Experience the revitalization of the South Bronx through affordable housing mechanisms and affordable housing at scale in the Mott Haven district with developer L&M.

East 162nd Street Court provides 126 mixed-income rental apartments in a new 12-story building. Thirty-seven units are reserved for formerly homeless families in need of supportive services. L+M and B&B Supportive collaborated with Palladia and Services for the Underserved to provide family supportive services pursuant to a contract with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Services include case management for mental health and substance abuse problems as well as educational and workforce services. The new building includes a separate office space devoted to the provision of these services, a community room, and laundry facilities. The remaining units in the building are reserved for families that earn 60 percent and 80 percent of area median income.

 

Bronx Point represents a transformative mixed-use development of approximately 530,000-square-feet that will bring affordable housing, educational community facilities, dynamic retail uses, and engaging new open space along the Harlem River waterfront in the South Bronx. It includes 542 units of permanently affordable housing, educational spaces for youth operated by Bronx Works and Billion Oyster Project, and retail opportunities. The Universal Hip Hop Museum will be a new cultural destination that celebrates the global hip hop culture.

In 2022, Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled plans for Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) Kips Bay, a state-of-the-art jobs and education hub in New York City. SPARC will transform Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus with an ambulatory care center, health care training simulation centers, an NYC Public Schools high school with health and science focus, and more. Driven by historic investment from the city and state, SPARC Kips Bay will make New York a global leader in creating and attracting accessible jobs in life sciences, health care, and public health by creating a pipeline from local public schools to careers in these growing and essential fields. New York City’s health care sector employs over 750,000 New Yorkers, and the metropolitan area’s life sciences sector is a rapidly growing industry with nearly 150,000 additional jobs in recent years. The city estimates the campus’s new commercial lab space will create about 2,000 quality jobs and attract new companies and startups, leading to additional good-paying jobs in the health care and life sciences fields.

 

During this walking tour, participants will have the opportunity to tour the Brookdale campus, visit a working laboratory, and learn more about the next stages of the SPARC project and how the city and state are working together to support the life sciences industry in New York City.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a center of urban manufacturing and innovation. A one-of-a-kind ecosystem with a legacy dating back to the early 1800s, the Yard has played a pivotal role in shaping American history, from its origins as a naval shipyard to its transformation into a dynamic, mission-driven industrial park. The Yard is a nationally acclaimed model of the viability and positive impact of modern, urban industrial development, employing more than 11,000 people and generating over $2.5 billion per year in economic impact for the city. Building on the Yard’s history as the economic heart of Brooklyn, the 300-acre waterfront asset houses more than 500 business and offers a critical pathway to the middle class for many New Yorkers.

Essex Crossing represents a true partnership between public and private interests. L+M, BFC Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, and The Prusik Group, along with Grand Street Settlement, were awarded the sites after a competitive RFP process in 2013. The entire project, located in the Lower East Side, is projected to be over 1.9 million square feet; seven of nine parcels are developed, and the last two parcels are expected to be completed by 2024. Once completed, the $1.5 billion project will include 1,079 units of residential rental and for-sale housing (of which over 50 percent will be permanently affordable to a wide range of incomes), over 700,000 square feet of commercial space, 350,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 square feet of community and cultural facility space, and 100,000 square feet of exterior and interior green space, including a new public park.

Key commercial users include NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Center, Trader Joe’s, Target, The Gutter NYC bowling, Regal Cinemas, a new and expanded Essex Street Market and The Market Line. Key community facility uses include a new senior center run by Grand St. Settlement, Henry Street Settlement’s Workforce Development Center, an early childhood education center operated by the Chinese American Planning Council, and the International Center of Photography.

In the two decades since the federal government turned over control of Governors Island to New York City, city officials have sought an innovative way to use the 172-acre patch of land with stunning views of Lower Manhattan. The city chose a consortium led by Stony Brook University to transform one of the island’s last big chunks of developable land into a 400,000-square-foot hub called the New York Climate Exchange. The campus, which will focus on researching climate solutions and training for green jobs, is expected to open in 2028.

