Visionary

Creative Homies.

November 2, 2022

Adewale Agboola (pronounced “WAH-Lay”) and his partner, Cyrus Coleman have purchased the historic Enterprise Building in downtown Portland originally constructed in 1905. The 20,000 square foot building is located at 433 NW 4th Avenue, Portland, Oregon. They plan to repurpose the 20,000 square foot building located at 433 NW 4th Avenue, into a creative hub dedicated to the BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People Of Color) community in Portland and are calling it the Creative Homies Enterprise Building (the “Building”).

Adewale believes there is a critical need for such a gathering/work space in the market for the growing BIPOC community in Portland. A series of curated spaces are being designed, ranging from a subterranean music bar and lounge, to a museum-style gallery, cafe/wine bar and boutique store, a full production studio space, with equipment rental and creative space available for use by the Portland creative community along with rental lodging for studio guests.

Adewale Agboola is a photographic artist by trade. His work is emotionally driven, capturing the mood and demeanor of his subjects in powerful photographic images. He is well-versed in understanding human emotion, art + storytelling and not afraid to express his strong emotions through his work.

He attended Mankato state university for Aviation and studio art. After being recruited to travel to China one summer to photograph lifestyle, Adewale became fascinated with the art of photography and creative directing. Now, after a 15- year career in the creative industry, he has worked with clients such as Nike, Target, Adidas, Wolf and Shepherd, redwing, RedBull, General Mills, Invisalign, Lil Nas X, Gronk, Bon Iver, The national, Chastity brown, Indigo girls, Ani Difranco and the list goes on.

Adewale is fascinated by people and has a genuine love for everyone he meets. His superpower is bringing like-minded people together. His ability to communicate and encapsulate moments from extreme to intimate is born of a deep and natural understanding of emotion. His photographs speak for themselves because of the beauty and truth they lay bare.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:07] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. And speaking of building better, I’m very excited to share that my company, Small Change, is now raising capital through a community round that is open to the public. Small Change is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for impact investment in real estate. For as little as $250, anyone 18 and over can invest in Small Change, helping to fuel our growth as we disrupt the old boys club of capital that routinely ignores so many qualified people and projects. Please visit wefunder.com/smallchange to review the full details of our raise and to make an investment if you can. And remember, investing is risky. Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.

Eve: [00:01:38] Today I’m talking with Adewale Agboola. Adewale is an astounding photographer with many Fortune 500 clients. As a Black man, he is in a minority in that profession. Only about 5% of professional photographers are Black. He’s also a minority in his hometown, Portland, Oregon. Only about 13% of the population in Portland is Black. But he and his partner, Cyrus Coleman, another successful artist who also lives in Portland, started hatching a plan to create a small art gallery and meeting space aimed at people just like them. Last year, they closed on a 20,000 square foot building in downtown Portland. Not so small at all. And have some very big plans to turn it into a creative hub catering to BIPOC creatives. They call themselves the Creative Homies. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:02:41] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do, share this podcast or head over to rethinkrealestateforgood.co and subscribe. You’ll be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:03:07] Hello, Adewale. Thank you so much for joining me.

Adewale Agboola: [00:03:10] Hey Eve, how are you doing?

Eve: [00:03:12] Your career path has fired both sides of your brain, first in aviation and then in your amazing work as a photographer. Truly amazing, beautiful work. How did photography take this lead in your life?

Adewale: [00:03:26] Photography, I think it became a place where I could express my emotions and express who I am as an artist. Earlier on in my uni days, I was really fascinated by the art of photography and just in general, the art of art. I mean, coming from a very technical engineering and like aviation background, I was kind of just blindsided by the art of art. So, I started shooting for my school newspaper and that kind of led into more involvement in creativity and more involvement in art. By the time I was junior year, during my uni years, I was recruited by Nat Geo to go to China for three months and travel with them and just photograph lifestyle. And this was like almost like an internship kind of things, but it was almost like the first time I’ve ever faced a world bigger than mine and so completely different and so beautiful. And I was just enamored by the culture that everything in China was like, almost like a sensory overload. Like, it just woke me up to this thing. And by the time that I came back home to school, I was gone. I just went through school, finished my degree and finished my pre-flight and professional flight certification. And I basically told my parents the last day I graduated, I’m going to move to Chicago and be a photo editor. And it goes.

Eve: [00:05:02] And like all parents, they were probably horrified.

Adewale: [00:05:06] Very, very, very horrified. It was pretty hard for them to kind of take that in because I’ve just spent like almost six years of my life flying.

Eve: [00:05:14] Yeah.

Adewale: [00:05:14] Spent a great load of money to do something so minute, but also something that I love, you know?

Eve: [00:05:23] So, they must be pretty proud now because your photographs are gorgeous. They’re just amazing.

Adewale: [00:05:28] They’re very happy now. Now it’s like, oh well, you’re not asking us for money, like how you can do everything on your own. I think they’re very happy now. They’re very, they’re very like, oh great, you can make money. That’s good.

Eve: [00:05:43] Well, that’s what every parent worries about, that their child isn’t going to starve on the streets, I suppose so. So, then I have to ask, what are the challenges you’ve being confronted with as a Black photographer in a majority white profession? I’ve read that there’s a very small percentage of Black photographers, something like 5%.

Adewale: [00:06:01] Yeah, I mean. When I started out, I didn’t have anyone to really walk me through how this is going to pan out, right? I had this ambition that I wanted to make it and work as a photographer, but something I never realized is you have to play the game, right? Like, you have to take all the clients. You have to go through all the seminars. You have to go through all the networking events and all of that. But also, I never had an agent. Now I have an agent to represent me. So, I never really knew how to really market myself except like on Facebook and Instagram. Well, Instagram was not even around during that time, It just was Facebook. So, it was really, really, really hard for me to really, like, make strides in any way until basically I just started randomly going to different agencies, I would look up ad agencies, and I would talk to a creative director like, hey, do you mind if I show you my work? And I started doing that. I think I kind of told myself I need to do three a week, to talk to three different creative directors or someone on an agency a week. And I would do that constantly until I got my first, like, my first big break. And once that happened, I think my first big break was a five different campaign with 3M, which is a massive company. And for the first time in my life, I saw like this big check. I was like, oh, my God, I couldn’t believe like a photographer could make this. And then as that kind of went through, I started showing those work and that landed me my second work and that landed me my second work until I got to like, photographing for Target and now Nike and Adi. So, it’s been really, really great. But also, being Black in a field that is really slim. For example, during the uprising, the George Floyd era of what happened, it was really important that Black Voices gets to narrate those events. It was really hard for me to see that go through, having the white photographers photograph, almost like Black grief, which is really hard. So, for me, I took it upon myself. I mean. I think one of the biggest quotes as a photograph was, I forgot who said this, pick up a camera, photograph the things that are going on in your community. That’s how you get noticed by anything. Once you’re out there shooting the interesting thing going on in your community and you’re giving it, you’re doing it with gratitude and you’re doing it with empathy, you’re doing it with grace. I mean, everything will come to you by nature. Everything will come to you easily. And I think that’s what I did during that time. I photographed what was going on in my community. And I told the story through images. You know, people always ask me, what do you do for a living? I simply just say, I see for a living. My job is to capture a moment to eternity. My job is to take moments and just put it in history as what they simply are. In my life, make tangible. Really, so…

Eve: [00:09:20] So then, I’m going to ask a leading question. So, you live in Portland. What’s it like to be a creative in Portland? A Black creative in Portland today?

Adewale: [00:09:30] It’s quite tough, actually. It’s I think for me, I would think artists should be more, given more opportunities here in Portland that are of color. But, generally speaking, Portland is a very, very white city. And people will give work to who they know and what they know.

Eve: [00:09:54] And what they’re comfortable with, right.

Adewale: [00:09:56] What they’re comfortable with, and people don’t really go out of their comfort zone to really search for great artists or great black artists. It’s usually, oh, we’ve used that person, let’s use that person again. Where you could actually challenge yourself and look at who is around and who lives in Portland, Oregon. It’s a really hard town, which is like one of the reasons why we wanted to do what we’re doing.

Eve: [00:10:21] Well, let’s talk about that, because we haven’t talked about that yet. So, you got together with your partner, Cyrus Coleman, who’s also a very talented artist, recently and purchased a commercial building in downtown Portland. So, I want to hear about how that came about. But tell us about what you plan to do with the building.

