelines to shepherd the project through the approval process.

"We don't just tell agencies 'You should let us do this,'" Hall says. "We say, 'You should let us do this because ...' and give them good reasons."

Christine Barton-Holmes, a planning officer in the Austin, Texas Development Services Department, has been in similar situations. Recently, the shuttered Highland Mall in the north central part of the city has been the subject of an ambitious redevelopment by Austin Community College, which now owns the site. Working with a private developer, ACC has established a flagship campus there and is now building the first of several planned mixed use buildings, including affordable and market-rate apartments, on what used to be a huge surface parking lot.

Although a master plan for the project wasn't formally adopted, DSD was able to work with the public-private partnership to achieve "alternative equivalent compliance." Having that kind of flexibility "definitely gets us better projects," Barton-Holmes says.

"It's about communication — most of the time, developers will respond positively; they just didn't know before."
—Amanda Couch Brown, Senior Development Planner, Metcalfe Wolff Stuart & Williams

3 Identify Shared Goals

That dynamic isn't, or shouldn't be, unusual. Stumpf says that while planning and development goals might seem to be at odds, that's probably not the case. "In reality, our goals are usually highly aligned and we need each other to achieve them."

The challenge is to identify the areas of overlap and meet in the middle. "Yes, the developer wants to make money," says Scribner. "But everyone wants the project to be completed, to be successful, to have a unique character. When both sides have the same perspective on this, it's a much better relationship and beneficial to both."

Barton-Holmes agrees. She reviews site plans and regularly meets with project stakeholders including both developers and residents. She says that many of the "cast of regulars" on the applicant side — experienced developers who are well-versed in the process — will often share digital versions of information that's usually only viewable in person, such as plan drawings, to explain project details, and sometimes even tweak them to respond to neighbors' concerns. That high level of engagement, says Barton-Holmes, helps to foster an atmosphere of compromise that benefits everyone.

Sometimes there's an opportunity to cultivate this kind of give-and-take on a larger scale. For the past few years, Austin has been engaged in a process of rewriting its land development code, called CodeNEXT.

The existing rules, which date back to the mid- 1980s, are ill suited to grapple with 21st-century challenges such as affordable housing and a growing interest in walkable neighborhoods. Scott Grantham, a senior planner in the planning and zoning department, says that an apt comparison he's heard is to "a bike tire that's been patched again and again and again."

Austin's explosive growth has caused consternation among many residents and politicians who feel buffeted by the pace and magnitude of change.

Some people, including some developers, see exciting opportunities associated with the changes.

A lot of them, says Grantham, have come to workshops and public meetings and provided helpful comments on early drafts (as have many of the people concerned about the project), helping to identify potential problems early.

Those meetings have also given planners a chance to allay some of the public fear of change with renderings and photos of projects that local developers can do, or have done.

"When some people hear 'mixed use,' they think of a high-rise building," says Grantham. "But one of our objectives is context sensitivity, so it's more likely to mean three- or four-story buildings that fit with the existing character of the street. Images can help resolve fear of the unknown."

Fleshing out words with pictures is just one planning tool that can be deployed in constructive and creative ways to reduce conflict. Jamie Greene, FAICP, a co-founder and principal at consulting firm planning NEXT in Columbus, Ohio, notes that the planning process itself can serve as a way to bring people together.

"A lot of our work is trying to help people see how to advance their own self-interest by working together," he says.

If people have been legitimately harmed by past decisions, he adds, it can be hard to rebuild trust. "But it's ultimately self-defeating to sit out. We never ask anyone to support outcomes at the beginning of the process, but we do ask them to support the process."

This approach works with developers as well as with communities fearful of change. Greene's firm is currently working with the city, a local community college, and other stakeholders on a redevelopment in the northeastern part of downtown Columbus. On a site used as a 4,000-space surface parking lot, the college is now in design development for a new culinary/hospitality education center with a more urban-oriented form and placement.

As part of that process, Greene facilitated a roundtable of developers and other stakeholders more accustomed to competing than working together.

"A lot of the time, developers don't want to show their hands or throw ideas out there," he says. "But here, they were constructively feeding into a process where the college is acting as the quarterback, not a private developer or the marketplace."

4 Don't Take Conflict and Disappointment Personally

Planning is ultimately a political process, so a certain amount of theater is to be expected.

"In my first job, an attorney I had helped just blasted me in a public meeting, and then afterward he was asking about my kids," says Stumpf. "I realized he was performing for his client! You have to develop a thick skin."

Scribner agrees. "We get paid to be the butt of the hearing, but then you have to step back and figure out how to move on and work together in the future," he says. "We can yell at each other during a meeting, then go and have a beer afterward."

Sometimes, though, the anger is real. "Planners generally do our best to make sure we're covering everything we need to cover, even if the developer is not happy with our recommendation," says Scribner. And good planning principles don't always prevail in the end.

"I had to learn a long time ago that as a public planner you have to divorce yourself from the work you've done once you hand off your recommendation to the planning commission," he says. "They will hand off their decision to the city council, and whatever happens, happens. If that's not something we think is good for the community, it can be hard to accept, but that's what we have to do."

And in the world of planning and development, trade-offs are inevitable. "A lot depends on what the public is willing to accept," says Brian Dale Ray. Planners might be unhappy with developers who pump out a large supply of projects with identical and uninspired designs. "But at some level, if a community prides itself on affordable housing, that might be the easiest way to get it."

Even the most diligent application of planning principles can be flat-out wrong. Scribner gives an example of a commercial project that Stumpf worked on in his neighborhood when he lived in Indiana.

"I looked at the plans and tried to understand what they were trying to do, but it just seemed like a terrible idea," he says. "I spoke out against it at meetings, but it still got built. And once it was finished, I loved it! I went to that grocery store every day. It was a great lesson for me as a planner — be open to understanding the longer-term benefits of a project."

5 The Change You Want to See

Planners and developers need each other. "If no development is happening, how many planners would have jobs?" asks Stumpf. But if you think that, with your experience and commitment, you could do it better, maybe you're right. "That's why I got into development," says Stumpf. "If I don't think anyone is doing it right, I should go do it myself!"

Ray, who is now working in the specialized area of military facilities planning, works toward good development and community design in other ways. He serves on his neighborhood association and on the board of directors for the Chamblee, Georgia, Downtown Development Authority.

Amanda Couch Brown, a senior development planner with the Austin law firm of Metcalfe Wolff Stuart & Williams, used to work for the city. Now she works with developers of large projects who have to navigate the substance and politics of the approval process, and her deep familiarity with the issues helps her clients. "We have a very good relationship with the city," she says.

"We're not trying to get our clients out of anything. We have to respond to everybody's needs, and sometimes we go above and beyond what's required. Maybe there's some flexibility in some areas. It's about communication — most of the time, developers will respond positively; they just didn't know before."

All of the players, she says, have their own perspectives — developers, the city, and residents. "It can be hard for them to get out of their own silos, but when you can explain it clearly, you have a better chance of success."

The job has expanded her own perspective, too. "When I was in the city silo, it was easier to focus on our needs rather than those of others," she says. "It's eye-opening to try to view issues through another perspective."

Linda McIntyre is a planner and award-winning freelance writer based in New York City.