You don’t know what you don’t know,” asserted The Kresge Foundation’s Carol Coletta at a recent ULI event in Philadelphia. A few weeks prior as a ULI Fall Meeting panel moderator, she posed questions to show a national crowd what they may not know about homelessness on the west coast. In Los Angeles, this year’s Fall Meeting was filled with surprising discoveries.

Similar Challenges, New Insights

Affordability housing, the death of brick-and-mortar retail, homelessness, equity, blight, brain-drain, gender gap.

We confront these challenges most often in our confined region. The concurrent sessions at ULI Fall Meeting invite us out of our regional bubbles to identify useful practices that are working elsewhere in the country. A response to affordable housing in LA is co-living. Retail’s new focus on the experience was echoed by asset managers in multiple markets as spots around the nation are adapting to a new Amazonian order. Homelessness is alleviated on the west coast with ADU’s (Accessory Dwelling Units).

Sometimes the lessons are broad like when Angela Glover-Blackwell of PolicyLink explained the difference between equality (input) and equity (output). In other cases, the example is specific, but the takeaway is transferable; developer Allan Glass filled a market gap in laboratory facilities for bioscience start-ups that would outgrow their incubator lab and leave LA because there were no facilities for them.

Verbal feedback of attendees leaving sessions sound like:

“I had no idea that existed.”

“It would be great if we did something like that.”

“I feel energized!”

Check out the Host City

Whether you have been to this city a dozen times or only ever experienced it cinematically, getting out to explore the host city is a key to unlocking the benefits of the ULI Fall Meeting. Chances are, something new is happening that will leave you excited to tell others back in Philadelphia. If you signed up early to take advantage of “Tour Day” you may have strolled alongside Google or Hulu employees at ‘Silicon Beach’ or the radically growing downtown known as DTLA. If you are on a Product Council, you may have happened to pass by my own self-guided exploration while on your tour of the instagramable Arts District. Murals and street art galore! Any mode you take to immerse yourself in the city (car, metro, bus, Uber, or DASH for 35 cents) will help you understand why Angelenos fill the second most populated city in the country.

Fall Meeting on a ‘Young Leader’ Budget

For being the sixth largest city in the country, Philadelphia had a relatively modest attendance in Los Angeles. Our region advances when more of our Young Leaders reap the benefits of Fall Meeting and it’s a challenge to get more of us there because it is expensive. Here are some suggestions for making it possible:

• Transportation (air): When air travel is your only option, stick with the cheaper airlines that charge you for all the extras. Then avoid all the add-on costs by eating a meal before airport security, bring an empty water bottle, and only carry-on luggage. If your return flight is on the last day of Fall Meeting, you’ll probably run into some familiar ULI faces heading back with you. Time for an informal debrief on the week!
• Transportation (ground): Amtrak should be compared to budget buses like BoltBus or MegaBus. For next year’s Fall Meeting in Boston, carefully consider Amtrak vs. airline. In the time you may save, you will still pay three times the amount to fly than taking the train. Pack food for Amtrak. Only trains and sports stadiums can charge that much for a hot dog and get away with it. Bring work and join the co-working before-it-was-cool crowd.
• Accommodations: Stay with friends! Or friends of friends. Or during this past fall meeting in LA, you could have utilized co-living at a PodShare AND heard the founding partner, Elvina Beck, speak all about it at the “Hospitality Trends” session. For $50/night or $280/week you get 7 nights for the price of 1 hotel in the same neighborhood.
• Food and Drink: Easy, eat the local street food. You’ll probably run into several other ULI attendees while doing so! Then continue pairing food with networking by attending all the cocktail receptions you can. YLG and the Northeast Corridor both hosted gatherings at swank hotels in the DTLA.

Before heading out to the next Fall Meeting, check in with your fellow Philadelphian ULI members to see who else is going. In a sea of urban professionals, it is calming to see a familiar face, exchange the things you are learning, and decide which of the next interesting sessions to attend. See you next year in Boston!

Lindsay Bodin, Project/Property Manager at AthenianRazak , was the recipient of the 2017 ULI Fall Meeting Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) Langan Scholarship.