Adewale: [00:10:41] Yeah. I mean, Cyrus and I started this idea, like, we were looking at a 400, 500 square foot studio to just have a space where we can create our work, where he could paint, and I could just turn it a photo studio. But also, we wanted a place where our friends can come to and just hang out and also just like, kick it with us while we do our work or they’re doing their work. And this idea kind of just started snowballing into multiple facets of things. You know, Cyrus’s family, are a music legacy family, and they’ve got this crazy tie to music legends. And I think that was like, really amazing. It’s like, oh my God, we could have a block party in the summer in this 400, 500 square foot building.

Eve: [00:11:29] As long as I’m invited.

Adewale: [00:11:32] Well, we kept coming up with this idea and something really hit me. I realized that there isn’t a lot of Black creatives in town, at least not enough that are showing theirselves or showing their work or being advertised. I started realizing that even looking at my work. So, we got together with Jessie Burke, who her and her husband, runs the Society Hotel here in Portland. And after we talked about our pitch deck and everything and kind of presented her this idea of what we wanted to really bring to Portland and how we want to unify creative people in town together and make something better for our community. And she basically asked the question, would you like to rent, or would you like to create generational wealth? And we know it’s to do with generational wealth. Of course, we definitely don’t want to rent because we’ve just gone through this two-months long campaign of trying to find a place and everything is just a bit too much. So, Jessie was like, well, I’ve got some units I can show you and I’ve got a building that you can buy. So, they started showing us these rental places that we can, which were all wonderful. But Cyrus and I had this inkling in the back of our head, we wanted to see this building. And the minute we walked into this building, we realized, it’s like, we can’t go back.

Eve: [00:13:02] And it was 20,000 square feet instead of 500 hundred.

Adewale: [00:13:07] Yeah. We couldn’t go back. We’re now stuck in this thing. And we’ve got to figure out how to acquire this building before anything happens. So, all of the inspiration comes from just my background of being a photographer, his background of being an illustrator and a designer. And also, we love wine, we love bringing people together, we love bringing Black people together, but we also love bringing all the Black people together, of creative, in a place where we can all talk and all laugh comfortably. Where no one is looking over our shoulder or no one is telling us what we can do or what we can’t do. And the idea is also to foster creative mind and to foster people’s outlet. You know, I would just be open minded in a place that could be of shelter, a place that could be like an oasis for people. So, we ended up acquiring the building in December 2021, and we started this conversation in June 2021. So…

Eve: [00:14:13] That was pretty quick, that was pretty quick.

Adewale: [00:14:15] Talk about reality kind of coming to fruition. We were very, very happy and very honored that Jessie and Jonathan saw something in us and they, kind of, went on this trip with us and it’s been an amazing ride and it’s still an amazing ride. There’s still, there’s bumpy days, there’s great days, there’s bad days, there’s good days. And you take it as it is and you go and you wake up the next morning and you go again and do it.

Eve: [00:14:39] So, just for our listeners. So, Jesse and Jonathan are a couple in in Portland who’ve been very successful with two hotels that they own and other real estate developments. And during the pandemic they decided that I suppose they needed to give back and they have developed this non-profit where they’re working with, I think the way Jonathan said it was to help shift real estate assets into the hands of the BIPOC community. And they do this with a limited number of clients, right? And you guys were, I think, some of the earliest. So, it’s a great story.

Adewale: [00:15:20] We’re also the one with the biggest undertaking, I think. I think our building is very ambitious and it’s also very well needed and it’s something that, you know, you can really talk to people and people just connect with it because it’s been something that has been wanted. We’re so surprised that Nike and Adidas and all the other companies that are around Portland hasn’t really thought about something like this for all the creatives that they bring into the city. Because one of the biggest issues Portland is having is losing great talent. They’re not able to keep them here because it’s not New York or it’s not L.A. Or it’s not London or any big metropolis. So, the idea is if we can foster a building where all of these people that are coming in could actually build family, build friendship, build all those things, It’s.

Eve: [00:16:14] Maybe even professional networks, right?

Adewale: [00:16:16] Yeah. The possibilities are infinite on what could happen then. So, yeah.

Eve: [00:16:21] So, what’s your big audacious goal for the building? You’ve got 20,000 square feet. What are you going to do with it?

Adewale: [00:16:28] I’m hoping it’s forever everlasting, really. It just grows. But, at the moment, the basement is going to be a jazz club, which is something that is very well needed in Portland as the couple that we had here has shut down. So, a lovely jazz club. And then we’re going to have a private speakeasy room in the basement too, and a beautiful kitchen. And then, that’s the basement of the building, which is also another 5000 square feet, which is, oh, insane. The first floor is going to be a big gallery room and a wine bar, a coffee shop and a point-of-sale place for every artist, but also for merchandise from whatever show is there or whatever we want to sell that it’s going to be that spot there. And then the second floor is going to be a full makerspace. This is a dream artists space. You can come in, you can paint, you can sew. There’s going to be a podcast room, there’s going to be a printing center, there’s going to be a screen-printing center too. So, it houses everything, any creative needs. And also, when you’re done with everything from the maker floor and you want to do a production and photograph your product and photograph everything, there’s a full production studio that is going to cater on the same level as Nuke Studio, Acme Studio. All of those places in LA, so people like Nike and Adidas and King and on running can find a place to actually shoot product and be present in Portland, Oregon. So, we don’t have to always keep flying everyone out to New York, flying everyone out to L.A. There’s a premiere studio in town and you can get that done here.

Eve: [00:18:13] So, what’s like the best outcome that you can imagine with this building?

Adewale: [00:18:18] Oh, man, the best.

Eve: [00:18:21] Am I asking too hard questions.

Adewale: [00:18:23] No, the best outcome for this building would be for it not to be used to the full potential of what it could be. I want people to see what it could be, and I want people to forever keep coming in to just work and produce work that are unparalleled, that are great, that are just revered by other artists. So, one of the best outcomes I really want for this building is I really want it to be a great oasis for artists. I want kids from high school to come in once a month to learn what it feels like to be an artist, to learn what you can become as an artist, because I wasn’t given that as my younger self. But also, it’s elevated and it’s Black excellent. It’s going to be something different from what people are used to in Portland. It’s going to have some African flair, some European flair. It’s going to have things from the world in it that I think everyone would be really stunned. But one thing I do also really want is I wanted to always, forever evolve. I don’t want it to stay stagnant. I don’t want it to stay still. I wanted to keep evolving and keep moving as we all grow.

Eve: [00:19:39] So, how far along are you in the process? You have the building. You need to renovate it, right?

Adewale: [00:19:45] Yeah. So, we’ve just won the occupancy review so we can have more people in the building. With the city, we are submitting our permits. We’re submitting the permits on Monday, this upcoming Monday to the city, we are now represented by an advertising firm who is going to do all the branding and all the the brand book and the design and the signs. We have a PR team that is behind us now to start going to different magazine and publishing. We have a world renowned, a world-renowned hardware store that is giving us a good amount of credit to come by and see things we can put into the building. We have friends going around talking about the building to friends. The building is in one of the most impeccable shape I’ve ever seen. It’s really got these lovely bones that is undefined. But also, we’re in the middle of talking to multiple different contractors. We’re now getting, we’re supposed to be getting the bids in actually today of what the build out is going to be. So, we hope to start demolition hopefully at the end of November or at the beginning of January so.

Eve: [00:21:04] And open the doors?

Adewale: [00:21:05] Open the doors hopefully as early as June.

Eve: [00:21:09] So, I do know that that you had, you know, financing was a challenge. So, tell me how you financed all of this and how are you going to finance the renovation?

Adewale: [00:21:21] So, even starting, we basically spoke to the lenders, and we presented to them what we really wanted to do with the building.

Eve: [00:21:32] What was their reaction?

Adewale: [00:21:34] They were like, this has never been done in town. This is great. Like, this sounds amazing. And we went ahead and put down the earnest money and then we also went ahead and put down the deposit on the building. We’re so lucky, we had really, really great sellers when they financed it for us. So, we didn’t have to go straight to a bank real quick. They trusted us and they believed in the idea of what we had. And now we’re at this point and we’re going through a local bank for construction and construction and finalizing things. They’re called Prosper Bank. They basically oversee all the BIPOC community. They oversee all those built out for BIPOC. They’re supposed to be an opportunity zone like bank, where, you know, if you’re a BIPOC community, like someplace like Chinatown and all that, they would finance all of those.

Eve: [00:22:37] So I have to say, you know, Jonathan told me that you went to maybe a dozen banks.

Adewale: [00:22:42] Yeah.

Eve: [00:22:43] And you, and I saw your business plan. It was very professionally laid out. And he said, only when you removed your images from those packets did the bank start talking to you. And honestly, that is, that just made me gasp. That was really pretty shocking for me.

