Planning & Development Services
For more than 20 years, TRF has invested its resources towards building wealth and opportunity for people and places that need it most. As with most of our place-based work, planning has emerged as an increasingly valuable reinvestment tool. Through planning, we combine local experience with objective data as a means to stimulate creative and sustainable redevelopment.
Our Reinvestment Plans have helped clients such as foundations and community groups identify development and investment opportunities that are based on in-depth knowledge of real estate markets and an understanding of the physical and social structure of a place. A Reinvestment Plan focuses on building from existing strengths to prevent or reverse indications of decline and recommends interventions that are tied to realistic, measurable outcomes.
TRF’s community planning approach is innovative and integrated. It emphasizes the need for continuous assessment, learning and improvement. It challenges the rationale behind well-established processes by redefining the assumptions used to develop community plans.
TRF’s planning and development process follows 3 major steps:
Assessment and Analysis
As a first step, TRF goes through a rigorous process of assessing and analyzing the following conditions:
- Macro Market: Using data and analysis to identify opportunities to connect the local space to the larger market.
- Physical: Assessing property conditions and use, vacancy, open spaces, urban form, landmarks and transportation.
- Micro Market: Evaluating residential real estate, neighborhood and property condition indicators, such as property sales, tenure and crime.
- Regulatory: Understanding zoning, incentive zones, parking requirements and density.
- Resources: Determining feasibility and capital allocation for implementation of the full strategy based on social, civic and economic resources.
Strategy Development
To develop a strategy, we then examine the data we have gathered using the following filters:
- Market dynamics: How strong are the residential and commercial markets? How are real estate sales?
- Connectivity: How is the neighborhood connected to its larger social, physical and civic networks? What are the neighborhood’s strengths and how to build off them? Is there a cohesive residential market?
- Implementing partners: What is the public, civic and private sector’s capacity? Who will drive the implementation of the plan?
- Political will: Is there public sector support and civic engagement?
Outcomes
The result of the planning process is a plan that provides:
- Scaled interventions that integrate all plans and data into a series of strategically located, discrete and measured development opportunities.
- Sequenced investments that maximize scarce resources and impact on surrounding properties.
- Targeted transactions that identify specific property investments and suggested uses.
TRF also provides a range of planning-related technical assistance, helping organizations like the Wachovia Regional Foundation and Philadelphia Neighborhood Development Collaborative support their grantees. Please contact us for more information.
Questions? Email NDS@trfund.com or call 215.574.5800.