ULI-SF Tackles Region's Tough Issues, Says Smith

SAN FRANCISCO—Sea-rise and climate change, affordable housing and building healthy places are just a few of the initiatives ULI San Francisco is currently tackling. We sat down with Jeff Smith, CFO of Sack Properties here and the incoming ULI San Francisco board chair, where he told us exclusively about how he plans to tackle these tough issues.

GlobeSt.com: What issues surrounding sea-rise and climate change is your organization focused on currently?

Smith: One of the great things about ULI is that we can focus nationally on some of the larger issues out there—not only those specific to the real estate industry. It reflects how we're thinking about the built environment and adapting development to take in those factors. A lot of our development in San Francisco is done along the coastline, and a large portion of West Coast land could be affected by sea-level rise over the next 75 years in California—in particular, in the Bay Area. That's something we need to tackle head on. Experts talk about the year 2050 or 2075, but if we don't start tackling it now, we won't be ready for when this change happens. We need to bring together the stakeholders and have a conversation about what will happen so we are ready for it. This goes hand-in-hand with climate change. Resiliency encompasses a lot of things. Sea-level rise is one of the things we're talking about, but also earthquakes and a number of different factors.

We're at the beginning stages of bringing this up as a topic nationally and internationally. The first ULI Resiliency conference on it just happened in September, and we want to weave it in to keep it current and keep people focused on it. ULI San Francisco just got an urban innovation grant to study sea-rise in the Bay Area and we're working with SPUR on a report to be published later this fall.

GlobeSt.com: What about affordable housing? What are you working on in this area?

Smith: One of the things we're focused on is bringing people together to talk about topics to find solutions to help facilitate more affordable housing for the Bay Area. It's a hot topic on everybody's mind, and I think we're trying to be involved in the conversation and get the right speakers up there: the City, neighborhood stakeholders, we're sharing the conversation with everyone. It's timely—the program on it we had at the end of September on affordable housing was in the Bay Area.

One of the things we're very proud of here in the Bay Area and with other councils in California is the report published at the beginning of the year called “After Redevelopment”. It studies what sort of tools we need in order to provide more affordable-housing units now that the RDAsare gone. We not only published that earlier this year, but we also had a number of meetings with Jerry Brown's office, state senators and assembly people. There are some things we can do that are effective at getting affordable housing developed. There are some tools we can use to spur that growth, including tax-increment financing—hopefully there will be some incarnation of that for the future.

GlobeSt.com: How does building healthy places come into play for you?

Smith: Another initiative we're focused on is analyzing buildings and the environment and what makes a healthy place. As projects are getting built, we're trying to encompass all of these factors. We studied both Seattle and San Francisco on this matter. It's interesting that there are common themes across the board; these are no-brainers in what works well and makes a great location: access to services, clinics or a doctor's office around the corner; access to transportation; walking and enjoying; access to parks and schools. Those were some of the things that came out of our exchange and some of the things we're going to be studying this year. It's easy to identify things that already exist in the built environment in higher-end housing, but we're studying how to make affordable-housing healthy places as well.

ULI is a convener of topics to help move things forward. We have people from all sectors of the industry: people from the City of San Francisco, architects, consultants, brokers, and there's a broader discussion with everyone coming from a different angle and background to share. That's one of the greatest experiences out of the organization in general.

GlobeSt.com: What else are you working on?

Smith: We have a really exciting year ahead of us. I'm excited to be the new chair; we have 7% membership growth last year, and we'll be hosting the Fall Meeting in October 2015, so we're gearing up and planning for that. It's an exciting time to be part of this organization. We're doing a lot of things for mid-career people—they can attend leadership institute and get mid-career peer development, so we're excited about that. There are a lot of great events coming up, like ULI's emerging trends conference, which is based upon a report from PwC that reveals the trends we see and where the real estate industry is going over the next year. We love these types of events because they are based on independent research.