Adewale: [00:23:01] It’s. It’s a hard thing to eat up sometimes. And trust me, I’m so sorry if I get a bit emotional.

Eve: [00:23:11] No, I’m emotional.

Adewale: [00:23:13] It was. You know, we’ve heard about things like that before, but it being done to you, it’s a whole completely different thing. You know, I like to want to say like there isn’t you know, what they call it like, there isn’t. The word is getting away from me. Well, it happens. It happened to us. And one of the biggest things was like Jonathan, Jessie, you know, started also their business. They had to go get a loan from a bank and they were right where we were. They didn’t really have much, and they were approved because basically they look like.

Eve: [00:24:07] They’re white.

Adewale: [00:24:08] Yeah. And for us it was very different. We had this amazing idea, and we have this great execution and we were just shunned off by everyone. And it’s very apparent because we’ve sat down for hours and hours and days to work on this business plannings and everything and to make sure it is so perfectly driven and perfectly written. I’m pretty sure the banks are going to be the one who even wins no matter what. But they declined us, multiple people. And it’s been really sad to kind of really see. But at the same time, Cyrus and I have such really crazy drive and really big heart, because we don’t let things like that phase us, we kind of rise to the occasion and we rise to do more, better and be better. That’s the way we’ve kind of looked at this process.

Eve: [00:25:01] Yeah.

Adewale: [00:25:02] We don’t let it knock us down. I think we just get up and we keep moving and hopefully something happens. And throughout the entire process we’ve always rised up and something has always come true for us.

Eve: [00:25:15] So, there’s a lot of discussion about, you know, wealth generation for minorities, communities, for the BIPOC community. And, and the thing that is tracked, I think, is redlining. You know, people have tracked what happens with redlining. But they’re really not tracking what’s happening to people like you going to a bank and the process of getting a commercial loan and how different it is for minorities and women, and they do track venture capital funding. And we know that the amount of money that is invested in minority businesses is minuscule. So, I really, like 1.2% of all funds this year. So, I’m sure it’s not very different for real estate. And it’s really, we’ve got a long way to go, so. I’m sorry you went through that. I’m very glad you got the building.

Adewale: [00:26:12] Yeah, it’s the lay of the beast. You know, it’s life. It’s not fair, but we understand it. You know, I think Cyrus and I, we’ve been really in tune and intertwined. Like we understand the world and the world of injustice and the world of what it is. But we don’t want to ever let that get us down. There’s so much more to be done, but we’re very optimistic and we’re very driven. So, nothing is going to break us down anytime soon.

Eve: [00:26:47] So, full disclosure, you have also listed a crowdfunding offering on Small Change. And you know, who do you hope will invest and be partners with you in this building?

Adewale: [00:27:00] We hope to see the leaders of tomorrow, people who believe in ideas. People who want to see things evolve. People who are dreamers. People who are artists. People who supports the hearts. People who know exactly what it feels like to be an immigrant, who also knows what it feels like to be Black in America to start anything. But also, people understand business and know this is good business and also understand, like the dark history of sometimes of what Portland is and what this is going to do for that community and how it’s going to celebrate this community. We’re hoping big investors come in and look at it like, okay, I support this. I love jazz club. I can go there and just sit down and listen to good music.

Adewale: [00:27:48] I feel free drinks coming on.

Adewale: [00:27:51] Yeah. Hey, it’s a perk. But also, if you’re a fan of, like, good art. Cyrus and I have promised ourself, we will always find people that would believe in quality to present their work, that wants to present their work. And something that is being really, really hit at the moment is a wine bar. We love good natural wine. That’s how we bring people down to the table. I mean, if you love wine and you want to see Black kids bring good wine from the Canary Islands, from London, from Spain, come to this place, it’s going to be great. Invest in it. And if you’re an artist that you always need a studio and you can’t work from your home and you need something to sew, like you need a machine to sew, you end up price machine. It’s also for you to come. Invest. That’s what it is. It’s for the like-minded, the artist in us, and also the business savvy people who just love to sit on the computer and do their meetings.

Eve: [00:28:54] You know I, first of all, I hope America is listening and I hope everyone goes and checks out your offering. And I really hope you are wildly successful, and I get to come see it next year.

Adewale: [00:29:06] Well, you’re going to be there on the opening day.

Eve: [00:29:09] I am. I’ve been told I have to do what dance is that I have to do? The mashed potato.

Adewale: [00:29:15] The mashed potato dance. No, you have to be that because you’re part of the reason why we’re really doing all of this. You’re helping us and a great deal. So, you and your team have to be there. That’s definitely going to be an invitation sent to you guys.

Eve: [00:29:31] It’s a deal. Okay onwards, right.

Adewale: [00:29:34] Yeah.

Eve: [00:29:35] Thank you.

Adewale: [00:29:36] Thank you so much.

Eve: [00:29:54] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. You can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing yourself head on over to wefunder.com/smallchange, where you can invest directly in Small Change and our mission to democratize capital formation to create impact in commercial real estate development. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Creative Homies

Dump it Right There.

October 19, 2022

In 1992 Julie Bargmann founded D.I.R.T (Dump It Right There) studio, a landscape architecture firm in Charlottesville, VA. She set out to focus on regenerating contaminated and forgotten urban and post industrial sites. Early on, one of the studio’s first major projects catapulted her work into the spotlight and became the early poster child for D.I.R.T.

The Vintondale Reclamation Park, a 25 acre park on a former coal mine near Pittsburgh, was designed in collaboration with an artist, an historian and a hydrogeologist. An acid-polluted stream was diverted into a series of six pools, where limestone, engineered soil, and plants leeched toxins out of the water. Vintondale became a model for bioremediation and was featured in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial.

Many other projects have followed, like Urban Outfitters Headquarters at the abandoned Navy Yard in Philadelphia, transformed with pathways, lawns, and dog parks. Julie won a 2014 Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for this project. Or Core City Park in Detroit, a collaboration with Philip Kafka of Prince Concepts, converting an abandoned parking lot into a public park. Completed in April 2019 this project was featured in Landscape Architecture magazine.

While studying at Harvard, Julie came under the wing and influence of Michael Van Valkenburgh. “Her energy and enthusiasm made her stand out”, he recalled, and she later worked in his firm. She was also influenced by Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th century architect of Central Park, and Robert Smithson, the artist-designer known for “Spiral Jetty,” a large-scale earthwork sculpture in Utah.

Julie is a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia, and was named Professor Emerita this past summer (2022) after teaching there since the 1990s. In 2021 she was named Innovator of the Year by Architectural Record and that same year was awarded the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize (described as the landscape architecture equivalent of a Pritzker Prize). In 2001 she won a National Design Award for Environmental Design, and in 2007 was awarded the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Urban Edge Award. She was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome for Landscape Architecture in 1990, and a United States Artists Fellow in 2008. She was named as one of the most influential people of the 21st century by CNN and Time Magazine.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve: [00:00:42] Meet Julie Bargmann, the inaugural recipient of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. This prize has been described as the landscape architecture equivalent of a Pritzker Prize, so it’s a really big deal. What makes this most exciting is the work that is being honored. In 1992, Julie founded Dirt Studio, which stands for Dump It Right There. She was intent on regenerating contaminated and forgotten urban and post-industrial sites. And it all began near Pittsburgh at the Vintondale Reclamation Park, a 25-acre park on a former coal mine. The end result became the early poster child of her business, a model for bioremediation that was featured in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial. Today, she is often referred to as the fairy godmother of industrial wastelands, as she crafts amazing new landscapes out of the contaminated and toxic sites she works on. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:01:59] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:20] Julie, it’s really an incredible honor to have you on my show today. Thank you for joining me.

Julie Bargmann: [00:02:25] Yes, I am honored. I love that you chose a landscape architect to enter into this realm of speaking about real estate. I’m actually quite passionate about it in terms of what landscape architecture’s role is within it.

Eve: [00:02:41] So, you know, I agree with you. And too often I think architects think about landscape as an afterthought, but it should really be an integral part of building and design. Absolutely, absolutely. So, I’m going to start by saying you studied to be an artist. So, where did your fascination with degraded and toxic landscapes begin?

Julie: [00:03:05] Well, I often tell the story of driving with my, riding in a station wagon down the New Jersey Turnpike and being completely fascinated by the refineries. I don’t know what it was. It was just kind of this perverse attraction, wondering, like, what is going on there and who’s working in there and what’s it like in there? So, I think that was a little kernel of it. And then I just kept finding myself attracted to working landscapes and working cities. So, off I went to Pittsburgh to study sculpture at Carnegie Mellon, and I love that city. I just, when I was there, the steel mills were still along the rivers. They were still belching smoke. It still smelled, which I thought was great, was all part of it. As an artist, I actually went into the steel mills because I wanted to see how they worked and who was working there, and I think that really did it. I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life. When later I discovered what landscape architecture was and that I could be kind of venturing into all these different types of landscapes, that was it. And not that landscape architecture at the point was kind of working in working landscapes, but I was kind of determined to do that.

