STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
If there was one thing you could change, address, etc. about Miami, what would it be?
All politicians would be in it for the little guy, not themselves.
Elected officials would make decisions based on creating a
legacy of inclusion.
What are you looking forward to in 2023?
World travel and more work being an evangelist for
Universal Design and a barrier-free built environment.
STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
What’s your favorite local social media account and why?
@BecauseMiami, because it’s snarky, sardonic
and cynical.
If you could give any one piece of advice to locals, what would
it be?
Love people who are different than you. Learn from
them; drink in their culture.
How does Miami help you do what you do or influence your work?
I’m from Ohio. It’s sure nice to have warm, sunny winters.
That gets me going when I’m having trouble writing or launching a big project.
STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
Share your other top three destinations for where you’d go on your perfect Miami day.
(1) Miami Beach at 5:00 a.m. to run on the sand till
the sun rises.
(2) Ball and Chain in the heart of Calle Ocho
for great music, drink, and vibes any time — day or night.
(3) Play on the grass at William Jennings Bryan Park,
because I live on it and spent more than two years protecting the one acre of
greenspace from being paved over.
STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
What’s your favorite Miami memory?
Getting to create, from scratch, a revolutionary
course on Universal Design.
I taught it to graduate and undergraduate
architecture and urban design students at the University of Miami School of
Architecture.
If you could eat only one meal from a local
restaurant for the rest of your life, what would it be?
A BBQ steak sub, well done, on wheat, no cheese,
black olives as the only condiment, and hot cherry peppers on the side.
From Super Subs, an institution on Bird Road in
South Miami.
(I eat less than half the sub bun and have no fries or chips to keep it healthy!)
STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
What brings you most alive about the 305?
Walking for entertainment and exercise.
I lost 125 pounds eating healthier and walking from
my home in Shenandoah to the Miami River and throughout Little Havana.
I documented the Art Deco, Spanish Mission,
Mediterranean, and other 1920s to 1940s classic apartment, commercial, spiritual,
and single-family homes.
My images were part of a six month, one-man Local
Artist exhibition at the Art Deco Welcome Center in Miami Beach
It ran through mid-February 2024.
STORYTELLER AND ADVOCATE
Howdy, Steve! Who are you? What do you do?
I am a writer, visual artist, keynote speaker,
planner, educator, and advocate.
I work for myself, creating content about Universal
Design and a better built environment for people with disabilities.
My clients include the National Association of
REALTORS, the United Spinal Association, the American Planning Association,
Global Disability Inclusion Inc., and many others.
I also create workshops and speeches about how to
make cities more inclusive for all.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
“Transformative placemaking focuses on neighborhoods and places at a hyper-local scale. It brings together programs, policies and practices that are intersectional,” said Tracy Hadden Loh, a Fellow at The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program-Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking.
“It combines the best of
economic development and infrastructure and the environmental movement.”
To increase the odds of success, the report suggests that
federal funds flow through to local areas only with “preconditions for growth
present and some assets for investment to scaffold onto,” such as potential
transit-oriented development; anchor institutions like universities and
hospitals; existing initiatives aimed at supporting local entrepreneurship and
business incubation; cultural activity clusters; or commitments to build rural
infrastructure.
“At the local level, we must break down silos [and] get the planner talking to the economic developer talking to the director of public works etc.,” Loh said.
“Anything else is pushing a boulder uphill.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
The Brookings report proposes what it has dubbed direct seed funding.
“Through this program, the Treasury Department would establish and capitalize state revolving loan funds that would provide direct seed capital through a combination of low-interest, potentially forgivable debt and working equity to locally managed neighborhood investment funds.
A one-time, $2-billion capitalization of these funds would yield $80 million at 4-percent interest to loan annually without touching the principal.
A 10-percent add-on to each transaction for working equity to
support local capacity-building would consume less than 0.5 percent of the
principal balance.”
The local neighborhood investment funds would allow residents of
eligible geographic areas — together with other public, private, and nonprofit
investors — to collectively purchase and develop or redevelop land or buildings
in commercial corridors in the targeted areas.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Tracy Hadden Loh is a Fellow at The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program-Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking.
She co-authored an inclusive neighborhood
revitalization report proposing that the federal government partner with state
and local governments to facilitate the local ownership of real estate in disinvested
urban and rural commercial corridors.
The report looks at more than $100 billion spent by Community Development Block Grant, empowerment zone and opportunity zone programs, plus a host of other federal spending programs and their relative failure at uplifting poor, marginalized communities.
Many of the failures are because the programs are directed at outside capital, which doesn’t deliver cash to local entrepreneurs that can build wealth in a poor community and who understand the unique needs of the community.
Funding zones also often are too geographically
broad, so money is not invested in the areas that need targeting the most.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Stephen L. Atkins, principal & managing director of SouthEast Development Group, said the pro forma calculated $1.75 per square foot to make the deal work and new leases are going at $3 per square foot — an endorsement for urban living in Jacksonville. Twenty percent of the Residences at Barnett rent as workforce housing.
“We didn’t receive any incentives, other than financing. We financed under the new market tax credit structure.
Also, my company has a
subsidiary certified to do tax credits, so we used federal historic tax
credits.”
He noted that occupying the Barnett building helped spur his
more than $70 million mixed-use project across the street, featuring an
Autograph Collection hotel, 170 multifamily units and commercial developed out
of a trio of historic buildings plus an infill new build.
“Jacksonville, like a lot of cities, was not the greatest steward of the golden age of buildings,” Atkins said.