Lower Manhattan has undergone a renaissance in the years since September 11, 2001. In a nearly flawless example of public/private partnership, the World Trade Center site was redeveloped not only to honor and remember the victims of 9/11, but also to create an even stronger central core for Lower Manhattan. Existing properties also underwent transformations, from the repositioning of the stoic World Financial Center to the vibrant mixed-use Brookfield Place as well as the multiple office to residential conversions. Led by key players in the transformations from Silverstein Properties and Brookfield Properties, this tour will explore the history of Lower Manhattan in its many incarnations and will delve into what the future will hold in the post-pandemic environment.

Hudson River Park extends in and along four miles of Manhattan’s shoreline from about Chambers Street to West 59th Street and includes dozens of recreational and revenue-generating piers. Participants will walk along the water’s edge from Tribeca to the Meatpacking District, exploring many of the diverse, award-winning open spaces that have been created by the Hudson River Park Trust over the last 25 years, including the Pier 26 Tide Deck, the Tribeca Boardwalk, the Gansevoort Peninsula, and Little Island. The tour will end at historic Pier 57, a mixed-use, adaptive reuse project created in partnership with RXR and Google. 

The Sunset Park waterfront, once one of the busiest shipping ports in the country, today serves as a major industrial, manufacturing, and employment hub in NYC. The area’s continued prominence as a manufacturing center is due in part to the large footprint of publicly owned industrial campuses dedicated to preserving and growing the area’s manufacturing legacy. The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) manages more than 200 acres of this area including the Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT), Made in New York Campus at Bush Terminal, and the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. The Brooklyn Army Terminal was built in 1918 by Cass Gilbert and was originally used as an American military supply and troop deployment facility. Today, BAT is New York City’s premier affordable hub for innovative industrial businesses and entrepreneurs, serving more than 100 businesses and 4,000 employees. BAT is being positioned as a future home for climate innovators and industrial businesses developing and fabricating technologies that support climate solutions. The Made in New York Campus at Bush Terminal is undergoing an investment of more than $265 million to reposition this historic shipping yard as a creative industrial hub with events facilities and public waterfront open space. Along with Industry City, a privately owned and operated creative industrial hub in Sunset Park, these campuses born out of the same historic shipping ports are being reimagined as modern industrial facilities supporting a vast workforce.

For over one hundred years, the Greenpoint waterfront in Brooklyn was a functioning lumberyard and industrial center. In 2005 the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Rezoning connected the waterfront to the long-establish Greenpoint neighborhood, including acres of publicly accessible open space and waterfront promenades. One of the largest development sites along the waterfront is Greenpoint Landing – a 22-acre site situated along a half-mile of East River waterfront being master-planned and developed by Park Tower Group. When complete, Greenpoint Landing will include about 5,500 apartments (including much-needed affordable units), a sprawling waterfront park designed by Field Operations, a new school, and numerous local retail opportunities. In a joint venture, Park Tower Group and Brookfield Properties developed a total of 2,000 units across four development sites, including One Blue Slip (2018), Two Blue Slip (2020) and The BellSlip (2022), all designed by Handel Architects and Eagle & West (2022) designed by OMA. Park Tower Group joint ventured with L&M Development Partners on three stand-alone affordable buildings - 33 Eagle, 5 Blue Slip and 7 Bell Slip – all designed by Handel Architects, and with Rockefeller Group on The Dupont, designed by GKV Architects, which is the latest building to be constructed at Greenpoint Landing. This past summer, Park Tower Group unveiled their 374-unit fully affordable building at 35 Commercial Street, also designed by Handel Architects.

"For the right deal, there is money to be had…what does the right deal look like?" How do you position your deal to be the right one? Hear insights and learn strategies for navigating real estate capital markets today. In this session, hear from the full range of lenders: large banks, regional banks, private equity, debt funds, and others. Who is lending and who isn't? For what types of deals? What size? What terms? Refinance? Development? What changes in the debt landscape can be expected up ahead?

This session will present the findings from ULI Terwilliger Center's 2024 Home Attainability Index. The Index is a data-rich resource for understanding the extent to which a housing market is providing a range of choices attainable to the regional workforce. The data can help identify gaps in home attainability and provide better context to understand residential markets; provide context by connecting housing costs to the wages earned by people with specific occupations in a region; and enable national and regional comparisons to inform housing production, policy, and financing decisions. The session will begin with Adam Ducker, CEO of RCLCO, presenting the national findings before drilling down to the local findings for each panelist. Ducker will then have panelists answer how they are addressing the particular housing needs in their market. Through this session, attendees will learn how the data can help decision-making for local economies: e.g., what type of housing is needed, and at what price point; who exactly is priced out; and how it is affecting the ability for employers to attract and retain workers.