Eve: [00:04:39] Yeah, but there’s a lot of very precious landscape architecture out there and what you’ve. And I think you really work in some of the worst and most toxic landscapes to be found. What about that is really interesting to you?

Julie: [00:04:56] Well, I think, first of all, I think the range that I like to be clear about with my work is that it does go to the biggest and the baddest, to the toxic, but also to the degraded. That is part of the kind of repertoire of industry. Right. It can be wicked and sometimes it can be kind of, quote unquote, inert but still impactful, you know. And the toxic ones, for a long time, I did projects with the EPA, and I was working on Superfund sites, which are the sites that are designated as kind of the biggest and the baddest. I think what I brought to that, which was completely unknown right then by the EPA for years and maybe to date, is the kind of cultural and social aspect of these landscapes. You know, they were totally focused on the remediation, right? The quote unquote, cleaning up of these landscapes. But I was like, well, come on, there’s kind of more to it than that. There are generations that still live around these sites whose grandfather probably died, black lung. And so, there are connections there. And I actually stopped working with the EPA because I just felt like I was being in my head against a wall where it was difficult to integrate that kind of factor. They always felt an enormous amount of urgency in kind of doing the fix and getting out of there versus actually engaging the community in what might be an incremental regeneration of that site. So, they’re quite myopic.

Eve: [00:06:45] Yeah, it sounds like they’re focused on fixing a problem, whereas what you saw was a future asset, really, for the community.

Julie: [00:06:54] Correct? Yeah. I don’t know if you remember way back to spell check.

Eve: [00:06:58] Oh, yes.

Julie: [00:06:59] Yeah. When I used to type in remediation, it would say correcting a fault. And then if you type in regeneration, it says creating a new. And I was like, Boom, that’s it. I’m never going to use the word remediation anymore because that’s not what this work should necessarily be about.

Eve: [00:07:20] So, I read somewhere that the Vintondale Reclamation Park, which is actually it’s a 35-acre site near Pittsburgh, was pivotal. But I’d love to know why.

Julie: [00:07:31] Well, you know, at the time I was really, really interested in this work. I did, as part of my academic research, because that’s around the time I started teaching. I did a tour around the United States just to kind of get a sense of what was going on. And I got this call, kind of out of the blue to join this team to work on Eve: Vintondale and. Well, actually to work on acid mine drainage, right. Which is the by-product of coal mining. And we were looking for to actually look at prototypes and models for, you can imagine, there are so many towns, post mining towns, former mining towns, that are plagued by acid mine drainage. So, to be on this team was my dream come true. There’s multidisciplinary. There was an artist, hydrogeologist, historian, who I, historians I love, you know, scientists, too. I love them too. And the community involved and AmeriCorps volunteers. It was just this collective effort to look at basically making the transformation of acid mine drainage visible, not behind a fence. You know, let the community know. One of the by-products, too, is yellow boy. Yellow boy is yellow boy. This is what it is. And this is you being a part of the next evolution of that landscape.

Julie: [00:09:14] Much like I was saying with the EPA in terms of trying to advocate for the community to be involved and not even maybe intensely involved, but at least a participant or a witness to what was going on in terms of the transformation here of acid mine drainage. That was, to me, a breakthrough in projects. And for me, it was a breakthrough in landscape architecture. This coincided, by the way, with a lot of the great projects that are in the Ruhr Valley of Germany. So, what we did was, in essence, make that science visible so that they could say, oh, I get it. You know, the acid, mine drainage is coming from mine number one, and it’s going through this system, and it’s coming out as biologically rich and being drained back into the streams. So, I basically, I call it an ecological washing machine. And that’s what was right near a bike trail. So, lots of folks are able to see it and nicely enough, it remains a model for the region.

Eve: [00:10:29] Interesting. So, when you work on a project like this, how does your work begin? Where does the inspiration come from?

Julie: [00:10:36] Oh, the history. Absolutely. Every time. Every time it’s the history of the site, which means the history of the people there. I just can never think about starting a project without really knowing what happened there before, because I feel that you cannot really propose anything about the future of the site unless you know it’s past, because it is all part of an evolution. It makes the process inclusive. It’s what I was thinking about in terms of private development, infusing the public in it for the public good. It’s the history. It’s the history. The history levels the playing field in terms of everyone who’s working on a project, because there’s a bigger story and a bigger picture. I feel that we want to be responsible to.

Eve: [00:11:35] So, is there an example of a project where the history took you in an unexpected direction or.

Julie: [00:11:43] Well, oh man. I guess I flash right to Detroit and I’m working with a wonderful, wonderful young developer there. And he is doing amazing things of investing in the public realm in the neighborhood, along with his private developments. And it was our like our I call it our first date. We just, I just came out and I was like, okay, you know, let’s look at the site. And we’re standing in front of like a blank, seemingly blank, parking lot covered with concrete. And he said, what would you do? And I knew that there was a historic engine house that was there. And I was like, Hmm. And it was raised in the seventies. And I was like, Hmm. I think that’s when they pushed, you know, the buildings into their basements. And I turned to him, and I said, dig. And he went. Okay. And he had a front-end loader there the next day. And I just was crossing my fingers about what would come up because I wanted to, I thought about integrating it into this public park, this community park we are making. And sure enough, beautiful redstone came up to make these, kind of, scattered little terraces. And then one day up came a giant piece of sandstone that said 1893 on it.

Eve: [00:13:22] Oh, wow.

Julie: [00:13:23] I was like, Oh. I was both very happy and very relieved. I was like, That’s it, that’s it. We found it. We found the material evidence of that history, and the park suddenly became actually quite old. I can’t tell you. I just got goose bumps again. I do every time when I think about it. The developer, he tells the story to everyone and the story kind of spreads. And everyone is knowing an essential part of history of their neighborhood, of Core city. That was unexpected and wonderful.

Eve: [00:13:58] That does sound wonderful. Is this the developer who’s working on the Caterpillar housing?

Julie: [00:14:03] Yes.

Eve: [00:14:04] Very unusual architecture as well. Quonset huts, right?

Julie: [00:14:09] Yes. He is having some architects do a little twist on Quonset huts because he wants to take something that’s very affordable and make beautiful spaces that are not terribly expensive so that they’re accessible for more folks. So, he’s quite adventurous that way and he, I just feel like, you know, his name is Philip Kafka, has his heart so much in the right place. I mean his, the proportion of like, I can’t remember, he loves trees, and I can’t remember what number he’s up to. But he’s very proud of the number of trees that he’s planted in Core City. For instance, the caterpillar. I think we planted 200, maybe 300. I can’t remember. He goes 200 trees and eight units. That’s how he thinks of it.

Eve: [00:15:04] Do you find that you need to educate people on this? Because this makes me think immediately of the people around where I live who are who are mowing down enormous old historic trees.

Julie: [00:15:17] Yeah.

Eve: [00:15:18] Because they want a flat piece of land to build their house on. But the tree seems to be the most valuable asset they have. I don’t understand it.

Julie: [00:15:27] Absolutely. I mean, everyone is quite used to a tabula rasa. You know, it’s the kind of easiest way to go. And that’s why, you know, again, I want to emphasize history of the site. Right? The trees are very much that history of the site. And you can’t replace that history, you know? Right. You just can’t. I mean, some history is buried underground like that park in Cork City, and some is just looming large, you know. And so, this is where I constantly go back to history, and I constantly go back to telling stories. Because most people like stories. And most people like to be part of a story. And that’s basically the form of education. Like I’m flashing to working with Ford Motor Company on the River Rouge plant and it took telling the story about the Coke ovens, which they wanted to wipe out. One, say we did our homework and said, you know, that part of it is toxic, that part is not, you know.

Julie: [00:16:41] So we did that homework, the environmental homework. And then when we did the history, we were reminding them that they were looking at a piece of incredible history of this Rouge River plant being the first manufacturing plant in the world. In the world. You know, so it occurred to us and they kind of came to that that was too important a story. You know, it was just too rich and too significant to so many people, so many generations that worked at Fords, they called it Fords, to obliterate. And they didn’t have to. They didn’t really have to. And that was the education part, too. You know, I called it homework and I found that, you know, especially as a woman, I needed to kill them with knowledge and just say, hey.

Eve: [00:17:48] Was it easy?

