Jury

Jury Chair
James J. Curtis III
Principal
Bristol Group
San Francisco, California

James J. Curtis III, CRE, is co-founder and principal of Bristol Group, Inc. Bristol Group is a real estate investment and development firm based in San Francisco. Its portfolio is national in scope and consists of over 13 million square feet of properties and over 3.5 million square feet in pre-development. The firm is broken into two components: the first is a private industrial company of over 9 million square feet focused in Southern California, Chicago, Northern New Jersey, and Miami; the second component is composed of a variety of value added opportunities.

Jim serves as a ULI Trustee. He is also a member of and on the board of governors for the American Society of Real Estate Counselors and Lambda Alpha International. He received the 1997 Graaskamp Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Wisconsin Business School. In 2004 Curtis received the Counselors of Real Estate Lovejoy Service Award. Curtis holds a BS in Finance and Economics from Marquette University and an MS in Real Estate/Urban Land Economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Chad Barron
Principal
Pioneer Property Group
Seattle, Washington

Chad Barron is a principal and co-founder of Pioneer Property Group, a Seattle-based, vertically integrated development company which specializes in urban projects. He is presently the managing member of development, overseeing investor relations, securing project financing, and leading company and project marketing efforts.

Barron's extensive real estate background includes over a decade managing multi-family Seattle properties, eight years working in key roles for a Seattle-area developer, and two years in commercial finance with St. George IFS in Kirkland. He has also enjoyed entrepreneurial success in the travel and high tech sectors. Barron is deeply committed to community involvement as the Program Co-Chair of ULI’s Seattle Young Leaders Group and as an active member of the Downtown Seattle Association and Habitat for Humanity.

Ray Brown
Architect/Designer
Self Tucker Architecture, Inc.
Memphis, Tennessee

Ray Brown offers architectural and urban design consulting services to diverse clients including municipalities, community development corporations, downtown redevelopment agencies, private developers, and architects.

Ray has more than 35 years of experience in both architectural and urban design. However, his passion is for downtown and neighborhood design and planning, and for designing buildings that enhance the existing urban fabric.

He prefers projects that have the best potential for improving the quality of life for disadvantaged urban residents in at-risk neighborhoods. As a practicing architect, Ray has designed both single-family homes and multifamily projects that combine today’s construction techniques with historical design precedents to produce affordable buildings that comfortably fit their contexts.

During his tenure as Vice President for Development of the Memphis Center City Commission, Ray reviewed proposals for downtown development projects that conformed to the overall Memphis downtown development goals and financial incentive eligibility requirements, evaluated and selected sites for proposed projects, and prepared preliminary development proformas.

As Project Director for the Memphis Redbirds, Ray directed the design and construction of AutoZone Park, the nation’s premiere minor league baseball park.

Ray is an active member of the Urban Land Institute and the Congress for New Urbanism, and has participated in ten previous ULI Advisory Panels in cities across the country, chairing two.

Donald K. Carter, FAIA, FAICP
President
Urban Design Associates
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Don Carter is president of Urban Design Associates. He has led many of UDA’s most complex projects, drawing upon his broad and deep national experience as an architect, urban designer, and developer. He has helped establish public participation planning processes and design charrettes as core disciplines within the firm. Carter uses urban design as a creative tool to develop community consensus and public approvals in often very difficult and contentious situations. A member of UDA since 1973, he serves as principal-in-charge on a wide range of projects.

Carter is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, and a member of the Urban Land Institute, serving nationally as Chair of the ULI Inner City Council. Previously, he served on the ULI Affordable Housing Forum, ULI Infill Development Forum, ULI Residential Development Council (Silver), and ULI Entertainment Development Council. Carter is past Chair of the ULI Pittsburgh District Council, and past President of the Pittsburgh Chapter, AIA.

Carter has lectured and published internationally on urban design and architecture. He serves on the board of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and the Andy Warhol Museum. Previously he served on the boards of the Pittsburgh Zoo, Leadership Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Pittsburgh Public Theater, and LaRoche College Board of Regents.

Carter earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and did post graduate work in urban design and regional planning at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, following his military service with the U.S. Army. He was also a consultant to General Motors, Heinz, and Alcoa regarding the reuse of access land parcels, including their potential for mixed-use and residential developments.