The New York metropolitan area has 20 million residents and within the next century could see six feet of sea-level rise due to climate change. The city itself has 500 miles of coastline and faces significant challenges for long-term coastal protections, including for vulnerable and marginalized populations. While new housing opportunities are needed to create equitable, resilient development in sustainable mixed-use neighborhoods proximate to mass transit, the region also has an existing housing affordability problem that will be further stressed by climate migration and population growth over time. This panel focuses on analysis, policy response, and insight into the various challenges and opportunities for evolving the metropolitan area for future housing demand. Expertise in climate modeling, public policy, urban design, and long-term planning will be needed to create more equitable and resilient neighborhoods. Panelists will discuss how climate change will dramatically impact urban design and land use and will identify key policy considerations coupled with tactical solutions for metropolitan areas to promote future-proof planning, climate justice, and resilient design.

The past few years have brought into sharp focus the scale and breadth of the interconnecting challenges we face. Economic pressures, climate change, a generational shift in work habits, and more are challenging real estate leaders in unprecedented ways. It can be hard to know where to focus your energy and resources first. What's clear is that unique challenges require innovative solutions. Join Gensler's co-CEO Jordan Goldstein, managing principal Joe Brancato, and a panel of real estate leaders from the work, lifestyle, and cities sectors as they help you reveal the signal within all the noise. Diving into Gensler's renowned Design Forecast publication, this session will be rich with the latest trends in design for the built environment together with actionable advice and new ideas that you and your teams need to be paying attention to now and in the year ahead.

New York City has a unique and varied history developing mixed-income housing. As cities around the country grapple with a growing housing affordability crisis, state and local governments are increasingly experimenting with different programs and formats of producing mixed-income housing to address this challenge. This panel will provide a deep dive into the topic, exploring where mixed-income housing works and where it sits in the continuum of attainable housing solutions. Mixed-income housing has the potential to provide economic, social, and political benefits, including serving a wider range of incomes, improving social mobility, increasing production in supply constrained markets, and mitigating financial risk. Panelists will draw from the experiences of NYC projects such as Essex Crossing, Navy Green, and Hunter's Point South to shed light on the benefits and challenges, including NIMBYism (not in my backyard), levels of affordability, and resource allocation; demystify available financing vehicles; and identify the tools government can deploy to promote mixed-income housing.

Over the lifetime of a building, embodied carbon from materials, transportation of materials, and building construction can account for half of a building's carbon emissions. Global building floor area is expected to double by 2060, which amounts to an incredible amount of upfront carbon emissions to address in the built environment. The process, and responsibility, to do so spans multiple stakeholders: materials supply chain, structural engineers, architects, construction, and developers. No longer can excuses be made or fingers be pointed for not achieving reductions; there is an urgent need to address embodied carbon. Plus, as global momentum builds for climate action, federal, state, and local governments are introducing building-sector requirements covering both operational and embodied carbon. This session will provide perspectives from a general contractor, a structural engineer, and a developer who have successfully reduced embodied carbon in new developments. Panelists will walk the audience through embodied carbon reductions from predesign through development, building occupancy, and deconstruction, all of which encompass a vital part of the industry's journey to net zero.

Middle market to luxury senior living developments have continued sprouting up across the United States, driven by an aging population of baby boomers who are socially and culturally active. Today's seniors are retiring later, traveling more, and embarking on nontraditional live/work/play paths, which include urban lifestyles and proximity to their children. The objective of the panel is to explore the current state of senior living real estate development across the United States. The panel will discuss and debate the most valuable ideas and strategies actively evolving the industry today, with a focus on multigenerational placemaking, designing for well-being, and international influences.

Before the pandemic, Midtown East was rezoned to modernize the area’s aging building stock, which catalyzed 6.5 million square feet of new office development over the next two decades. Join us to tour some of the new and active office developments on and surrounding Park Avenue resulting from this rezoning effort.