Julie: [00:17:50] Sometimes more than other. I have to say, I even changed my tone. You know, I think early on I was pretty insistent. And then, I think I was more empathetic, you know, to the folks who were really dealing with the EPA, and.

Eve: [00:18:05] Yes.

Julie: [00:18:06] And a lot of pressure to remediate. And I encourage them, I’m like, come on, let’s talk about this. Let’s show them a careful mapping. Because they didn’t know how to map. You know, they showed the flow diagram of the coke ovens, and we did another map of it and said, look, you know, this is the part that’s harmful. So, we need to deal with it in another way and this other stuff we can deal in another way. So, you don’t need a tabula rasa. You can have your cake, your coke ovens and you’re, there We put remediation fields and remediation gardens, which they just loved, you know, they just whew. You know, they put it on their website in all caps, you know?

Eve: [00:18:49] Yeah. Well, it tells an amazing story. When you work on a very large project, what does your team look like?

Julie: [00:18:58] Oh, wow. Well, sometimes I work with another landscape architect. A DIRT studio is modeled after an artist’s studio. So, the most folks I’ve had been working with me is maybe five. So, if it’s a really large project, I need, I look for a bit more firepower and so, that’s really fun working with another landscape architect. Always engineers are on there, and I think more unusually, is getting scientists on the team. I always insist about that. Like when we’re starting and the client, I’m like, no, we need this scientist. Which they, you know, they didn’t know would be at all necessary. And like I said earlier, I, which is really unusual for a client to hear, is to have a historian on the project. And then when I’m talking about like scientists, too, it’s just not even kind of like one type of scientist, soil scientist, wildlife biologist, you know, that when I had a phytoremediation scientist. And it’s, I have to tell you, it is so wonderful. I mean, my learning curve is always like vertical, you know, on these projects by bringing in. Yeah.

Eve: [00:20:22] Fabulous. So, you know, you’ve done a really broad range of projects. Like there’s some for retail clients and…

Julie: [00:20:31] Yes.

Eve: [00:20:31] …some remediation. What are some examples of the project you’ve taken on, what they were and what they became?

Julie: [00:20:40] The most kind of in a way obvious, because they’re out there, retail client was Urban Outfitters. And, with Urban Outfitters it was really interesting. They were moving from Rittenhouse Square into tight little quarters out to what was really at the time the hinterlands of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. And, you know, I worked very, very closely with the founder, Dick Kayne, which was a blessing and a curse. He’s quite something, but we got along famously. And for a project that was coming from some folks that are so aesthetically based to be kind of more, more like historically based and environmentally based was, you know, that was a challenge. I, quite frankly, learned at some point not to even talk about what I was doing, what I was proposing in terms of history and the environment. It just wasn’t of enormous interest to them. You know, as I say, I snuck sustainability out in the back door and.

Eve: [00:21:59] I hope he’s not listening.

Julie: [00:22:01] Oh, that’s OK. Dick is so cool, you know, he won’t mind. He knows I love him. We used to speak our secret language of Latin, of plants because he loved plants. So, we just got along great. And he was cool, he just was like, Yeah, bring it on. And he never really asked that many questions. There was an amazing amount of trust between us, and that’s something that I can’t speak enough about is, as you probably know from projects, that trust is enormous. And so, with the Urban Project, there wasn’t an enormous amount of remediation that needed to be done. Some lead soils had to be dealt with. And, you know, lead is tricky, man. So, they didn’t want to go through the process of other types of remediation. So, one okay way of dealing with it is actually to encapsulate it. So, it was encapsulated.

Julie: [00:23:04] But the big thing with Urban Outfitters that was tricky was when it was going into like phase four and being built around the historic dry dock that was right in the center of this gorgeous, you know, water body from way back when for the huge ships. I found myself in that precarious place of kind of, I say, I always kind of say, defending the public realm within a private enterprise. That’s when I have to say, I think design gets really tricky, you know, because there was really kind of like a teetering point where literally something that we would do, we were forming, would feel too private, you know. And how is it that we could make this campus that was private, but parts of it could be shared? So that’s, I have to say, a big deal.

Eve: [00:24:04] It’s like pushing against a gated community, right?

Julie: [00:24:07] Yeah. So, I mean, I have to say, that’s what I feel like in landscape architecture, because we’re dealing with ground, and I know this is the case in most development and I’ve had projects where, I’m just realizing I’m picturing a good old fax I sent sometime where it said I quit. Because, you know, the commitment to the public realm wasn’t there, you know, which I’m learning from working with Kafka in, you know, in Detroit is so essential. Maybe I knew it intuitively. So essential in terms of building that quality of common ground that then makes sense for the individual happily living in their private abode. So, yeah.

Eve: [00:25:00] That probably touches on my next question. You’ve written about the overlap between poor and minority communities and contaminated soils, and I certainly know of that. I mean, I have to ask, how and why did that happen and how do we fix it? Why is it that poor and minority communities have had the brunt of this mess, basically?

Julie: [00:25:23] You think about industries and how they would kind of most conveniently cite themselves, you know, and when industries were getting up and running before all the environmental legislation starting in 1973, when you think about it, my God, that’s not that long ago. You know, most of the industries started up then, you know, they were looking for floodplains to discharge all of their nasty stuff and they were looking at a lot of land that did not have a lot of value to have people be downwind and downstream from nasty stuff. So, poor soils, poor people, they go together. I mean, it’s just a thing to be conscious of now, which I think a lot of folks are.

Julie: [00:26:14] I mean, there is the kind of whole movement of environmental justice. Industries are being held accountable. I like to think that, you know, the ground that we live on is, and work on, is becoming more just. And I think it is, I think I like to think it is. I should say it should be because I think folks are much more aware. If you asked somebody what a Superfund site was, you know, what, ten years ago, 15 years ago, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. The level of environmental awareness has just gone up so high. But the next thing is the action to enforce it and act upon it. And I don’t think that most folks, in what the things that they’re proposing, you know, you look at developers working in Richmond, or any working city and their projects are going to be scrutinized. Yeah.

Eve: [00:27:18] Yeah, I think that’s true. So, there’s been a definite shift, but I always wonder whether it’s still too easy to forget about the poor communities. And you know, and if sufficient funds are being deployed to make those contaminated lands into assets there. Someone has to start a project, right. They have to have the funds to start it and I don’t think that’s equitable yet.

Julie: [00:27:48] Right. So, for instance, you know, I’m flashing back to Detroit where I’ve done these projects and I’m thinking about how, you know, and you probably know about some of these Eve, these deals are being struck with developers where it’s like, okay, we’ll sell you this land, you know, but you’re also going to be responsible for this land, which will be, you have to make something there to benefit the existing, often poor, community. I’m optimistic about initiatives like that. It’s kind of, or it is, forcing developers who I think could very well be just carpetbaggers, you know, in a disinvested, deep populated city like Detroit to make them more civic minded.

Julie: [00:28:49] I was running around Detroit with the former Planning Director Morris Cox. And there’s one man there who’s planting a bunch of tree farms. And I was kind of disgusted, as much as I love trees. And Maurice asked me, he goes, What’s the problem? And I said, I know it maybe improves the quality, the value of the land here, but who is it doing that for and what at all about tt is civic? You know, I’m like, where are the trees along the street where are the. And I just, I kind of went on my rant to just dissect it for what public good a private enterprise was doing, you know? And he was like, oh, and I said, you should insist. You should insist that, yeah, the city will sell you this land, but you need to do this and this for the public realm.

Eve: [00:30:00] I always thought there was just a little bit of a problem with our political structure because someone who has some power to make these decisions may have been an insurance agent in a past life. They don’t necessarily have any training on landscape or architecture or urban design or how to make better civic places. And they’re really given enormous power to control what happens in those places.

Julie: [00:30:28] Yeah.

Eve: [00:30:29] That’s a shame.

Julie: [00:30:31] I’m sorry, did you say planning folks?

Eve: [00:30:35] Well, planning folks are a little bit better because to be a planning person, you’ve got to have some background in planning. No, I’m thinking like a mayor or someone on city council who has.

Julie: [00:30:45] Oh, my God,

Eve: [00:30:46] The power to make a vote and doesn’t really have any of the necessary education or understanding, right?

Julie: [00:30:53] Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I have to jump in here to, I mean, I’m so excited to say this because I always say, like, I have a huge crush on mayors, you know, and that happened from being part of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design.

Eve: [00:31:08] Oh, yes.

