The LAI-ZIA Chapter welcomes you to Santa Fe and Alburquerque New Mexico—The Land of Enchantment

The Fall 2010 LEW, headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico’s Capital, will focus on how the rich history and culture of New Mexico along the Santa Fe—Albuquerque stretch of the Rio Grande Corridor has been preserved, even as cutting edge development projects are defining New Mexico’s built environment in the 21st Century.

Located at the base of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains, 7000 feet above sea level, Santa Fe (also known as “the City Different”) is internationally recognized as an art Mecca, a place of extraordinary light and natural beauty, the oldest (400 years) Capital city in the United States, preserved Historic Districts and a place whose history and character are defined by Native American, Hispanic and Anglo cultures.

About 60 miles south lies Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city by far and its financial center. It has its own long and rich history, which will be evident throughout the Weekend.

Among other activities, we will explore the “old” and “new” Santa Fe. Our itinerary includes stops at the Plaza, the historic town square, (which marked the end of the Santa Fe Trail); the redevelopment by Drury Hotels of the old St. Vincent Hospital in the city’s downtown historic core; lunch at La Fonda Hotel, the city’s oldest, known as “the Inn at the End of the Trail”; along with presentations and tours of:

• Santa Fe’s emerging “second Plaza”—the Railyard Project
• The art hub that is the College of Santa Fe
• The award-winning Tierra Contenta affordable housing development
• Las Soleras, a large transit-oriented mixed use community to be developed on the southern edge of the city.

On the second day of the LEW we will bus to Albuquerque with commentary from expert speakers about: the creation of the RailRunner, New Mexico’s new commuter rail line between Santa Fe and Belen, 30 miles south of Albuquerque and casino development on Sandia Pueblo lands. We will tour the Old Town, the railroad museum, Wheels, and redevelopment projects along historic Route 66. We will lunch at the historic Hotel Anadluz (originally built by Conrad Hilton) which has been converted to a LEED certified historic structure.

Then, after visiting Mesa Del Sol, the largest (12,000 acres) mixed use development in the country under public ownership, we will return to Santa Fe on the RailRunner in time for dinner on your own.

Our headquarters hotel will be the highly rated Eldorado Hotel. Filled with Southwestern ambiance, it is located two short blocks from the Plaza.

We look forward to welcoming you to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, in October! Please register early as room space during these dates is limited. Bienvenidos!

PRESIDENT'S LETTER

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Ireland: Walking the fine line between stability and recovery—Q2 2010

Dr. Karen Sieracki LAI President

General
Ireland is now experiencing a nascent recovery after such a steep slump as shown in the chart below. Its economic recovery is also dependent on the health of its three main trading blocks: Eurozone, UK and US. The downturn for these countries has not been as steep as Ireland and each respective recovery differs in magnitude and impact. The one area where Ireland does not have links are with the emerging markets in Asia and South America, so it will be difficult for Ireland to participate in their growth which is forecast to be at much higher rates. This is important as Ireland is dependent on an export driven economy. Export trade is projected to grow by 10.6% in 2010 and 8.4% in 2011 (ESRI) which is a tall order as Ireland has very little dealing with these emerging economies.

Source: PMA, DB, JP Morgan

This places pressure on Ireland to remain competitive. Therefore wage rates and input prices need to be relatively low. The main area of Irish exports has been pharmaceuticals and medical devices. These are low domestic value added business with high capital intensity so will provide limited future employment growth.

A skilled workforce is another important ingredient. It is forecast that Ireland will see a net emigration of 160,000 from 2009-2013 (ESRI). This will help unemployment to decline, but Ireland needs to be careful that its skilled workforce will not depart as well. The Government has launched a new €500m Innovation Fund in July 2010 to support enterprise and job creation. Its purpose and effectiveness is debatable as venture capital supports only a small number of this type of business which is mostly bank credit financed.

While Ireland was the first to undertake serious fiscal consolidation with the introduction of an income levy and big cuts to public sector pay and social welfare benefits, the jury is still out as to its effectiveness in encouraging economic growth. This action early on did help to restore confidence, but the government is still walking the fine line between stability and recovery.

Source: IPD, Mercer

Irish Property Market
The emerging recovery seen in the Irish property market in the first quarter changed direction as greater downward adjustments were made to capital growth. This was due to the greater fall in rental values as occupier demand for property remained muted with an oversupply. For 2010 so far, bonds and cash saw positive returns as seen in the chart below. Irish equities have been the worst performing asset class over the various time periods.

Investment
On the European stage, the Irish property investment market activity is tiny, seeing €103m of transactions in Ireland compared to €40.7bn of total transactions throughout Europe for the first half of 2010 (DTZ). Ireland had a 0.25% share of total European investment activity. The level of activity in Ireland increased in the second quarter, seeing €84m of deals done from €19m seen in the first quarter.

It has been tough in Ireland as there was great uncertainty as to how far prices would fall, together with the relative stability of cash flows. For the second quarter, offices were the favoured sector with €60m of sales and an Irish portfolio was sold for €52m.