This walking tour will begin at 1.75 million-square-foot One Vanderbilt, the tallest office tower in Midtown (standing at 1,401 feet tall) designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by SL Green and Hines, it opened in September 2020. The project included a $220 million package of public open space and transit infrastructure improvements that will help ease congestion and overcrowding on subway platforms, improve circulation in and around the terminal, and create new, direct pathways to the regional railroads.

 

The tour will also highlight the Company at 335 Madison Avenue (Milstein Properties, SHoP Architects), a 350,000-square-foot vertical tech campus with an extensive amenity program, before continuing to 343 Madison (BXP, currently under construction), a 49-story, 750,000-square-foot office tower. The tour will conclude at 399 Park Avenue, a 1,800,000-square-foot office tower developed by Boston Properties.

Beginning in the 19th century, New York’s Morningside Heights attracted important institutions that have since grown into large campuses, dominating the character of the neighborhood. These institutions are constrained by space with no obvious land for development. In response, many of these institutions have uncovered new opportunities by partnering with for-profit development teams to simultaneously revitalize the historic urban fabric and respond to the city’s ever-growing demand for housing. This has been achieved by introducing a new, denser building typology—tall, modern apartment towers—into the neighborhood. This tour will examine how a range of development groups and their design teams have leveraged the historic urban underpinnings of Morningside Heights to create new projects that demonstrate the value of vertical placemaking within the neighborhood.

Long Island City (LIC) is New York City’s fastest growing neighborhood. The city is engaged in multiple efforts to support the neighborhood’s long-term transformation into a mixed-use district. The Hunter’s Point South project is transforming the Long Island City waterfront with improved infrastructure, an 11-acre waterfront park, and 5,000 total residential units, including 3,000 affordable housing units. In 2018, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) completed the waterfront park, featuring a green stormwater infrastructure, bicycle and pedestrian pathways, adult fitness equipment, a playground, and an art installation. In fall 2023, the city kicked off the One LIC neighborhood planning study, focusing on LIC’s northern Waterfront and the industrial business zone (IBZ) located between the Waterfront and Court Square. This project seeks to leverage city-owned sites for affordable housing, promote equitable economic development, add waterfront open space, and improve circulation around the neighborhood.

 

This tour will begin at Hunter’s Point South Park, move north along the LIC waterfront to Anable Basin, and conclude at the IBZ. 

The Metropolitan Transit Authority has made sweeping investments across all three transit systems: commuter rail, subway, and national rail platforms. This tour by rail will begin at Grand Central Station to explore East Side Access, the MTA’s largest capital project, costing $11.1 billion and completed in 2023. The finished project provides Long Island Rail Road riders with 40 miles of new tracks, a new terminal beneath Grand Central, and the modernization of the busiest intersection of passenger train lines in North America.

The tour will continue to take the No. 7 subway line extension to Hudson Yards. The extension, built to facilitate West Side development, stretches 1.5 miles southwest from its previous terminus at Times Square, at Seventh Avenue and 41st Street, to one new station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue. The city and the MTA reached an agreement for the funding and construction of the No. 7 line extension in September 2006 with construction commencing in late 2007. Revenue (passenger) service began in September 2015.

 

We will then walk to Moynihan Train Hall where the tour will conclude. Moynihan Train Hall is an expansion of Pennsylvania Station, the main intercity and commuter rail station in New York City, into the city’s former main post office building, the James A. Farley Building, serving 17 of the station’s 21 tracks for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers. The 486,000 square foot complex was built to alleviate congestion in Penn Station, and the $1.6 billion renovation restored the Farley Building, including a retail space, a 320-seat waiting area for ticket-holding passengers, and public restrooms. Moynihan Train Hall facilitates the redevelopment of the larger Penn District.