Julie: [00:31:10] And I was on many sessions and blah, blah, blah, but regional and national and I just think they’re brilliant. I just really think, you know, having been in there and, you know, just one on one or just the mayors, you know, talking about a specific project, but some more in general. Just everyone I know, I saw that light bulb go up above their head and they were like, we are the architect of this city. You know, if we can’t make an informed decision, we better surround ourselves themselves with somebody who could help them. Yeah.

Eve: [00:31:52] That’s a great outcome.

Julie: [00:31:54] Yeah.

Eve: [00:31:54] So, I want to ask you about this incredible honor that’s been bestowed on you. You’re the first inaugural laureate for the Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. It’s not just National, it’s international.

Julie: [00:32:10] Yeah.

Eve: [00:32:11] What does that mean to you?

Julie: [00:32:13] Well, it means a lot to me, obviously, but I can’t not be. But for me, it’s what it means to the discipline, my discipline. And that has to do with, I think, what I might represent. And that is, much like Cornelia Oberlander, who it’s named for, I decided I could take risks and I wanted to take risks. I had the advantage of teaching, so I always say I was kept by the university. But what I found is that there was something that the jury was saying in terms of the value of having a critical practice, not a commercial one, having one that was going to get out there. And the other thing was to influence a good many students after 27 years of teaching. So, that was heartening to me about receiving the prize. I’m just enormously proud, and I’m enormously proud of my discipline. You know, I’m hoping that what my getting the prize communicates is for people to go ahead, you know, be fearless, kick some ass, you know, just do it. Don’t be afraid. Yeah.

Eve: [00:33:31] So, I have to ask you, is there anyone following in your footsteps? Anyone who’s coming up young in the ranks, who’s fearless, doing really interesting things?

Julie: [00:33:42] Yeah, there are former students who are doing it. I even swell up with pride right now. My former associate, David Hill, of Hill Works is just doing some amazing projects. He’s based in Auburn, Alabama. And another former student, and also a dear friend of an architect, I’ve known her since she was nine years old, Maura Rockcastle and Ross Altheimer with TEN x TEN architects, Chloe Hawkins. Nicely enough, I think I can list a good number of folks. And also I think that I have kind of a solidarity, a group that is kind of a support group, I think of Kate Orff. Kate is absolutely fantastic and she’s doing unbelievable work and I can’t think of names right now. They’re out there, and I just know that, you know, there are a lot of emails that just say, you go girl, you know?

Eve: [00:34:46] And so, you got a little bit of prize money. What do you plan to do with that?

Julie: [00:34:50] Oh, okay. Well, I’m looking outside at my Bambi. My Airstream, Bambi. She’s named Cornelia. And she and I are going to take that cross-country trip that I took, it will be what’s 1993? What is the arithmetic? But it’s a lot of time. That mining tour that I told you about. So, I want to do that again. I want to stop at DIRT projects along the way, see how they’re doing, you know, visit with the old pals that I built it with. Hit some more Rust Belt cities. I have a project in Pittsburgh to stop at. And, you know, I think I’m just going to keep going west and look at some big holes in the ground again. I liked them.

Eve: [00:35:45] So, I’ll be really interested to see what comes out of them.

Julie: [00:35:50] Yeah, I hope so. The Cultural Landscape Foundation who has bestowed the prize, I’m hoping they will put together some sort of blog or some sort of something, you know, of my time on the road. That’d be fun.

Eve: [00:36:07] Well, I really, thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. Your work is fabulous, and I can’t thank you enough. And I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Julie: [00:36:18] Thanks. Great. Thank you.

Eve: [00:36:21] Okay.

Julie: [00:36:22] It’s been a privilege.

Eve: [00:36:30] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive together. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. If you like what you heard, you can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co, where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Julie Bargmann

Eve Picker wins national Real Estate Award.

October 18, 2022

Connect CRE has named Small Change founder and CEO Eve Picker as one of their National 2022 Women in Real Estate Award winners.

Central to Connect CRE’s selection of Eve was her establishment of the Small Change Index to evaluate the impact of real estate projects according to ESG-related factors. All projects listed on Small Change must score at least 60% on the Small Change Index in order to prove that they offer an opportunity for real impact within their community.

Connect CRE noted that Eve is on a personal mission to democratize real estate and highlighted Small Change’s performance as strong evidence of Eve’s success: over half of the projects have either a minority and/or female sponsor, 65% have included affordable housing and 78% have been located in underserved communities.

Connect CRE also reported that the US News & World Report has ranked Small Change as one of the top seven real estate crowdfunding platforms.

Image courtesy of Eve Picker

People first.

September 28, 2022

In 2000, Helle Søholt and her (professional) partner, Professor Jan Gehl (a Danish architect and urban designer) launched Gehl Architects (later Gehl), which grew into a notable urban research and design consulting firm based in Copenhagen. The firm, now over two decades old, focuses on improving the quality of urban life, in part by prioritizing the pedestrian and the cyclist in urban design. Jan Gehl was Helle’s professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and after completing her master’s degree at the University of Washington in Seattle, she started working with him on urban design projects in Copenhagen. Shortly after this (she was 28) they co-founded Gehl. Today, as CEO, Helle’s role at Gehl focuses more on the overall strategy of the firm.

Gehl has grown significantly, with projects in over 50 countries and 250 cities globally. This includes the New York City DOT, the Melbourne City Council, the Energy Foundation in Beijing, the Brighton & Hove City Council in the UK, the Institute of Genplan in Moscow, to name a few. Today, they have offices in Copenhagen, San Francisco and New York. Helle describes their approach to be “people first,” which comes down to exploring the needs of the people living in said cities or communities, with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space.

Today Helle is a prominent leader in her field. She has acted as an advisor to the City of Copenhagen and other great cities in Scandinavia like Oslo, Stockholm and Gothenburg, advocating for a new alternative to traditional planning. Internationally, Helle has worked in cities such as Cape Town, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne adding to her global experience in the field of urban design and development. She has extensive international urban design experience at various levels of intervention and at a multitude of scales – from urban research and analysis, visioning and strategy to design development and implementation. In 2010, Helle was awarded membership of the Danish Arts Society, as well as the Danish Dreyer’s Prize of Honor for Architects in Denmark. She also serves as a member on several boards of foundations, organizations and committees, such as the Realdania Foundation in Denmark and the Danish Federal Realestate Development Agency.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:09] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo, in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:46] Helle Soholt was just 28 years old in 2000 when she co-founded Gehl Architects with Jan Gehl, her professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Together, they built a commanding firm, now over two decades old. Gehl focuses on people first in urban design with a focus on walkability and access to greenery and public space. In 2016, Helle took over as CEO and the firm now has offices in Copenhagen, San Francisco and New York. People first has gone from its humble beginnings in Copenhagen, to work that spans over 50 countries and 250 cities globally. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:01:38] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:05] So welcome to my show Helle. I’m so honored to talk to you.

Helle Søholt: [00:02:10] Thank you so much Eve.

Eve: [00:02:12] How did urban design come to take center stage in your professional life?

Helle: [00:02:18] Oh, I think very early on as an architect, I found out that I was really interested in not just the buildings themselves, but actually the neighborhood and the context around the building. And I was just very interested in sort of political processes and how society is created. And that made me sort of relatively quickly in my studies, way back then in the nineties, shift from building architecture and then moving into to urban design at a fairly early age.

Eve: [00:03:00] So, that led you to meet Jan Gehl and you launched Gehl with him. How did that happen? That was pretty early on, you were young.

Helle: [00:03:11] I was very young indeed. I was 28 at the time and I had, first I finished a master’s in Urban Design at the Architecture School and Royal Academy in Copenhagen. And I worked for Jan actually for about half a year. And then I went to the States, to Seattle, actually, Washington University, and got another master’s degree there. And when I came back, I started working in a different firm, actually coming back to Copenhagen. But, I kept doing some side projects with Jan. And after about half a year back in Copenhagen, he invited me to start the office together with him because until then it had primarily been him running sort of a sole consultancy. So, I accepted the challenge and we started Gehl together at my age, 28. And Jan was in his late career at the time, 64 years old.

Eve: [00:04:16] So, it looks like he made a wise move. What was the primary focus? What were you planning to do with this firm when you started?

Helle: [00:04:24] Well, we started out in the year 2000 and back then there was not a lot of focus in planning on people, on behavioral aspects of planning, sustainability or was something that mostly was thought of by extremists and it was not part of the sort of general planning processes. So, we really started out with this ambition to change the paradigm within planning. It was a rather big sort of move and bold ambition we had because we focused globally from the very beginning, and we were able to do so due to Jan’s vast international academic network.

Eve: [00:05:11] Interesting. So, you’ve also been heard to say mission is not to Copenhagenize the world, which wouldn’t really be so bad because Copenhagen’s lovely. So, what is the mission then? Just generally project by project maybe.

