How we help

Proven practices we use

Gather Everyone Who’s Needed

You don’t need everyone, but wIthout everyone who’s needed, outcomes can not be fully achieved. We help you find them.

Small Developer Census
Every place has incremental developers but they often fly under the radar. City halls know big developers well, but rehabbers and small-scale developers quietly improving a neighborhood building are less visible. We help you find and organize your small developer base–from those doing it to those who could be (e.g. people in construction and real estate roles who could easily make the shift, business owners looking to get into development and folks looking for a side hustle). Rather than finding developers from afar, places that build their own small development industry segment tend to outperform others.

Action Forums
We help you find the right people to get things done. You choose the purpose, we help you find those who care the most and are willing to do something about it. With that kind of passion in the room, results happen. We’ve mobilized groups of 10 to over 1,000+ with this proven method that has been tested for decades in every country on the planet. It’s a great way to jump start work and create enough energy to keep it going.

True Small Business Engagement
A Small Business Ecosystem DataCore is how we connect local small businesses to information, resources, and networks in their industry ecosystems, and strengthen those ecosystems to grow those small businesses. Whether you need to more fully identify your small business base in a particular geography or supercharge existing business relationships with more value to get measurable results, DataCore is a service that leverages data to find, capture, and retain small business customers and grow revenue for businesses focused on providing services in specific markets. Your target can be small developers , or other small businesses–neighborhood retail and service businesses, or entire industries.

Define Place(s) That Matter

When you draw a circle on a map things come into focus. Specific organizations and people are defined. We use that specificity to achieve your desired outcomes.

Implement Plans
Most plans focus on a place. Over 75% of plans fail to be fully implemented. We support your plan implementation through one-on-one consultations, best practice research, options identification, and connection to our extensive regional and national networks of practitioners and experts. We position places to implement plans through activating small-scale real estate and keeping it going.

Actionable Data
Reports and studies are often turned to as the first step–generating long lead times where no work is getting done. We help you identify the right information to guide immediate action. Getting started generates data too, that helps refine and calibrate your ongoing work. Reports can enable people to talk about work. We focus on data that helps you get things done. We work this approach into more conventional (and often required) documents including strategic plans, land use and master plans, market studies, housing needs analyses, comprehensive economic development studies (CEDS), transit oriented development (TOD) plans, and more.

Opportunity Analyses
If you don’t know what matters, we help you uncover and size the opportunities related to your objectives. We take on questions like

  • What properties can produce the most value now?
  • Where will current market conditions enable immediate action?
  • What properties have location efficiencies we’re not leveraging?
  • Where does our local regulation enable our building production goals (and where does it need to be changed to do so)?
  • and more

Establish High Performing Team(s)

People are needed to implement any recommendations, strategic plans or action steps. They’re also the chief factor in failure to fully implement–whether those doing the work or those they need action from to achieve the desired outcomes. We help you shape people into effective, adaptable, cross-functional and continuously improving teams that can effectively manage themselves and affect their environments.

Develop Homegrown Housing Production Accelerator
We offer a 1-1.5 day applied workshop (virtual or in person) designed for cross-sector team(s), each composed of 3-7 members–local developers, government staff, community and financial folks) to jump start their existing implementation opportunities with small-scale development. Our proven approach generates immediate results:

● Team members support the developer in generating a robust one-page Working Plan.
● Everyone is aligned around what’s needed to produce the next increment of housing or desired development.
● This begins Implementation. Teams learn how to keep it going.
● Coaching supports the work, overcomes barriers, and maintains progress on the path to “done.”
● Housing is delivered as rapidly as possible.
● Once done, locals know how to repeat and scale up.

This approach is empirical in its application, deliberately builds on what has worked in similar contexts, rapidly tests it locally, and continuously adapts. Learning propels the work and delivers purposeful increments of value quickly and cumulatively. It produces results faster, reduces risk, and powerfully iterates toward desired outcomes.

Local Government Housing Production Boot Camp
Local government has influence on more than 50% of the cost for new housing. To be most effective, government people (department staff and management, elected and appointed officials) need to know enough about how development happens to effectively enable it to drive their broader goals whether it be supporting the tax base, wealth building, or a thriving downtown. We offer hands-on training (virtual or in person) in flexible formats to align local government around effectively enabling more home grown housing production. Participants will learn how to leverage the success factors from how their own town was founded and thrived, understand the basics of a development budget (a pro forma) and where government actions can reduce costs, and what actions to take to enable and maximize local homegrown housing production right now.

Support the Work of Small-Scale Development

We systematically connect locals to ‘just in time’ experts to overcome barriers quickly in areas such as those below.

Private Sector Developers

  • Packaging financials for investors and loan approval 
  • Least cost development strategies, architectural plans & elevations
  • Development accounting and bookkeeping
  • Tax Increment Finance (TIF) plans (Michigan)
  • Exceptional storefront, branding and retail strategies for successful  mixed-use tennants
  • Success with various tenant-based housing supports 

And other connections–expertise, capital, opportunities and networks–to take a development practice to the next level.

Public Sector Local Governments

  • Zoning quick fixes
  • Code and regulatory diagnostics
  • Zoning analyses so code updates are calibrated to deliver results (few are)
  • Successfully positioning local efforts for competitive federal grants 

Financial Sector

  • Integration of federal and other financing, technical and funding resources into projects
  • Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) leveraging strategies
  • Anchor institution-powered financial tools
  • Community capital and crowdfunding strategies

Nonprofit Sector (Issue and Place-Based Organizations)

  • Real estate services for nonprofits owning, managing and seeking to develop properties 
  • Diversifying organizational portfolios to allow focus on core service provision 
  • Strategy alignment with place-based and issued-based community improvement efforts