Until recently, the new Hudson Yards district was simply an open swath of space peering down upon the open Amtrak and New Jersey Transit railways below. Over the course of 30-plus years, a plan was devised to build over the rail yards and create a new Manhattan neighborhood, like the creation of the Park Avenue corridor in the late 1900s. What has grown out of multiple rezoning plans and creative development teams in tandem with city and state support is an incredibly vibrant new mixed-use neighborhood dominated by developments led by the Related Group (Hudson Yards) and Brookfield Properties (Manhattan West). Located adjacent to Pennsylvania Station and the newly redeveloped Moynihan Train Hall, these developments are easily accessible and set to become the newest hub for commerce and live/work/play. The final piece of the puzzle, connecting the sites to the elevated High Line public park, was completed earlier this year. This tour will explore the history of the Hudson Yards as a whole, the engineering and development challenges of building over the railways, and the overall thesis for its success. 

Running for 1.3 miles along the Brooklyn side of the East River, Brooklyn Bridge Park has been a significant agent for transformation for the historic DUMBO neighborhood, iconic for its 19^th-century industrial architecture. Join us for a walking tour of the DUMBO waterfront, where we will explore the park’s unique resilience and sustainability efforts to create the best waterfront possible, becoming a case study for the new Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines. We will also visit several exciting adaptive reuse projects, that have taken long-abandoned 19^th-century waterfront warehouses and transformed them into vibrant cultural and commercial spaces for the community.

With the Borden Complex, its latest state-of-the-art, multi-story, multi-tenant development, Innovo Property Group is shifting the paradigm for a new generation of users seeking space in dense metropolitan markets. The Borden Complex is a five-story, 900,000-square-foot, class A mixed-use development in Long Island City designed by KSS Architects. After its completion, expected in spring 2024, the project will be home to a 680,000-square-foot last mile distribution facility, designed for shipping to much of New York City. In addition, the space will be the home of Borden Studios, a 194,000-square-foot film and television production facility that includes sound stages, as well as office space for production crews and project executives.

Customer value and driving loyalty are ubiquitous concepts when it comes to consumer industries. However, in real estate, only the hospitality sector has cracked the code on what loyalty means in the context of built environments and the experiences they contain. Both single-family and multifamily residential continue to grow as asset classes and scale players are emerging. With this growth comes the opportunity to build brand and create customer stickiness—driving both higher renewal rates and better pricing for the branded promise behind living experiences. We will discuss how customer expectations are evolving from these players, what loyalty means in the context of a living experience, and how players are leaning into digital and artificial intelligence to help power a next generation of personalized services and community with the aim of building brand. We will dive into how to take a design-led approach to building brand equity beyond naming and finishes, and using that brand strength to create unique, data-driven loyalty moments around the big "decision moments" that matter (e.g., touring, lease signing, renewal decisions). In short, this presentation, followed by a panel discussion, will aim to unpack how end-to-end experiences in the residential sector can be reimagined and digitized to drive a new frontier of loyalty and consumer brand.

Current challenges to America's office sector need not spell the death of the American city. In fact, urban office buildings and their surrounding downtowns have a distinct advantage over suburban or nonurban developments. Data suggest that while American office workers prefer the flexibility of work-from-home or hybrid work arrangements, they are still flocking to cities to recreate. This change began even before COVID, as miles of waterfront from Pittsburgh to New York were rejuvenated and activated with retail, restaurant, park, and residential uses. These well-programmed, lifestyle-focused urban developments have proven to be attractive alternatives to an increasingly online world and magnets for investment and urban innovation. The office sector's headwinds are an opportunity to rethink America's downtowns by transforming single-use, commuter-focused blocks of office buildings into places where people want to spend their leisure time—replacing central business districts with central social districts. By thinking of our downtowns as homes for social activity, we can expand the realm of what's possible and fill city centers with activity, life, and commerce.

Conventional hospital buildings will soon be outmoded. While providing a wide range of services under one roof might have seemed efficient at one time, today we understand that very few patients require so much at once. Instead, a distributed system of care—with a bevy of access points and a focus on the patient experience—more efficiently addresses needs, both physical and financial. Today's health care providers understand this and are looking for ways to cost-effectively distribute the most care to the most people, while also enhancing the experience of workers, patients, and the communities that surround them. Simultaneously, developers and owners are looking for solutions for underused real estate of nearly every type, in both downtown and suburban locations, that can be scaled nationally. This panel will bring together top players from the entire health care real estate ecosystem to examine case studies of how a decentralized model can improve health outcomes while realizing the potential of vacant commercial real estate.

