Photo courtesy of Consensus Strategies
Patrick Fox
CEO, Consensus Strategies
Age: 61
Industry experience: 35 years
As a consultant to real estate developers, Patrick Fox helps navigate the rocky shoals of local politics and potential hazards on the route to approval. Fox distills his experiences in his new book, “Mastering Land Use Politics: Dealing with NIMBY’s, YIMBY’s and Covert Operatives.” His Waltham-based firm, Consensus Strategies, works with developers across Massachusetts and the U.S. on community relations and permitting strategies. Fox’s background in Bay State politics, working for former Massachusetts Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti and legislators on political campaigns, prepared him for the sharp-elbowed arena of real estate permitting. In his previous role at Hingham-based Saint Consulting Group, Fox co-authored “NIMBY Wars,” with its CEO, P. Michael Saint, in 2009. His new volume reflects the role that social media plays in the process, and how developers can harness it to their benefit.
Q: What’s the best way to describe your firm’s focus?
A: I work both on getting projects approved and sometimes protecting market share for my clients, making sure that competing projects are not. That makes me uniquely paranoid. It makes me think about how I would stop me. With social media, everybody has a voice. The bad news is everyone has a voice. Some of the voices are scared and paranoid. You certainly have a lot of people involved in the process who have legitimate concerns, and need to have them addressed. But then there are intractable opponents that won’t talk about a project, won’t consider the greater good – and social media has made it so those people can connect, can organize and spread misinformation in ways that can be highly damaging to the process.
We had a hearing in the Midwest on a wind farm, and someone said, “You’re going to build a hundred turbines going in one direction. You’re going to screw up the rotation of the Earth.” How are we supposed to deal with that? You’ve got to counsel developers that you can’t be dismissive. You can’t be condescending, but you need to explain the merits of the project.
People are much more motivated to oppose something than to support it. I’ve worked on lots of projects and I know 85 percent of the municipality supports the project, but there’s no supporters at the hearing. The opponents dominate because they care and they are passionate. That’s the handicap that every developer starts with.
Q: With the emergence of YIMBY groups, particularly on housing production, are you working with their organizers?
A: I have. The problem is housing is the most NIMBY issue of all. Everybody is for new housing. Everybody knows we need it, but nobody wants it in their community. It’s really only in the most active and liberal of communities where you’ve got a YIMBY component that can really make a difference.
Q: What’s unique to Massachusetts land use politics?
A: The constituencies can be a bit more rational than some other states where rumors and conspiracies can cause even more of a problem. California and Massachusetts are places where a lot of the innovation and regulation in land use originates, and it makes a great incubator for the rest of the country.
Q: Your book mentions that some of the most effective opposition comes from double-income households where people have experience in related fields. How do community demographics affect proposals?
A: I’m thinking of one in Massachusetts where we tried to get a retail project in and the stay-at-home housewives were lawyers, engineers, had graduate degrees and were devoting all their time to try and stop this project. And it can be extremely challenging. Developers in those situations need to reach out. It used to be that developers would say, “Let’s keep quiet.” Let’s try to do a hearing around July 4 or around the holidays. Those days are long gone with the internet and social media. There’s going to be opposition. They need to start to outreach early: [Find out] who is impacted, who are the key people who have a say, and involve them in the process.
Q: Should developers respond directly on social media?
A: You have to, within reason. You don’t want to have a Facebook site where people can just trash you and add more lies and rumors. One-on-one and eye-to-eye is always going to be the best. The best thing a developer can do is look people in the eye and humanize the project. Nobody believes Acme Corp. and their promises about what they can build in your community. Social media can help you identify those people you need to get to. It also helps with other issues: What can a developer do for mitigation and community services and other benefits?
Q: How do you identify competitor-organized opposition?
A: It happens in virtually every industry. It’s about protecting market share. Corporate careers rise and fall on the stock market and market share, whether it’s malls, grocery stores, factories – just about anything you could think of. Some 15 or 20 years ago, I would talk to companies saying, “If we can’t win fair and square on our own merits, we don’t want to fight our competitors.” Every single one of those companies is out of business.
I had an order of nuns hire us. They ran a regional hospitality facility, and a national chain was going to come in and they needed to oppose it. They hired us to oppose the national chain, but it needed to be done so nobody would know the order behind it.
Everybody does it and it’s an essential part of the real estate strategy, but they don’t like to discuss it. There is one example of a hospital that had opposition and we looked at who was showing up at the meetings and researched them, traced them back to a political consultancy. We put all of that together and handed it to the newspaper who followed up on it, and that discredited the opposition during the entire process.
Fox’s Five Favorite Speakeasies
- Blind Duck at Raffles, Boston
- Yvonne’s, Boston
- Bogey’s Place, Boston
- Hecate, Boston
- Backbar, Somerville
