On Thursday, August 21, 2008, the Houston District Council of the Urban Land Institute will hold its first-ever Suburban Marketplace conference at The Woodlands Waterway Marriott. The half-day conference is modeled on the highly-successful ULI Houston Urban Marketplace conference, which has, for each of the past three years in which it has been held, attracted over 600 attendees and almost 60 exhibitors from the for-profit, not-for-profit, and public sectors, bringing members of the development and land use community together to meet, share experiences and best practices, and lay the foundation for future collaborative efforts.

The half-day Suburban Marketplace conference will feature a luncheon with keynote speaker, discussion panels, roundtable discussion groups, a marketplace with exhibitors, and a cocktail reception—all with a focus on promoting best practices in suburban development. For this year’s keynote speaker, we are excited to have Mr. Gadi Kaufmann, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of RCLCO (Robert Charles Lesser & Co.), the largest independent real estate advisory firm in the nation. Mr. Kaufmann will begin our discussion of the latest trends in suburban development, to be continued through our after-luncheon discussion panels and roundtable discussion groups. Please join us, and be a part of this important discussion about our region’s future.

10:00 am - Registration Opens

10:00 am - 5:00 pm - Exhibitors' Marketplace
Exhibitors from development companies and development service providers, as well as from governmental and quasi-governmental entities, market their development plans, incentives, and services to other developers and financiers.  

10:30 am – 11:30 am - Tours offered of Woodlands Town Center
(Tour repeats at 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm, per below)

12:00 noon - 1:30 pm - Luncheon with Keynote Speaker, Gadi Kaufmann, Managing Director and CEO of RCLCO
As Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of RCLCO (Robert Charles Lesser & Co.), the largest independent real estate advisory firm in the nation, Gadi Kaufmann brings an immense wealth of knowledge and experience to bear on our conference topic: current trends in suburban development. Among RCLCO’s many research and advisory activities is its annual survey of the nation’s master-planned communities, which provides valuable insights on which communities are flourishing, and why. Learn what consumers are looking for, and which trends are proving to be successful even in challenging market conditions.

1:45 pm - 3:15 pm - Discussion Panel #1- Fostering Suburban Development through Regional Cooperation

Speakers:

Roger Galatas, President and CEO, Roger Galatas Interests presentation .ppt format Doug Goff, Senior Vice-President and Director, The Johnson Development Corp. Jeff Taebel, Director of Community and Environmental Planning, H-GAC presentation .ppt format Marilee Utter, President, Citiventure Associates, LLC presentation .ppt format

Economic development no longer occurs merely among cities, but rather among entire regions, necessitating greater intra-regional cooperation. Working across multiple jurisdictional lines creates new challenges, though, both for the developer and for the public policy-maker. How have multiple public-sector entities successfully worked together, with each other and with the private sector, to facilitate improvements in suburban development? We will look at our own region and efforts currently underway here, and will also study one of our region’s economic competitors: the Denver region, where the mayors of Denver and 36 surrounding suburbs have formed the Metro Mayor’s Caucus, a working partnership that is credited with facilitating development across jurisdictional lines, and with accomplishing regional initiatives such as the six-billion dollar FasTracks program for the expansion of regional transit.

3:30 pm - 5:00 pm - Discussion Panel #2- "So You Think You Can Be a Town Center?"

Speakers:

Alex Sutton, President, The Woodlands Development Company presentation .ppt format Steve Kellenberg, Principal, EDAW presentation .ppt format Woody Mann, President, Vista Equities Group presentation .ppt format Zane Segal, President, Zane Segal Projects, Inc.

The terms "town center" and "village center" are the new buzzwords of suburban development, and are used to describe virtually every type of retail or mixed-use project, from a neighborhood strip to the 1000-acre Woodlands Town Center, where Suburban Marketplace is being held. This seminar, featuring a distinguished panel of both local and out-of-the-region developers, will highlight the scalability, synergistic mixture of uses, advantages, and constraints of this renewed type of social and real estate focus for areas as small as a few hundred homes and as large as small cities. Town and village centers are not new concepts, obviously, but they are being developed to higher and better standards in their latest incarnations. This session will push the understanding of how these complex projects really function, both during their development phases and their operational lives.

1:30 pm - 5:00 pm - Roundtable Discussion Groups
Experts from the real estate sector and other industries, government, non-profits, and academia sit at six tables throughout the room, where attendees can ask questions and engage them and fellow attendees in a free-flowing and more in-depth, personal conversation on issues raised during the luncheon presentation and discussion panels.

5:00 pm - 6:00 pm - Tours offered of Woodlands Town Center
(repeat of tour offered from 10:30 am - 11:30 am, per above)

5:00 pm - 6:30 pm - Cocktail Reception
Participants put the information they have gained and the contacts they have made to immediate use, interacting with one another to lay the foundation for future collaborative efforts.

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Suburban Marketplace Committee:

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Please click here for more information about exhibiting at Suburban Marketplace (please note that exhibit space is included for all Suburban Marketplace Sponsors- if you have already completed the Sponsor Commitment Form, you do not need to complete the Exhibitors Registration form included in this packet; you would only complete the Exhibit Information Form).