Building owners, investors and tenants grapple with the costs of reducing carbon footprints while cities set aggressive goals towards achieving net zero. Meanwhile, the capital markets must determine how to finance these "green" initiatives and quantify the value and risk associated with transitioning to net zero. Join us as we explore the real costs of going to net zero, who bears the burden and the financial drivers behind this push.

Join us for an eye-opening session that will transport you to the future of the built environment. We'll step into a future state world to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) might enable better human experience and connection. During this engaging session, we'll imagine the possibilities, together. Will you be effortlessly transported from your doorstep to the office, whisked away on a cutting-edge "people mover"? Will technology become your ally, monitoring your well-being, stress levels, and productivity, providing personalized recommendations to enhance your mental health? Picture a future where your office recognizes your need for a revitalizing cup of coffee and has it waiting for you. It's time to talk about the potential of AI to enhance the human experience in the office. While everyone is discussing how AI can improve services today, few are exploring how it will revolutionize our office environments of tomorrow. Don't miss out on this invaluable session tailored for professionals, executives, and thought leaders who want to stay one step ahead in the AI-driven workplace of the future. Join us and be part of the conversation that will shape the way we work and experience the office environment in the years to come.

As the home to more than 1,500 museums, galleries, theaters, dance companies, zoos, botanical gardens, and more, New York City is clearly at the epicenter of arts and culture. Beyond these cultural organizations, arts and culture can easily be viewed in the public realm through the city's storefronts, sidewalks, and street plazas. Attracting talent and visitors alike, the vibrant cultural landscape in New York has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar sector fueling the city''s economic engine. Public investment in the arts in New York is unmatched when compared to other city and state arts councils, with only the federal government spending more. The underlying belief is that such investments in arts and culture positively impact the economy, social well-being, and community engagement. Despite its rich cultural landscape, New York City still faces challenges when addressing historic barriers such as class, race, and income inequality. Join industry professionals, civic leaders, and other major stakeholders as they discuss the challenges and opportunities when creating a cultural eco-system that is more sustainable, inclusive, and equitable for all New Yorkers.

Visit groundbreaking resilience-focused projects in Rockaway, Queens. The Arverne East project is a master-planned development transforming a 116-acre oceanfront site, composed of a 35-acre publicly accessible nature preserve, mixed-income housing of various tenure, diverse neighborhood retail, parking, and infrastructure. This project also includes a boutique hotel, recreation spaces, an urban farm, and both short- and long-term uses to encourage economic development, cultural programs, and community health and wellness. Arverne East will also include a district geothermal ambient loop, which will tie into individual building systems for increased efficiency and reduced consumption in heating, cooling, and domestic hot water.

Beach Green Dunes II is a model for resilient, green, affordable housing development, delivering 127 affordable homes to one of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Like Arvene East, this building’s design and construction uses Passive House principles, a cutting-edge sustainable building method, to increase the building’s energy efficiency. Beach Green Dunes II is a perfect example for how cities and developers can build cutting-edge sustainable design to deliver affordable housing in communities grappling with severe storms, tidal flooding, and rising sea levels.

 

Beach Green Dunes III is currently vacant land owned by the city of New York and is being developed by L+M Development Partners in conjunction with Triangle Equities and The Bluestone Organization. This project will contain residential space, commercial/retail space, and community facility space, as well as an open space transit plaza. Beach Green Dunes III will also be a Passive House–certified building and participate in the city’s Housing Development Corporation’s and Department of Housing Preservation & Development’s Extremely Low and Low Income (ELLA) housing program.

The East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) Project is a coastal protection initiative jointly funded by the city of New York and the federal government, aimed at reducing flood risk from coastal storms and sea-level rise on Manhattan’s East Side from East 25th Street to Montgomery Street. ESCR is a one-of-a-kind, forward-thinking resilience project being constructed in a dense urban environment with complex below- and above-ground infrastructure. The 2.4-mile flood protection project is intended to build physical, social, and economic resilience, strengthening the city’s coastline while improving waterfront open space and accessibility.

The boundaries of this project correspond with the natural “pinch-points” in the 100-year floodplain: areas where the land is higher along the coastline, making it easier to close the system off from water entering from the north and south. The project design integrates flood protection into the community fabric while improving waterfront access and public open space.