“A lot of great buildings were torn down and replaced with postmodern stuff. The thing about adaptive reuse is if you don’t make it work and support it, once the great buildings are gone, they’re gone.
No amount of subsidy can take you back in time to preserve a razed building.
People want to be in a
vibrant downtown environment and converting old office buildings to residential
creates that.”
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Stephen L. Atkins, principal & managing director of SouthEast Development Group in Jacksonville, Fla., helped preserve that city’s most-treasured landmark after several attempts failed.
Barnett National Bank once was Florida’s largest
commercial bank, and its 1926-vintage, 18-story Renaissance Revival-style
headquarters would be at home among the best of New York or Chicago
skyscrapers.
The redeveloped building features 107 residential units on the top 13 floors, offices below that and a bank branch on the ground floor.
A change in office
tenants may allow for another 45 apartments in the building.
The Barnett
National Bank building in Jacksonville, Fla., was repurposed into a mixed-use
development.
“We delivered the project right in the middle of COVID, but it had 100-percent occupancy in a few months, and we have a waiting list of 40 or more,” Atkins said.
“The smallest studio is about 540 square feet and the biggest two bedroom
is more than 1,000. It’s mostly young professionals, but we have a mix of
business executives, empty nesters, the arts community.”
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
The historic Luna Lodge on Route 66 in Albuquerque, N.M., was converted into affordable housing
Ultimately, the historic features were preserved, and 28 units of affordable housing were created, earning an award from the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition.
The NAR report notes the heavy subsidies the
project required, including: $3.3 million from out-of-state buyers of tax
credits, $1.24 million from a City of Albuquerque Workforce Housing
Construction Loan Grant, $344,120 in historic tax credit equity, $210,000 from
the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas Affordable Housing Program and $100,000
from the Environmental Protection Agency/New Mexico Environment Department.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
A case study compiled by an NAR colleague of Snowden cited the Luna Lodge redevelopment as a prime example of overcoming hurdles.
The Pueblo Revival-style 1940s vintage Route 66 motel in Albuquerque, N.M., was on the National Register of Historic Places, but was declared unsafe to occupy and substandard when a city inspection discovered a litany of issues including raw sewage on the site.
The city approved rezoning
to allow conversion to affordable units, but a neighbor litigated the zoning
and the project endured 16 months of delay while the case went to the New
Mexico Court of Appeals.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
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Brandi Snowden, NAR’s director of Member and Consumer Survey Research, said surveys done before and during the pandemic showed that zoning was often the biggest hurdle for adaptive reuse.
When hotels experienced extreme vacancy rates during COVID, a lot of people looked at alternate uses.
But even though hotels already had
multiple units and fairly high density, many cities made it difficult to
convert hotel rooms to small workforce or senior housing units.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Michael Mouron, founder of Capstone Real Estate, currently is seeking office tenants for the Streamline Moderne Greyhound Bus station in Birmingham, a vacant building historic for its 1961 stop by the Freedom Riders.
The building is refurbished into a shell, awaiting a build-to-suit tenant.
“With adaptive reuse, I’ve found that most people can’t walk into an old building in need of repair and be able to envision what it can become.
For that reason, I’ve always done the core and shell of historic
building first — so people can at least see it restored,” he said.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
“I have $25 million invested in the historic Federal Reserve.
It appraised for $18 million.
The difference between the $25 million and the reasonable $18 million appraisal was state and federal tax credits,” said Michael Mouron, founder of Capstone Real Estate.
“The cost to restore the building would not manifest itself in rents that would justify the investment.
So, tax credits rejuvenated a long-vacant building and created a restoration so appealing that it ran on the cover of a National Park Service report.
The backup bid to my development proposal was a
surface parking lot — the entire building would have been razed.”
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
“The key to effective historic renovation is state and federal historic tax credits.
There’s a misconception that historic renovation should be cheaper than new construction,” Michael Mouron, founder of Capstone Real Estate, said.
“People say ‘you have a building already, why would it be so expensive?’
Renovation
certainly can be less expensive, but if you’re really trying to do first-class
historic renovation using matching materials, such as granite beveled stone;
drilling through a federal bank vault; preserving huge windows; putting in HVAC
to heat and cool 20-foot-tall rooms, not 8-foot ones — it’s going to be
expensive.”
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Birmingham’s Federal Reserve building had been vacant for 15 years before Michael Mouron, founder of Capstone Real Estate, acquired it.
The building now is 100 percent occupied, including two levels of basement, the upper one containing a fitness center.
The ground floor has a branch bank and restaurant.
The second floor has
an advertising/marketing firm, the third a real estate company and a law firm
occupies the fourth and fifth floors.
The vacant Federal Reserve building in Birmingham, Ala., was restored into an office and retail complex.
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
“If a building is in a good location — and that doesn’t mean it has to be at the corner of Main and Main Streets — if it has some innate charm to it, it’s a great candidate for adaptive reuse,” he said.
“If it has high
ceilings and some good onsite parking, it can work.”
THE BENEFITS AND TECHNIQUES TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
Michael Mouron, founder of Capstone Real Estate, has a long history of reviving classic and historical buildings in his Birmingham, Ala., base and beyond.
He even purchased the 1929 Art Deco downtown Akron, Ohio, building that was home to the Pulitzer-winning powerhouse Beacon Journal Newspaper.
He tried to turn it into
office space for a branch of FedEx then a new Akron City Police headquarters
and is still searching for an adaptive reuse after those deals failed to come
to fruition.
