Citiventure specializes in one-of-a-kind projects. The more transformational the real estate opportunity, the greater the need for strong leadership. A good project is a Venn Diagram of relationships, design, uses, markets, funding, politics, and implementation. It must work for the landowner, developer, local jurisdiction, investor and the community. Citiventure provides this essential leadership to all business sectors, and has a track record of bringing people and projects together with impressive results.

We provide a full array of development strategy and advisory services.

• Defining success
• Identifying and selecting the best sites and developers
• Assembling and organizing the right team
• Finding common ground with landowners, developers, business owners, public officials and community leaders
• Deriving a market-driven, community-sensitive development program
• Determining timing and implementation
• Formulating design options
• Addressing the inevitable surprises and challenges
• Telling the story
• Coaching along the way

P3s have become an irresistible buzzword; when a project lacks capital, invariably someone will suggest a public private partnership (P3)—regardless of whether they are on the private or the public side.

What this means and what is actually needed vary widely, however. P3 collaborations range from an informal agreement to work on a community vision, to a comprehensively documented Design Build Finance Operate Maintain (DBFOM) investment deal. Fueled by aging infrastructure and growing communities, P3s today are a dizzying and dynamic world encompassing high-powered risk analytics, inventive deal structures, global players, and surprising alliances and partners.

Ultimately, most successful P3s are an appropriate package of benefits that each party contributes to enable a project to be done faster, better, easier or cheaper than otherwise possible. Special districts, tax increment financings, density bonuses, low cost interest loans, tax credits and tax reduction incentives are common in this category. Citiventure can help sort through the maze of what each project needs, available tools, what's achievable, appropriate partners, key deal points, and how to explain the deal.

Development around transit is harder to design, entitle, finance and build than most kinds of development. While market demand is usually strong, TODs face issues of density, mix of uses, last mile and other connections, parking, intermodal interface, open space, affordability, and social equity. Nonetheless, well-developed TODs for bus-, rail-, or boat-based transit are powerful assets to a community providing vibrant destinations, walkable centers, neighborhood branding, healthy places, and high-stakes economic return.

Unfortunately, successful TODs are still surprisingly rare, with many station areas lacking any significant development. Land use and transportation work best when they are planned together, but often they aren't. Transit agencies usually design transit lines to maximize mobility, while communities usually prioritize lines that maximize economic development.

Managing the natural tension between the public and private players involved in TOD districts is where Citiventure excels. The firm draws on national and international experience diagnosing the obstacles, and then formulating and creating action plans to address them. The result: greater value creation, higher transit ridership, happier communities.

Real estate portfolio decisions often require complex analysis, substantial financial investment, political capital, and an inordinate amount of time. Yet it is not unusual for cities, counties, school districts, foundations, NGOs, and other non-profits to lack a useful inventory, in-house expertise, or full understanding of how to best use their real estate holdings. With skillful management, real estate can be just as valuable as cash in accomplishing the mission of the organization. It can be swapped, developed, repurposed for different uses, leased, sold, joint-ventured, upgraded, held for future action, packaged with an assemblage, leveraged, and more.

What differentiates public sector real estate decision-making from private sector is the understanding of the public sector's mission and resources. After all the private sector market and financial analysis techniques are applied, there are additional criteria that public-sector decisions must meet, including furthering the long-term stability of the community. Short-term profitability—a common driver of the private sector—is not necessarily applicable to the public sector which operates on different time horizons, derives revenue from different sources, and is judged on achieving a much broader agenda.

With today's excruciating financial strains and workforce overloads, more than ever, government will be taken advantage of if it doesn't shrewdly evaluate and manage its real estate holdings.

Citiventure knows the ins and outs of managing public real estate, whether it's a special property destined for redevelopment, a strategy for developing public facilities, or overall portfolio analysis and management.