The ESCR Project is the first step in the city’s plan for a more extensive coastal protection system around Lower Manhattan. This project is the result of years of planning and collaboration among city, state, and federal agencies, elected officials, and the local community, which has been enabled by a $338 million federal grant to fund design and construction, with the remainder of the project's $1.45 billion total cost funded by the city of New York. The city has worked with community partners and residents to identify the best ways to meet the many challenges caused by the climate crisis, including sea level rise and more frequent, intense storms.

This tour will introduce people to portions of the project that are already completed and phases under construction in a “hard hat” tour led by DDC and the design team. Construction on the project began fall 2020 and will continue through 2026.

This tour will also visit the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resilience Project. Lower Manhattan is at the core of New York City’s transportation system, economy, and civic life. Millions of people travel through this area by rail, bus, car, and ferry every day, and the residential population has increased by 170 percent in the last two decades. By the 2040s, Lower Manhattan’s shoreline will begin to experience frequent tidal flooding from seal level rise, impacting streets, sidewalks, buildings, and critical infrastructure. Failure to act now will render much of this area unusable, leading to the loss of Lower Manhattan as we know it today. The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency (LMCR) Project is an integrated coastal protection initiative to reduce flood risk from coastal storms and sea level rise. The city, state, and federal government have committed over $1.7 billion in capital investments for climate adaptation projects.

The Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan will complete this comprehensive flood defense strategy by providing protection along the one-mile stretch of waterfront between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery. The plan features a multilevel waterfront that extends into the East River and will provide protection against both sea level rise and severe storms. This plan reflects a shared City-community vision to protect the area from climate change, while providing new universally accessible public open spaces, resilient ferry terminals and piers, and space for habitat restoration. When implemented, the Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Plan is expected to prevent $11 billion in economic losses to the city and region.

The Gowanus neighborhood has historically been best known for the toxic sludge-filled canal that runs through its center. Sandwiched between three quintessential brownstone neighborhoods–Park Slope and Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill–this 82-block swath of Brooklyn has until recently been home to a gritty mix of industrial uses, with a dash of off-beat bars and barbeque joints. After a decade-long zoning overhaul that came into effect in 2022, Gowanus is now in the middle of a dramatic transformation. A vibrant mixed-use neighborhood is emerging that eventually will include over 8,200 new apartments, including 3,000 affordable units, 500,000 square feet of commercial and maker space, and a verdant esplanade that lines both sides of a cleaned-up canal.

This walking tour will include several mixed-use, mixed-income multifamily projects in various stages of completion; a world-class anchor arts facility; an exemplar piece of green infrastructure; and the emerging public realm that ties it all together. The tour will be enriched with informal presentations by the planners, policymakers, developers, and designers who are making it all happen.

Join us for a special tour of one of New York City’s most dynamic neighborhoods, Hudson Square. The district, at the nexus of NYC’s premier retail and residential neighborhoods, is rich in history but is also leading the way in terms of sustainable design and thoughtful and contextual architecture that is appealing to some of the world’s largest and most innovative office tenants, including Google, Horizon Media, Publicis Groupe and Squarespace. Trinity Church Wall Street, steward of the neighborhood since the early 1700s, helped usher in a residential rezoning that has allowed the neighborhood to flourish, and, in partnership with Norges Bank and Hines, Trinity Church has repositioned their more than 6 million-square-foot portfolio of purpose-built printing house buildings to cater to modern office needs in a Class A manner.

The group will tour a cornerstone of the Hudson Square portfolio, 555 Greenwich + 345 Hudson. 555 Greenwich is a 270,000-square-foot ground-up development designed by COOKFOX Architects that is the completion of the adjacent property, 345 Hudson (built in 1931), to create a 1.2 million-square-foot interconnected campus. 555 Greenwich represents the next generation of high-performing buildings and will exceed NYC’s 2030 climate targets for office buildings by over 45 percent and align with New York State 2050 carbon-neutral targets. 345 Hudson is one of three commercial buildings selected to participate in the Empire Building Challenge’s low-carbon public/private design partnership.