William D. Chilton, AIA
Managing Principal
Pickard Chilton
New Haven, Connecticut

William Chilton has directed architectural work on projects for leading corporate and institutional clients worldwide. He has collaborated on the design of Four Seasons Centre, a 3.1 million gsf development in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Crawford Long Hospital and Conservatory in Atlanta; Potomac Yard in Arlington, Virginia; AIM Corporate Headquarters in Houston; the 70-story Four Seasons Hotel & Residences in Dubai; and the CalPERS Headquarters complex in Sacramento.

Prior to the founding of Pickard Chilton, he collaborated on such notable buildings as the Science Museum of Minnesota and Kingdom Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Art Institute of Chicago selected Kingdom Centre, the tallest mixed-use complex in Europe and the Middle East, for the international exhibition, Skyscrapers: The New Millennium. As Ellerbe Becket's president of architecture and principal, he served on the board of directors and management committee and was responsible for the firm-wide practice for corporate clients. He has collaborated on numerous projects for Dow Chemical, DuPont, Conoco and other international corporations.

Chilton received a B.A. in architecture from Iowa State University and a M.Arch. from the University of Minnesota. In 1995 he was awarded the Design Achievement Award by Iowa State University for distinguished contributions to the arts. He currently serves on the boards of the Iowa State University College of Design and the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Todd Johnson, FASLA
Principal
Design Workshop
Denver, Colorado

Todd Johnson is a principal at Design Workshop where he has focused his efforts in the planning and design of urban redevelopment and brown-field sites. Design Workshop is an award-winning, international firm practicing landscape architecture, land planning, urban design, and tourism planning. They combine principles of smart growth, sustainable design and environmentally sound planning to reconcile economic needs with the preservation of scenic, cultural and community values. The firm comprises 140 designers, planners, and support staff in 10 North and South American offices in Aspen, Denver, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Lake Tahoe, Asheville, N.C., São Paulo, Brazil, Santiago, Chile, and Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Their work has been recognized with more than 70 awards from such organizations as the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association, and ULI.

Design Workshop was started in 1969 by Joe Porter and Don Ensign, who were teaching landscape architecture at North Carolina State University when they decided to found the firm, naming it for the collaborative process with which they taught. Their earliest projects engaged them in planning new communities in Columbia, Maryland, and Raleigh, North Carolina, as well as resort work on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Large ski-resort projects brought them to the western United States in the early 1970s, where they began to develop expertise in mountain, desert, and prairie ecology. A focus on urban design and strategic services resulted in the founding of the Denver office, followed by an expansion throughout the West. In the late 1990s, the firm added three offices in South America and in 2002, it established both a North Carolina office and a strategic alliance with the Canadian firm LANDPLAN in Calgary.

In addition to environmentally sensitive projects in residential, golf-course, ski resort and campus work, the firm’s current portfolio also includes the redevelopment of several former industrial sites to create large transit-oriented, mixed-use projects and the creation of sustainable new communities with significant public spaces.

Johnson holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He has worked on redevelopment and urban design projects in the U.S., Canada, the Middle East, and the Far East.

Signe Nielsen
Principal
Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects PC
New York, New York

Signe Nielsen brings extensive experience to the field of landscape architecture. She has designed and supervised the construction of over $310 million worth of projects including private estates, waterfront parks, large campuses, urban transportation improvements, and corporate facilities in the United States and abroad.

A Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Ms. Nielsen’s design work has received awards from the Art Commission of the City of New York, the ASLA, the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and the New York State Association of the American Institute of Architects. In 2003, Ms. Nielsen was appointed to the New York City Art Commission for a three-year term. Her work has been published in the periodicals Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Landscape Architecture and in the books International Landscape Design, Designing the New Landscape, and Yearbook of Landscape Architecture, among others. Exhibits of her work have been show in New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

Born in Paris, Ms. Nielsen holds degrees in Urban Planning from Smith College; in Landscape Architecture from City College of New York; and in Construction Management from Pratt Institute.

Ms. Nielsen, principal of her own design firm for 20 years, also directed a landscape construction and maintenance firm for 10 years. Ms. Nielsen has been a speaker and juror for events sponsored by many professional and educational organizations and served as panelist on the New York State Council on the Arts. She is currently a Professor in both the graduate and undergraduate Schools of Architecture at Pratt Institute and has been a faculty member at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and City College School of Architecture. Ms. Nielsen is a registered landscape architect in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maryland and holds a Council of Landscape Architectural Review Boards certificate.

