Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson Among Four U.S. Mayors Named as Fellows by the Urban Land Institute Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Urban Land Institute (ULI) Daniel Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use has named Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and three other outstanding local community leaders to serve in fellowships for the Center through 2011.  Johnson's local team will join three others led by the mayors of Charlotte, Detroit, and Houston.

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The mission of the ULI Rose Center is to encourage and support excellence in land use decision making. By providing public officials with access to information, best practices, peer networks, and other resources, the Center seeks to foster creative, efficient, practical, and sustainable land use policies.

"The City of Sacramento is honored to be a part of the Urban Land Institute's Daniel Rose Fellowship Program," said Johnson.  "This will give Sacramento the unique opportunity to bring in the best minds from across the nation to help us tackle one of the most important infill projects in the country – the redevelopment of the Sacramento Railyards.  We welcome this opportunity to be a part of ULI's Daniel Rose Fellowship that will help us fulfill our goal of making Sacramento a world class destination."

Johnson and his team will offer guidance to ULI in the development of products, programs and services that cover a broad spectrum of work incorporating three over-arching themes: real estate finance and development; the interdependencies and respective roles of the public and private sectors; and the role and importance of the public realm in creating viable, thriving communities.

The Sacramento team will work with the other selected mayors and their respective teams to address the most challenging land use issues facing their communities.  Over the upcoming year, Johnson and his team will work with leading experts in the real estate development, finance, and land use fields with the intention of tackling complex land use issues facing each community.

"The slow pace of economic recovery is continuing to take a toll on our nation's cities. This is undercutting America's overall economic stability, because the nation's economy is largely based on the strength of its metropolitan areas," said ULI Chief Executive Officer Patrick L. Phillips. "ULI looks forward to working with the new class of Rose fellows to help them overcome obstacles posed by the current economic environment, reposition their cities for long-term prosperity, and establish a course for success that can be applied to other cities."

Johnson's 2010-11 ULI Daniel Rose Fellowship team members are as follows:

• John Dangberg is an Assistant City Manager with the City of Sacramento.  John previously served as the President of USA Multifamily Development, The Executive Director of the Capitol Area Development Authority and as the Director of Community Development for the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency.
• John H. Hodgson is the Founder and President of The Hodgson Company.  Hodgson is a Full Member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and recently served as Chair of the ULI Sacramento District Council. He served six years as the Chair of the Capital Area Development Authority (CADA).
• Mike McKeever currently serves as the Executive Director of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) Board of Directors.  Previously, Mr. McKeever was project manager of the Blueprint Project at SACOG.

The ULI Rose Center was created in 2008 with a $5 million endowment by Daniel Rose, chairman of New York City-based Rose Associates, Inc., whose career has involved a broad range of professional, civic, and nonprofit activities. Rose Associates is a leading developer and manager of more than 30 million square feet of major office towers, commercial retail centers, mixed-use complexes, and high-rise residential buildings throughout the East Coast.

According to Rose, the Center is unique in how it facilitates collaboration among leaders in land use by bringing participants together from the public and private sector. "Each has much to learn from the other," he said. "The more knowledgeable and better trained people are on both sides of the table, the more effective they are. The most successful projects invariably reflect those relationships."

In addition, ULI has assembled a team of eight urban development and design leaders from around the nation who will be serving as faculty for the 2010-2011 Rose Center Fellowship cities: Hilary Bertsch, associate principal at Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects in New York City; Carlton Brown, chief operating officer at Full Spectrum of New York City; Andre Brumfield, urban design and planning principal at AECOM Design + Planning in Chicago; Antonio Fiol-Silva, principal at Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC in Philadelphia; Calvin Gladney, managing partner at Mosaic Urban Partners, LLC in Washington, DC; Con Howe, managing director of CityView's Los Angeles Fund; Mark Johnson, president of Civitas, Inc. in Denver; and Marilee Utter, president of Citiventure Associates, LLC in Denver.

The current class of Daniel Rose Fellowship teams follow the inaugural 2009-2010 class, led by the mayors of Minneapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

"The Rose Fellowship has been a tremendous asset for us," said Philadelphia Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Alan Greenberger, a 2009-2010 fellow. "It has given us an opportunity to step back and think about a particular land-use problem with outside expert help. That is very difficult to achieve in the public sector, when all of our time is extremely pressured. Through this fellowship, we were able to travel to other cities, interact with colleagues, and hear from other experts in fields that are related to what we're doing.  That is not an opportunity that comes often in the daily course of life."

For more information on the Daniel Rose Fellowship program, visit:  http://www.uli.org/rosecenter

About the Urban Land Institute
The Urban Land Institute (www.uli.org) is a nonprofit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the Institute has nearly 34,000 members worldwide representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines.

SOURCE Urban Land Institute