We will follow with a tour of 550 Washington, the 1.3 million-square-foot home to Google's headquarters designed by COOKFOX, and end at historic Pier 57. Originally constructed in 1952, the newly restored mixed-use pier features Little Island, an award-winning public park and urban oasis, a waterfront food market, ample indoor/outdoor community spaces, and an interactive gallery and classroom focused on wildlife and waterways.

In 2011, Cornell Tech emerged as the winner of a global contest—Mayor Bloomberg’s Applied Sciences NYC Initiative—that was designed to dramatically expand the city’s capacity in the applied sciences sector to maintain the city’s global competitiveness and create jobs. The winning bid by Cornell Tech, a partnership between Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, proposed the development of a 2-million-square-foot innovative science campus on Roosevelt Island, which will serve more than 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff upon its completion. By 2017, the $1 billion, 850,000-square-foot first phase opened, boasting a net-zero academic building, a striking co-location office building, a 40,000-square-foot conference center, a 224-room hotel and a residential tower with 350 apartments in the largest Passive House tower in the world at the time of its opening. The campus embodies New York’s commitment to technology’s growing impact in New York City. Discover Cornell Tech: NYC’s thriving innovation hub!

Explore the high-rise building boom that’s transformed New York City’s skyline in recent years. This tour will visit high-rises along Central Park West, Central Park South, and Park Avenue that have set records for some of the most expensive home sales in U.S. history but have also set the stage for the supertalls that have joined New York’s skyline in recent years.

In response to the pandemic and the global push for racial justice, the Freedom West team and future development is prioritizing equity in the built environment. This panel explores an "Equity by Design" framework to design and development, uncovering a community's needs and aspirations—including underserved voices—and tying design solutions to what is heard. Freedom West 2.0 will exemplify an Equity by Design approach through the revitalization of Freedom West Homes in San Francisco, the largest and oldest co-op in western North America. Spanning four city blocks, the project encompasses 382 existing homes and 2,000 new ones. Its primary objective is to provide a sustainable future for the predominantly African American and East Asian population in the area. The master plan and conceptual design revolves around restoring the city grid and urban neighborhood character, as opposed to the current forced suburban layout, driven by the city's density reduction agenda, particularly affecting ethnic communities. MacFarlane Partners, Legacy First Partners, and Avanath Capital Management have fully committed to community equity. This approach not only considers the co-op's spatial requirements but also its values.

In recent decades, no building material has inspired awe, passion, and innovation like mass timber. Nature's building solution is transforming the construction industry because it sequesters carbon, greatly improves speed and precision, significantly reduces the size of the framing crew, and, most important, creates a superior product that occupants love. The United States has been behind Europe and Canada in the production and use of mass timber and many municipal codes haven't even contemplated tall timber as a solution. But in recent years that has changed, as companies such as Google, Adidas, Atlassian, and Walmart have embraced mass timber and cities have updated codes to allow for taller mass timber structures to be built. This session serves as a "state of the union" for mass timber: how far it has come, its massive future potential, and the biggest challenges (and solutions) for its progress.

Fifteen-minute communities hold the promise of accelerating decarbonization, increasing housing affordability, reducing climate and health risks, and fostering social equity. This approach to city building lays a foundation for developing compact, mixed-use, and walkable communities that can increase real estate value, create co-benefits for joint use and co-location, and generate new resources to help invest in local communities. The ULI Curtis Infrastructure Initiative created Building 15-Minute Communities: A Leadership Guide to share actionable leadership strategies across public, private, and nonprofit sectors to decarbonize metro regions with a network of 15-minute transit-oriented communities; diversify urban central business districts into affordable, live-in downtowns; humanize edge cities into heat-proof, resilient, retirement, and child-friendly communities; densify suburban corridors into walkable, mixed-use innovation districts; transform suburban malls into transit and trail-oriented mixed-use communities; and activate exurbs as working landscapes of agrihoods and nature-based solutions. Learn about this practical tool for aligning leadership actions to implementation.

This session will cover the opportunities and challenges in developing mixed- or middle-income, infill multifamily development—often referred to as "missing middle" housing. Using real development case studies presented by three developers, the panel will cover both rental multifamily and homeownership development models. The case studies will show how we can deliver housing more affordably than typical market-rate development and more efficiently than typical affordable housing development, using creative financing tools that blend private impact equity with strategic public financing sources.