Helle: [00:05:28] Yeah. Well, I don’t like the term Copenhagen-izing because it really sounds as if we think that all the solutions in Copenhagen is fit for every place and we certainly don’t think so. So, our method is much more based on urban anthropological studies, ethnographic studies, where we go to places, and we use our public life methods to investigate what is the local life and how can we best understand the needs and the behavior of the local people there to then develop strategies and plans and so forth. And by that come up with customized, localized solutions that still brings the place towards a more people-oriented position. So, our ambition started out, as I said, to change the paradigm of planning, and I had that ambition for ten years together with the Jan. But when he retired and I sort of bought the company from Jan at the point, this was back in 2011, the ambition changed and became a bit more sort of action oriented because at the time we had already sort of changed somewhat the planning paradigm after talking about it and sort of advocating for it for ten years. And since then, I would say we’ve been more focused on making cities for people, making actual change and creating what we are now focusing on. Places for all.

Eve: [00:07:10] So then what type of projects do you work on right now?

Helle: [00:07:14] In Denmark at the moment we are part of a couple of large projects. One is actually working with the National Foundation for Social Housing, and we are advising this national entity on how to make sure that their investments, they are investing about 40 billion Danish kroner into real estate development for the social housing across the country. And we want to make sure that that money that is poured into mostly renovation projects, that they actually have a social and equitable outcome and is benefiting not just the buildings but the people and the wider community in those areas. So, that’s a big project that we are helping on and working on at the moment. We also in Denmark engaged in a new sort of masterplan for development where we are actually designing the lived experience for people who are going to live in this new neighborhood. So, going all the way down into master planning and landscape design of public spaces in the area.

Eve: [00:08:32] That’s in Denmark but I think you look all over the world, right?

Helle: [00:08:37] We do.

Eve: [00:08:38] What other cities and countries have you worked in or are you working in now?

Helle: [00:08:44] We have quite a large team actually at the moment in the US and we started out back in 2014 with an office in New York and San Francisco and we actually have three teams now up and running in the US, one focusing more on cities and foundations, a second team focusing on the real estate sector, really being engaged in introducing a new type of master planning approach to the US market. And then the last team focusing more on corporate clients, working more with placemaking and the impact on communities from larger corporations.

Eve: [00:09:30] So, how large have you grown from just the two of you? How many people now?

Helle: [00:09:38] Today we are 100 staff and seven partners.

Eve: [00:09:43] That’s quite large. So, I have to ask, do you have any favorite cities and why?

Helle: [00:09:51] Oh, I’m often being asked that question. I have to say Copenhagen, because this is where I live and the place that I call home. And as you alluded to as well, I think at a point in our conversation, Eve, Copenhagen has become one of the most livable cities in the world with time and having worked here myself in that transition for the past 20 years, it is a place that I really deeply love. But of course, there are so many other places in the world that I’ve come to love so much. You know, messy cities like the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina, for example, where we have worked as well since 2017, Melbourne, that you know yourself so well where we have worked also for about 20 years. I like cities that have an ambition to do better and to strive for that quality-of-life aspect and sustainable ways of living. And if I feel that there is that ambition, I can become very attracted to the place.

Eve: [00:11:00] Yes.

Helle: [00:11:00] Regardless of how messy it is.

Eve: [00:11:03] Yeah, I think I like messy cities too. I think if they’re too cleaned up it worries me.

Eve: [00:11:09] Yeah. Yeah. And Copenhagen, of course, has become more clean or nice with time. But then I supplement, you could say, with going to more messy cities around the world, working there to further develop.

Eve: [00:11:24] Yes. Can you tell us about one of your favorite projects that you’ve done over the years and how it changed the place?

Helle: [00:11:32] Yeah, there’s quite a few important projects, I think having worked in Mexico City, for example, with their bicycle strategy. That was the first time I worked in a really large megacity, a real sort of hard one as well, where the traffic is intense and the processes are intense and hard and it’s, the engagement piece is difficult. But we managed to drive a process that ended up with some beautiful results in terms of implementation of bicycle ways and a public bike system and I believe a culture and positions that has remained within the city organization. So that work is being and has been continued over the years. A city like both New York and San Francisco where we are based, I’m also very proud of the transition projects we’ve been a part of, both in New York with the Public Plaza program, transforming Times Square, Madison Square, introducing bikeways in New York, as well as the transformation of Market Street in San Francisco. A big reference project, I think, from across the country, actually. So, these are just to mention a few.

Eve: [00:12:59] Right. Well, the one I’m very familiar with is New York, which I watched unfold. The Plaza Project and it was astounding to watch how it transformed the city. I studied there and every time I went back it was just a different, walkable, less congested place. Pretty fabulous use of, I suppose it was a reorganization, of streets to become friendlier to people. It was really fabulous to watch. So, congrats for that one. So, how has your you know, I suppose the big question is, is what are cities demanding now that they didn’t ask for ten or 20 years ago?

Helle: [00:13:41] That’s a great question, I think when we started out, it’s been a sort of a transition, I would say, because when we started out there was not a focus on delivering public spaces, having a focus on public life, neighborhood communities and so forth. But I would say that has certainly become something that the cities are now looking for, planning for, caring for, to a much larger extent. And now after COVID and the COVID crisis, we’ve seen further changes in this direction where there is now a strong, strong demand from people in cities to have access to green space, have access to places where you can meet people and socialize outside of your work and your living conditions and so forth. Much more focused on inclusion and equity. Diversity and inclusion, I would say, is something that most people, most cities, sorry, are struggling with. How to engage people locally, how to ensure proper processes, how to ensure processes and efficient decision making at the same time, and how to ensure how do we get more out of the investments that we are pouring into cities? Those are some of the challenges that I feel that are more urgent now after the COVID crisis.

Eve: [00:15:19] I think that’s right. So, I think the outdoors has taken front and center stage over the last few years, and that’s a good thing. So, in all of that, what do you think is the future of cities? Because, you know, certainly a year or two ago, there were a lot of grim forecasts about people fleeing cities forever, right?

Helle: [00:15:38] Yeah, I don’t think the concept of city is dying. We’ve had cities for thousands of years, so cities will definitely continue to exist and flourish. We come to cities not just because we are going to and from work, but because that’s where we can offer services. We can be closer to education and other health options and offerings and so forth. So, there are many, many reasons for coming to cities and living closer together. However, I do see an opportunity to have much more flexibility in our lives. And we see that also with a lot of companies offering more flexibility, people working from home, having much more of a fluent work-life situation where you don’t necessarily have to come into work every day. And that requires a change in cities where we don’t have these business districts and mono functional areas and cities, and we sort of transport ourselves from one end to the other. I think we need to move in a direction where neighborhoods are more diverse in terms of functions, allowing people to have that much more flexible lifestyle, live urban so that you can walk and bicycle on an everyday basis and have access to public transportation where the density of people is needed. So, I think we have a ways to go in terms of still being able to move in a direction where the neighborhood level in cities are developed to allow that type of lifestyle to happen rather than these mono functional urban areas as we are seeing it right now.

Eve: [00:17:36] So I think you’re talking about the tantalizing terms, 24-hour neighborhoods and 15 minute cities, meaning that you can walk anywhere in 15 minutes. Right? That’s a pretty big goal. Also, I noticed on your website something called Inclusive Healthy Places framework. What is that?

Helle: [00:17:58] Very happy you mention it. The inclusive, Healthy Places framework is toolkit that we developed actually with the foundation, Robert Wood Johnson, and the idea with this toolkit is for real estate developers or community developers or place makers to use this tool to help make sure that we think about equity and health as we develop places and public spaces. The tool came about in a process where we collaborated in Gehl with health practitioners from across the states and community developers. And for the past couple of years, we’ve worked together with various organizations, including the American Planning Association, to spread the word about this tool so that more organizations can approach planning in a more holistic way. So, it’s out there, and there is also a website now where you can go in and read some a bit about the cases.

Eve: [00:19:11] Oh, okay. When you move towards making places that work for everyone, everyone feels comfortable in, are there basic elements that you always think about? Basic elements for great spaces.

Helle: [00:19:25] Well, first of all, it’s important to, as I mentioned, not just to think about the place as a very closed entity but think about the context of the area. What’s the history of the place? What’s the culture of the neighborhood? Then there is both the physical and the program aspects, the, you could say the activities in the place as well as the design. And then lastly, the fourth element, which is the whole sort of, how are people actually engaged? How are they, also how is the institution around the place set up in a way that allows people to continuously feel ownership and engagement within the area? So, that’s more of a political, organizational, economic, you could say, structure around the place. Those are the four categories of topics you could say that we are looking into.