Irish property yields appeared to have currently stabilised with retail at 6.25%, offices at 7.5%, shopping centres at 8.5%, retail warehouse at 8.5% and industrial at 9.0% (CBRE, DTZ, JLL, Savills). The area of concern is continuing falling rental values, depressed tenant demand and the oversupply of space.

Karen Sieracki, LAI President

Lou Slade KeyNotes Editor

How does the concept of resilience better enable our urban areas to sustain the impacts of major disturbances that shut down infrastructure? My column this month was inspired by an enlightening article in the July issue of Landscape Architecture that says that sustainability is not enough; systems should be resilient too. My definition of resilience is: a system characteristic that ensures that the function it performs can be maintained even when part of the system is disturbed or destroyed by outside forces. Sustainability means the system must use renewable resources and must not generate costs and impacts that cannot be fully mitigated. Thus, resilience and sustainability are two very difference sets of criteria.

The concept of resilience upends old ideas about sustainability. Sustainability implies stasis with an almost sacred balance, whereas resilience embodies flexibility, decentralization and other characteristics that enable a system to be adaptable to volatile forces.

Enough with the generalities; this is a pretty easy concept when you think about examples. Electrical power that is delivered to my home, my office, and my metro area is generated by coal-fired plants and transmitted via a large grid of hard wires. Ten years ago, this system had a catastrophic failure due to a demand overload, and one-half of the population of northeastern North America had no electric power for a couple of days. This happens to a lesser extent but more frequently due to storms taking out overhead power lines.

I’m totally dependent on this coal generated electrical grid system and therefore my life is susceptible to all kinds of interruptions of service due to coal availability, system overloads, higher frequency of powerful storms due to climate change, an enemy attack on the generation plants or key points in the grid, etc. The experts who are studying resilience in urban systems are looking at how system reliability can be improved with redundancy, diversity, and modularity. I now have the option of selecting a proportion of my electricity to be generated by wind power that is beginning to provide redundancy to coal. Some neighbors are installing photovoltaic panels to augment and possibly replace their reliance on the grid, and others have purchased internal combustion powered generators for emergency situations. I’ve read about “V2G” (vehicle to grid) that uses the gasoline engine-generated electricity from a hybrid automobile to “stand-in” as a generator to produce electricity for household needs during times when the urban electric grid is down.

Multiply this electrical energy example by all of the systems we rely on for domestic and commercial operations, transportation, food and water supply, police and emergency services, education, and all of the endeavors of human life. Then chart the interrelationships between each of the systems that support each of those areas of human endeavor. This is the kind of research that is being done in resilience research that bridges the fields of planning, engineering, economics and sociology. Building resilience into our urban systems would provide greater levels of reliability and security as our world goes through large-scale transitions due to globalization, population growth, petroleum depletion, climate change and other major forces of change.

Thus, while electrical power generated by wind may be a sustainable system, we should not seek to replace our current system with that singular new system. Our goal should be a resilient system that includes many sources of electric power, and coal-generated electricity will be one component of a decentralized system that includes several redundant sources.

Moving Baltimore’s Port Forward

LAI-Baltimore Seagoing Members are Greeted by Vice President Jim Leanos, left; Rupert Denney, C. Steinweg Inc; Chapter President Rachel Edds, along with President Emeritus, John Murphy and Darrell Doan, Baltimore Development Corporation

Heave Ho! LAI members Help Haul Sail

Photos by Robert West Madden

Thirty members and their guests boarded the historic Chesapeake Bay skipjack SIGSBEE on July 21st. Owned and operated by the Living Classrooms Foundation, as part of its education fleet, the 1901 vessel was captained by Joe Persinger. He and his crew navigated a 3-hour tour of Baltimore’s waterfront This excursion provided an opportunity to view architecture and recent land use changes along the inner harbor to Key Bridge while hearing an update about business in the 304 year old Port. The chapter’s last guided tour was in July 2008 (see LAI KeyNotes, August 2008).

According to Rupert Denney, General Manager of C. Steinweg’s operations in Locust Point, tonnage is off in Baltimore’s Port. Historically, this strategically located East coast port generates greater bulk business than container business. Due to the challenging economic conditions, Mr. Denney said an enormous volume of inventory of aluminum currently is being stored awaiting consumers to start spending (e.g., windows, refrigerators, stoves, autos). Also stockpiled by private terminals are break-bulk metals not shipped inside containers (e.g., copper, tin, zinc) that are traded on the London Metal Exchange. He expects when the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014, Baltimore’s port will experience an uptick in the container volumes coming from the Far East.

Serving as the former president of the Baltimore Port Alliance (a 501©(6) organization with 146 members representing all facets of the maritime community in Baltimore and throughout the Chesapeake Bay), Denney salutes MD’s Secretary of Transportation, Beverly K. Swaim-Staley and the Port’s Director and Assistant Executive Director, Jim King and Kathy Broadwater for their leadership; and he acknowledged the importance of the state’s stimulus and investment in maritime related improvements. In spite of the difficult economic conditions, the Port laid off few from the 16,700 direct jobs. He remarked that the private and public parts of the Port provide important blue-collar employment (e.g., stevedores, truck drivers) for many of the City’s undereducated youth who have been failed by the City’s school system.

