Designing Downtown: Using the Economics of Place to Guide Design

APA-NJ Members received a 10% discount by clicking here.  

Featuring nationally-acclaimed Kennedy Lawson Smith of The C.L.U.E. Group

(Here is her bio.) 

Held the restored Ashley McCormick Center in Bridgeton – NJ’s largest historic district – and a Main Street New Jersey community since 1991. 

During this day-long workshop, nationally and internationally-renowned Kennedy Smith will take you through the relationship between successful “places”, best practices for economic analysis, and making the most of historic assets.

APA 5.0 CM Credits Pending 

Agenda 

8:30am – 9:15am — Registration and Networking
9:15am – 9:30am — Welcome & Overview
9:30am – 11:30am — The Economics of Place

Kennedy will teach participants about how to leverage their traditional downtowns, their character, their buildings into a more sustainable model for the current and coming economic climate.  This section will include cutting edge approaches to using rehabilitation financing tools and other approaches to bringing investment into downtown districts.   Kennedy will answer the following questions:

• What does “the economics of place” mean, anyway?
• What does “economic growth” mean now?
• How are retail markets changing, and what does that mean for downtowns?
• Why doesn’t the old market analysis methodology work anymore?
• What new tools are communities using?

11:30pm – 1:00pm — Lunch on your own, Networking, & Exploring Dowtown Bridgeton

• Bridgeton has NJ’s largest historic district and a rich tapestry of commercial, residential and mixed use buildings representing centuries of architectural history. Take some time to look around at the assets, challenges, and change, both positive and negative, affecting this downtown, grabbing a local lunch to eat along the Cohansey River or in their beautiful pocket park, both close by to the workshop site.

In the afternoon, we will use examples from some of Kennedy’s most challenging recent assignments to explore solutions and brainstorm strategies for preserving and reusing historic commercial places. The following case studies will be used and applied to NJ-based downtown scenarios:

• 200 medieval Transylvanian churches
• High-value Pacific Ocean viewsheds
• A historic Civil War battlefield

3:15pm – 4:00pm — Barriers to Economic Development in Your “Place”

This session will allow participants to hone in on their local barriers to economic development in their communities and to use the strategic approaches and focused tactics and resources learned about earlier in the day to begin to develop solutions to those local barriers.