On Tuesday, September 10^th, ULI Philadelphia hosted “Designing a ULI Global Award Winner – Meet the Visionaries” at the ArtsQuest Center in Bethlehem, PA. A panel of project leaders spoke to the attendees, providing insight on two ULI award winners: Bethlehem’s SteelStacks Arts + Cultural Campus and Downtown Allentown’s Revitalization District. The panel included Jane Heft, VP and Director of Project Design & Corporate Branding at City Center Investment Company, Kassie Hilgert, President and CEO of ArtsQuest, Laura Stedenfeld, Principal at Omnes and Wendy Rowden, President of Building for the Arts, NY.

Jane Heft spoke about the expansive development happening in downtown Allentown, which was originally centered around the state-of-the-art multipurpose arena, PLL Center. The intent of the arena was to keep people in town while continuing to shift the environment to one more interactive and centered around culture and the arts. Heft emphasized, “You have to show people what can really be” in an effort to explain the potential that any neighborhood or project has if the time, effort, and money is invested. She highlighted that residential buildings in Allentown are being leased faster than they are built, a trend they weren’t expecting to happen so soon.

Kassie Hilgert explained that the vision of SteelStacks builds on the history of Bethlehem steel and created a music gathering across the old industrial Lehigh Valley to make a space welcoming the creative class. She believes that artists are natural problem solvers and it is the goal of ArtsQuest to use arts and culture as a way to propel the South Side forward to its full potential. Her guiding philosophies throughout the development of the SteelStacks Arts + Cultural Campus have and continue to be that you must have a deep level of humility and a high tolerance for failure if you want to succeed.

Laura Stedenfeld highlighted that the best way to connect with people is through art and design because of the natural way we interact with it. She emphasized that making sure that the connective tissue, a word used to describe the space between buildings, was authentic was their top priority when designing the Allentown ArtsWalk and Pocket Park. Every dollar spent on arts development comes back as a factor of three, proving that art is both a successful financial and community investment.

Wendy Rowden, a ULI National Trustee and founder of the ULI Women’s Leadership Initiative, runs a nonprofit in New York that utilizes arts investment to catalyze community development. As the Global Jury Chair in 2017-2018 when Allentown won, she provided a unique perspective of why these projects stood out among 100+ applicants from around the world. She emphasized that the ULI Global Awards are not just an architectural or design award. They are designed to take a holistic view of a project, factoring in how they impact their community, their innovative approaches to development and if they are financially successful.

All of the visionaries expressed a common theme: the importance of arts investments to revitalize communities. These types of projects require people who are in it for the long game. Project leaders need to be nimble and expect that their original model or vision will change. Being patient and flexible will eventually contribute to a project’s financial success as well as its ability to catalyze the greater community- the true formula to a ULI Global Award winner.

Following the event, there was a self-guided tour beginning at the Renaissance Allentown Hotel for attendees to observe all the exciting work being done in Downtown Allentown.

ULI would like to thank our Title Sponsor, JDavis, and Supporting Sponsors, Langan Engineering and MacIntosh Engineering, speakers, and attendees who continue to support and make these events possible.

Article was contributed by Kiara Damon, a student at Lehigh University earning her B.A in Psychology.