While sailing along the waterfront, Darrell Doan, Baltimore Development Corporation’s (BDC) Director of Development for East Baltimore, www.baltimoredevelopment.com, pointed to the recently dedicated Morgan Stanley business services center. Considered Fortunate are the 600 employees who now work in the Thames Street Wharf, an 8-level office tower, developed by H&S Properties Development Corporation. Morgan Stanley is the first tenant in the 27-acre area called Harbor Point, a peninsula between the Inner East Harbor and Fels Point. The plan calls for a 5 million square feet mixed-use community with homes, offices, hotels and shops on the remediated property where the Allied Signal Chromium plant once stood.

Tara B. Clifford, Scribe

On September 15, 2010, LAI Minnesota will host a panel discussion and luncheon focused on “Edina: The Challenges of Re-Development in a ‘Successful’ First Ring Suburb” The panel will feature Mayor Jim Hovland, Planning Commission Chair Michael Fischer and Planning Commission Vice Chair Kevin Staunton.

Edina has historically been a community that has valued innovative development. From its incorporation in 1888 as a milling area on the banks of Minnehaha Creek, Edina has evolved to be a model among municipalities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. It has been an innovator and leader in many ways as evidenced by:

• Approval and construction of the Country Club neighborhood in 1924 featuring contoured streets, parks, trees, an eighteen-hole golf course and over 600 period revival homes built with private covenants governing unit placement, architectural style and property maintenance.
• Adoption of a comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1929, the first Minnesota village to do so.
• Establishment and renewal of the 50th and France commercial area into one of the Twin Cities area’s most popular shopping districts.
• Development of Southdale Center, the first climate-controlled, fully enclosed mall in the United States.
• Development of Centennial Lakes and Edinborough, which have become contemporary models for the integration of commercial and residential land uses together with public park and recreation centerpieces.

The audience will learn about the challenges the city is facing with re-development and changing expectations of its citizens. The panel will also share preliminary results of a new public engagement process aimed at restoring innovative planning in Edina through a citizen-driven Small Area Guide process.

Canada’s Technology Triangle – A Tour Highlighting Excellent Urban Design

Simcoe Chapter members were hosted by Canada’s Technology Triangle - CTT on a familiarization tour of Waterloo Region on June 3, 2010, and were pleasantly surprised by the number of innovative, unique and revolutionary examples of high quality urban design evident in the Region.

Canada's Technology Triangle Inc (CTT) is a not-for-profit, public-private regional economic development partnership that markets the competitive advantages of the Waterloo Region to the world, and works to attract new businesses, investment and talent to the Region. As an information provider and business network facilitator, CTT is typically the first point of contact for enterprises outside the Waterloo Region interested in start-up, expansion, or relocation to the Waterloo Region. CTT's activity complements its partner municipalities, who focus on local business retention and expansion. CTT's municipal partners are the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo, and the townships of North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot and Woolwich. And market to the world it does – in part, with the distinctive and radical urban elements that are exceptional in the Region.

The tour featured stops at many locations throughout Waterloo Region including (click links for more information) the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, the St. Jacobs Farmer’s Market, the University of Waterloos Research + Tech Park, Cambridge City Hall, Enermodal Engineering, Christie Digital, the Lang Tannery, the Perimeter Institute and the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

An especially notable part of the tour was the public celebration of “A Symphony of Design” at which the LAI members were special guests. This promotional video consists of introductory and summary messages highlighting the quality of architecture and urban design projects in the Waterloo Region. The project showed the collaborative spirit of the Region, as partners included CTT Inc, Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and Waterloo Regional Tourism Marketing Corporation. (The ‘Symphony of Design’ video can be viewed online at http://vimeo.com/8336733)

The tour participants reviewed an important event within Waterloo Region that occurred back in 2007, when the City of Waterloo was recognized as the Intelligent Community of the Year by the Intelligent Community Forum. This is representative of an area that is far reaching in many sectors including Health and Life Sciences, Business and Financial Services, Advanced Manufacturing and Information Communication and Technology, to name a few. This significant recognition is a key differentiator among successful and competitive cities across Canada and the USA.

Scott Burns

LEF GRANT PROGRAM

Ron Buss, LEF Vice President

Lambda Alpha International (LAI) has recently created a group on Linkedin.com. Linkedin is an online professional network of more than 60 million professionals in over 150 industries. Linkedin is a great place to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. Linkedin allows you to:

• Stay informed about your contacts and industry,
• Find the people & knowledge you need to achieve your goals, and
• Control your professional identity online.

Our LAI Linkedin group will provide a means to further promote communication and networking among LAI members. Please join us at LAI’s newest place to network: www.linkedin.com.

For motorcycle enthusiasts, LAI First Vice President Ian Lord invites you to join him before the LEW on a trek from Scottsdale, AZ, to the Four Corners, and on to Taos,NM and back, October 16 - 20, 2010. Contact particulars are on www.lai.org. That includes you...

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Future Land Economics Weekends (Subject to Change)

SPRING 2010
October 21-23, 2010
Zia Chapter, New Mexico

SPRING 2011
June 1-4, 2011
Scotland