Balfour Beatty Capital Group, Inc. recently partnered with Civil Design Group and Health Care REIT to plan the ULI Nashville program, “Building Excellence through Anchor Institutions: Leveraging Today’s Innovations for Tomorrow’s Prosperity”. The sold-out conference, hosted by Nashville Urban Land Institute (ULI), aimed to provide a bridge between innovations as a road to economic development and creative new city building, including new financial models, infrastructure, residential options and land planning. In collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, this event brought together key leaders from many of the community’s anchor institutions to discuss Nashville’s potential to leverage technological innovations for business growth.
Tom Murphy, ULI Senior Resident Fellow for Urban Development and former mayor of Pittsburgh, highlighted key points from his report, “Building on Innovation: The Significance of Anchor Institutions in a New Era of City Building” as part of a session on shaping Nashville’s path as a ‘world-class’ city through innovation. The report showed that Nashville, compared to other large cities throughout the U.S., is well-positioned to leverage technological innovations through its powerhouse anchor sectors of entertainment, healthcare and education. Murphy also stressed these sectors need to collaborate closely with municipal and state authorities to establish a more progressive capital framework, including acceptance of new financial models such as public-private partnerships (PPP) and the creative investment of pension funds.
The Mayor’s Office of Economic Development and ULI Nashville also facilitated an initial strategic innovation breakout session that included 25 of greater Nashville’s economic development officials, senior executives from the education, entertainment and healthcare sectors, and the State of Tennessee’s Director of Economic and Community Development. The discussion was moderated by Tabitha Crawford, Sustainability & Innovation Officer with Balfour Beatty Capital Group and last year’s Southeast Regional Green Business Innovator of the Year.
“Balfour Beatty uses PPPs heavily in the UK and Canada, but the U.S. is just now beginning to consider the benefits of allowing private capital to fund public needs. The privatization of military housing, for example, has dramatically improved the quality of life for military families and is now evidenced as one of the most successful PPPs in history,” said Crawford. “Services provided through creative economic models can accelerate access to startup capital, reduce the public tax burden, and allow third-party ownership structures for facilitiesor renewable energy assets.”
Matt Wiltshire, Director of Economic & Community Development for Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, added “We were honored to participate in this event with ULI and the strategic innovation session that followed afterwards that brought together the Greater Nashville community to discuss how we can shape the future of the city. This event provides a forum for so many important conversations to occur regarding Public Private Partnership opportunities and the progressive direction in which Nashville is headed in coming years.”
(excerpt from press: http://www.bbcgrp.com/PressReleases/pressreleases/5.6.12_ULI%20Nashville%20Event.pdf)