ORANGE COUNTY, CA—Developing communities that become a catalyst for better neighborhoods is one of ULI Orange County/Inland Empire's goals, Randy Jackson, president of PlaceWorks, tells GlobeSt.com. As we reported last week, Jackson is the newly appointed district council chairman for the chapter. We spoke with Jackson about his goals in his new position and what he sees as the most relevant issues facing the industry.

GlobeSt.com: What are your goals as the new district council chairman?

Jackson: We have five or six different initiative councils, and we will probably add another, where we have a broad membership of different interests—designers, financial, construction—that get together and find solutions. One problem is, how do we create healthy communities? Rather than just focusing on a project, we're looking at how that project could help to instigate a healthier surrounding community as well. How does it become a catalyst for better neighborhoods, foods, health services, etc.?

The second initiative is related to the fact that we don't have a true core city in Orange County. We have a whole bunch of pretty good-sized cities, but none of them are the core city. Instead, we live more on corridors—the Beach Blvd. corridor or the Garden Grove Blvd. corridor—so how do we develop projects along corridors that benefit multiple jurisdictions? We have affordable housing, parks, etc., but how do we make each project more by activating all of those individual interests?

Some corporate initiatives for ULI are to expand our membership. We have about 900 members for the Inland Empire—which includes San Bernardino and Riverside counties—and Orange County combined. We're going for 1,000 b midi-2015. We'd like to do outreach to the communities that haven't traditionally been part of ULI's membership. There's a bigger part of the development industry that would really benefit from ULI, since we're across all sectors of community development: finance, development, entitlement. They can be students as well as associate members.

GlobeSt.com: What are the most important issues facing the industry regarding land, as you see it?

Jackson: We've had a good amount of available land for development, and I think we're turning that corner and rethinking our communities. We're starting to ask, “How do we look inward rather than outward?” We need to stop looking at greenfields, start looking at underutilized land, consider industrial and commercial and start integrating commercial and residential together into mixed-use communities. We need to create different scales of development and integrate within the community fabric. And we need to do from a private-sector standpoint what the public sector used to do.

GlobeSt.com: What other issues are impacting the industry significantly?

Jackson: There's a problem with a development not wanting to take on the level of entitlement that needs to be done. A lot of developers are looking at properties and saying, “There's a one- to two-year process of entitlement, and then I may not get it, so why do it?” If there's a way ULI can act as a bridge between the government and the community with development and funding and look at how we create projects that are really beneficial to communities, then we should do that. We want these entities to work together to thrive, rather than have an adversarial relationship.

In order to accomplish this, we are setting up TAPS or technical advisory projects. We create a team that will work with the City to help find solutions and opportunities with the City and developers. We're looking at doing a series of those next year. They're two- or three-day workshops—mostly done pro bono, where we raise the money ourselves—and involve experts at development, entitlement, planning, engineering and other aspects to find solutions that all the stakeholders are happy with. We think being a neutral third party will help. Mike Ruane is still on my management team, and he will manage and advance the mission for ULI. And as an urban planner for 44 years with 150 employees in California and a lot of experience in various roles for ULI, I have a lot of resources I can muster for this as well.