Eve: [00:20:29] Okay. So, you know, I have to ask how like, are cities focusing on making sure that good design is available to everyone no matter whether the place is rich or poor, that everyone has access to beautiful urban spaces. I know some cities have more money than other cities, but typically in the past certainly, great spaces have been in higher end neighborhoods, you know. Do you think that is shifting at all?

Helle: [00:21:00] It is perhaps shifting, but I don’t think quickly enough at all. And this varies a lot across the world, I would say. In the US, unfortunately, we still see many, many neighborhoods across cities that are disinvested in and has been for ages for decades.

Eve: [00:21:22] I live in Pittsburgh, so I know what that looks like.

Helle: [00:21:25] Yeah, yeah.

Eve: [00:21:26] It’s half its population, so, you know.

Helle: [00:21:29] Yeah, exactly. And in other parts of the world where sometimes the public sector might be a little bit stronger and have more means, we see a stronger effort to actually even out some of the differences and inequalities in terms of investments. So, I definitely feel that this is an area where we could, especially in the US cities, could do so much more because it’s a rich society and there should be possibilities to actually ensure high quality, proper public spaces for all and it doesn’t have to be expensive granite pavements and what have you. We saw that in New York. It is a matter of the geometry of the space and the prioritization of the people above cars, for example, and just plain access to open space and green space. So, it’s not so much design as it is the pure access and availability of space.

Eve: [00:22:41] I mean, New York’s a great example. It was really paint and some bollards and plants and some furniture from a supermarket originally, like a Target or Walmart, right?

Helle: [00:22:55] Exactly.

Eve: [00:22:55] Just to completely transform the city. Yeah. It isn’t about granite, as you said. I wish we could move along faster. Do you notice different sources of funding coming to the table? Foundations, or other than public sources? Is that shifting? Because there’s a lot of talk in the foundation world about sort of rectifying the inequality, but I wonder if it’s filtered through to urban places.

Helle: [00:23:24] I think that’s a great collaboration and this is also in the US and we are learning from that, I think in Europe with a strong collaboration between foundations and public sector NGOs, community organizations. And that’s admirable because sometimes in our part of the world the public sector is perceived to deliver all of it. So there is a collaboration. I think the collaboration could be more action oriented, more testing, more actually willing to actually get your hands dirty, so to speak. I mean, make some real changes. And I sometimes worry that too much effort is lost in planning processes and strategies. And one of the approaches that we really advocate for is to, yes, you need to have a strategy and a plan. Yes, you need to analyze your conditions properly, but you also need to engage through actions. And in that way, you actually really show the willingness to commit and to make change locally. And too often I think we we don’t get to that level of engagement.

Eve: [00:24:41] I used to work at the Planning Department years ago in Pittsburgh, and we used to call that analysis paralysis. There were many, many plans on the shelves that had never been enacted because of fear or inability to take the next step or I really don’t know what, but a lot of money wasted that way. I totally agree with you. That is actually one of the reasons why I loved what happened in New York, because it was very quick and dirty. They tested it out. They tested it out with not even very nice bollards just to see what would happen and then move forward. And that I, I love that. I think it’s great. I’m going to ask you another hard question. So, I want to know is Denmark more supportive of female leaders than the US? And if so, how are women encouraged to take leadership roles?

Helle: [00:25:39] I do know that the Danish Society is one of the most, sort of, equal society in terms of men and women having equal opportunities. So, there is definitely something in our societal model that allows women to have a career. And the fact that we have so good public childcare system and school system and so forth enables many women to have a career. So that’s for sure part of it. It’s also been a process here. I mean, when I started out in real estate, in planning 20 to 25 years ago, it was much more male dominated. So, I would often in my early career be the sole woman in in a room. And I can see over these last 20 years or so in Denmark how that has changed. And also, in architecture education. We now have 60% women, actually. That is not to say that, we don’t necessarily have 60% women when it comes to leadership positions. So, there is still a gap even in even in Denmark on that front.

Eve: [00:26:58] What about women who control money? I mean, I think the problem we have here is maybe not in architecture, been in real estate in general. There are very, very few women in positions of control in real estate in the US. It’s a very heavily male dominated industry. And when you control the money, you control the decisions, right?

Helle: [00:27:22] Yeah, and that’s definitely the same here. I think the problem with real estate in general is that it’s a very conservative business and it’s a market that is used to developing a model and then sort of really refining that model and copying so that you can sort of earn more and more money over time. And there is very relatively little experimentation actually, and that’s actually what is needed more possibility to experiment with different types of lifestyles and different types of ways of living. I think many of ours.

Eve: [00:28:04] Different solutions.

Eve: [00:28:05] Yeah. I always think about affordable housing in Pittsburgh where I’ve lived for many years. I mean, affordable housing is absolutely important and was heavily supported by the city and I am not criticizing it, but it became a cookie cutter thing. You could drive down a street and you could point to the subsidized house because it had a very certain look to it. And that’s a shame. I mean, again, that speaks to good design shouldn’t only be for people with means. There are people who need affordable housing who want to live differently. It’s a little depressing.

Helle: [00:28:44] Yeah. And Denmark, we have a special model for social housing that is more than 100 years old. And I’ve often tried to export this model even to the US. Generally, it’s called common housing, or it’s called general housing because it’s not social for the people who need support from the government. Actually, in Denmark everybody can apply for general housing or for common housing. And the way it works is that it’s actually run as a separate private company, and all the private companies that run these estates, they pay part of their rent, after having paid back relatively cheap loan to the government, after 30 years, then they can start paying rent into a national fund and the national fund then repays back in a circular system. You can apply for money from the foundation whenever you need to do renovation or social projects in your estate. So, this basically means that we don’t have any common housing estates in Denmark that are badly maintained. We have money to run social programs and job training programs and health programs and renovate public spaces and stuff like that in the public housing estates across the country. And in our planning law, in new developments, you are required to have 30% common housing in your area.

Eve: [00:30:39] Interesting.

Helle: [00:30:40] So, it’s super interesting, sort of circular, sort of, at least in money terms, circular system that has existed in Denmark for 400 years. And I think there should be ways to set up similar types of mechanisms, maybe at more of, sort of, a regional level also in the US. It would be super interesting to think about.

Eve: [00:31:09] Oh, that’s really fascinating. I will look into it for sure. Yeah. So, what’s your ultimate goal?

Helle: [00:31:22] My ultimate goal is I think, currently my ultimate goal would be to try and create a sort of more of a community of thinkers and doers around our approach to development so that we can hopefully impact even more places to create even more sort of visionary projects that can be references and lead impact behind, so that it can inspire others. And do that through more strategic partnerships globally. So, I’m really still very focused on the sort of more global transformation, you could say, within our field.

Eve: [00:32:20] Well, I’d be really fascinated to see what you do, and I think I’m going to make up a list of places that you’ve worked on to go see next. As travel opens up a little bit, and certainly back to Copenhagen, which is an amazing, amazing city. Although I have to say I almost got run over by a bike there. It’s a little scary crossing the bike lanes. And then I actually brought a bike in Copenhagen back to Pittsburgh, so I have a little bit of it there.

Helle: [00:32:47] It’s fantastic.

Eve: [00:32:48] But the bikes certainly rule the road, don’t they, in Copenhagen?

Helle: [00:32:53] They certainly do. And I would say, Eve any time you’re welcome to visit. We have also done a bit of a collaboration with the city of Pittsburgh actually, but I don’t believe any of it has been implemented yet.

Eve: [00:33:08] Oh, I can’t wait to hear.

Helle: [00:33:11] If any of our team is there. I’ll connect you.

Eve: [00:33:14] Absolutely. That’d be fabulous. Thank you very much for joining me today. Bye.

Helle: [00:33:19] You’re welcome, Eve. Bye.

Eve: [00:33:31] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive together. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. If you like what you heard, you can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co, where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Helle Søholt

The Fintech Times.

September 14, 2022

When asked about building a Fintech business (as a woman) by the Fintech Times, Eve Picker, founder of SmallChange.co had this to say:

“Be realistic about the good and bad aspects of building a business. I’ll start with a negative: you’ll probably have a tough time raising money. After all, only two to three per cent of VC funds go to women. You can let that start depress you or you can move forward and refuse to give up. If you persist, you might very well become a trailblazer for other women. And that brings me to another positive: It’s an amazing experience to build a business, especially one that is forward-looking and future-thinking. Fintech is the future and so are women.”

Want to read about all 13 amazing Fintech women? Click here.

Image courtesy of The Fintech Times

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