Enrique Peñalosa
Former Mayor of Bogotá
New York, New York

Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá and a Presidential candidate in Colombia, is an accomplished public official, economist, and administrator. While Mayor of Bogotá (1998-2001), he led a number of transportation-related efforts, stressing access for the impoverished and the need for public spaces. During his tenure, he built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, bicycle paths, and greenways, and added more than 1,200 parks. A firm believer in the needs of pedestrians, Peñalosa restricted peak hour traffic and convinced the City Council to increase the gasoline tax, directing the resulting revenues toward a new Bus Rapid Transit system that now serves 500,000 Bogotá residents daily. In 2000, he instituted the city’s first “Car-Free Day,” for which he received the Stockholm Challenge Award.

Peñalosa holds masters and doctorate degrees in management and public administration from the Institut International D’Administration Publique and the University of Paris II in Paris. He has been a Visiting Scholar at New York University where he worked on a new urban development model for the Third World. He has been awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship and National Simon Bolivar Prize for Journalism. He has also traveled extensively with the World Bank and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Financial Advisers

Kenneth H. Hughes
President
Hughes Development, L.P.
Dallas, Texas

Since 1983, Hughes’ companies have developed numerous projects in the Southwest and have consulted on several major projects in Mexico. The area of emphasis for Hughes has been large, inner-city mixed-use developments containing loft apartments, office, retail and entertainment uses.

A major current development is So7 in Fort Worth, Texas. This 25 acre, inner city development has been in planning and initial construction since 2000 and currently includes a Marriott Hotel, luxury townhouses and a townhouse/condo. When completed, the overall development will be approximately $360 million in new construction.

Transit-oriented development has been one of the company’s interests in recent years. Mockingbird Station represents that development type in a major way. It currently includes a luxury, 211-unit loft apartment component built atop one of four retail buildings, 170,000 square feet of office, 200,000 square feet of shopping/entertainment and 1,600 structured, underground and surface parking spaces.

Hughes began his career with the Henry S. Miller Company in Dallas, Texas. With the company for fifteen years, he eventually became Executive Vice-President and a member of the board of directors. He attended The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business. He is a member of and serves in a leadership capacity in several professional and civic organizations. In Washington, D.C., he has been a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and Chairman of The Dollars and Centers of Shopping Centers, ULI. He currently is on the Policy and Practice Committee of the ULI and is a Governor of the Institute. He also has served on the Board of Directors of the Real Estate Council in Dallas and has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Cox School of Business and the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. He has served as a board member of Theatre Three, a respected local repertory company and provided the match funding for the current theatre building. He currently serves on and is a Life Member of the Advisory Council of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture He also served for three years on the Mayor of Dallas’ Inside the Loop Committee for the rebuilding of downtown Dallas.

John M. Walsh III
President
TIG Real Estate Services, Inc.
Dallas, Texas

Walsh is the President and founder of TIG. TIG has developed over 2 million square feet on behalf of its institutional clients. Prior to starting TIG, Walsh spent 17 years with Trammell Crow Company in various leasing, development, and senior management roles. During his tenure as development partner for the Northwest Dallas area market at Trammell Crow, he developed almost 5 million square feet and leased over 8 million square feet of office, industrial and service center space.

A Dallas native, Walsh has served as Chairman, Director, and Trustee of various business and charitable organizations including: Trammell Crow Employees Profit Sharing Trust, Valwood Improvement Authority, Carrollton Zoning Ordinance Board, Texas Commerce Bank, Valwood Park Federal Credit Union, and Sky Ranch Youth Camp. He has also served on working committees and boards for the City of Carrollton, the City of University Park, Highland Park Independent School District, and the City of Framers Branch.

Walsh has served as a volunteer member of numerous ULI Advisory Services Panels including panels in Hengelo, The Netherlands; St. Joseph, MO; Richmond, VA; and Portsmouth, VA. He has participated as a speaker for ULI at both the national and local level and has served as a Product Council Chair at ULI and currently presides as Chair of the North Texas District Council of ULI.

Walsh is a member of the Texas State Bar, with a Law Degree from Texas Tech University School of Law. He served for ten years as an adjunct professor of Business Law at Dallas Community College and the University of Texas at Arlington. He earned his undergraduate degree from University of Texas, Arlington.