The mood was upbeat among the more than 350 people who attended ULI Colorado’s TOD Marketplace, where some of the nation’s most experienced finance, development, and transit experts discussed creative solutions for transit-oriented development, including innovations in financing, public-private partnerships, and other components that could pave the way for more development around stations in the Denver metro region’s expanding public transit system. The event also included concurrent sessions on TOD housing, parking, and demographics, technical advisory panel presentations on Lakewood, Denver, and Aurora, and exhibits on sites at play in the region.
ULI Colorado Chair Chris Achenbach opened the program with Phil Washington, general manager of the Regional Transportation District (RTD), who discussed the roll-out of the FasTracks expansion of 57 new commuter and light-rail stations, a new transit development policy, and pilot programs to encourage development around transit stations.
Keynote Speaker
Steven E. Goldin, director of real estate for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, advised focusing and simplifying the message to educate the public about the value of TODs, a concept he said is unfamiliar to 99 percent of Americans. Goldin, who oversees 35 million square feet of public-private TOD for WMATA in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, said that to attract the public’s attention during the upcoming election year, the TOD message should focus on “issues that resonate–jobs, mobility, and economic growth.” Simplify marketing text and graphics to “speak in headlines,” he advised. Promoting TOD housing, for example, might involve a message like “TOD + LEED building + green car = 72 percent reduction in energy consumption.”
Kathleen McCormick
Fountainhead Communications, LLC
