Preservation as an Economic Generator (part 1)

Today was the first day of my conference. I had a great time even though I felt a little out of place. Most of the people there were community development people.

The first session was given by Dan Carmody who is an expert in property development. He is currently the principal developer of Renaissance Rock Island, IL (by the way I LOVE Comedy Spotz!). He was an incredibly dynamic speaker. The title of this opening session was "Building Better Cities."

His major point was the rules have changed and we are now working in a global competition. They key to winning this competition is a combination of density, details, and diversity. Some of his other great points were:

• Urban decay didn't happen because of economic decline, but instead was due to complacency.
• Development is now about human capitol (talent and knowledge), so you need to create compelling area to attract people with these traits.
• The most common house-hold type in America is now the single person, therefore expect a movement from the suburbs back into the cities.
• How do you survive major cost overruns? -will power
• We can't get caught up in the current thinking of liberal vs. conservative, but instead think in terms of dynamic vs. stagnant.
• A creative place is a combination of technology (he seems to be a big proponent of green building), arts, and housing.

The second session I attended was on tax credits. It was basically an overview of both the federal and state rehabilitation tax credit programs and an refresher (for me) of the national standards of preservation from the department of the interior. The most interesting part was the presentation was given, in part, by Anne Grimmer who is the Senior Architectural Historian for the Heritage Preservation Service Program. She co-authored the standards and a lot of the other information of the National Park Service website. And to top it off she's from my home town. How cool is that!

At lunch Anne gave another presentation on preservation of more modern buildings.

After lunch I attend the session on Section 106 review which was interesting, but pretty much irrelevant to me. I'm really regretting not going to the other one on building codes. However, I did get a copy of the power point presentation so I'll have that to go over.

To end the day I attended another one of Mr. Carmody's talks. This one was titled "Real Estate Pro Formas." It was basically a overview on what developers should be looking at to make a property cash flow and be appealing to financial institutions (and also some what into what Main Street programs should do to encourage this development). Here are a few of the points that caught my ear:

• Real estate development is really three different businesses: financing, building, and management
• Always error on the side of quality.
• "Bankers don't lend to buildings. Bankers lend to cash flow."
• If you had to take one road trip see Memphis, TN.
• Pioneer housing types start as rentals and move into ownership.
• Design energy conservation into the project. This will become a major issue in the future.

But probably the point that hit closest to home was:

• "When you're being a pioneer you have to be quick on your feet."

He said this in relation to the story of getting their first project appraised. I hope I'm remembering this right, but the appraiser wouldn't appraise it as a unit as future condos since that had never been done before and so he had no compairables. So the developers had to seek a second opinion. We had the same thing happen when we had the house appraised. It seemed to come in way to low, but when you looked at the comparable properties it was not so surprising. They were horrible! Yes the square footage was the same and they were all country properties, but that's where the similarities ended. I'll have to try to remember to get some photos of the properties on the blog. One of them is a doozy of a remuddle that I almost called the realtor and faked interest in just so I could make fun of how badly it sucked. But since it's not really funny completely destroying a beautiful folk Victorian the tour would have just depressed me.

But back to the conference. All of the presenters had amazing photos that made me want to work for the State Historical Society and see all of the great projects that are coming across these people's desks.

Also the conference was held in this great facility, the Music Man Square. They have a fake main street built in the center of the building.

What's on par for tomorrow?

• A tour of the Park Inn Hotel, the only remaining Frank Lloyd Wright hotel
• A workshop on either Epoxy Systems or Patching Mortars (I haven't decide which yet)
• A look at some of the "Preservation Superstars" in the state
• And finally a walking tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Rock Glen/Rock Crest communities

I am defiantly a conference kind of girl :)