Richard W. Reynolds (left) is stepping down as chairman of the Urban Land Institute’s Boston District Council and will be succeeded by Glenn L. Burdick.
Changes are under way at the Urban Land Institute’s Boston District Council, with Chairman Richard W. Reynolds stepping down after a three-year stint to make way for Glenn L. Burdick, a corporate real estate specialist active in the ULI since the 1980s.
“It’s a big legacy for me to try to continue,” Burdick said in praising Reynolds for expanding the regional chapter to nearly 800 members from about 600 when he took the helm in 2001. “Dick has provided tremendous energy and vision to the organization, and it is going to be a challenge trying to fill his shoes.”
A veteran figure in Hub real estate circles, Reynolds has previously served as president of the Massachusetts Land Bank and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. The timing in stepping down as ULI council chairman is happenstance, he said, to his simultaneous departure after 11 years from Spaulding & Slye Colliers, the Boston-based real estate company that merged with Reynolds’ Cambridge development firm in 1993. Burdick will take over as chairman on Oct. 1, the same day Reynolds leaves Spaulding & Slye.
In both cases, Reynolds told Banker & Tradesman, the changes are less an ending than they are a beginning. Already gearing up to help ULI add more district councils nationally, Reynolds privately is launching a new real estate consulting firm, the Reynolds Group, that will be based in Needham.
“I’m excited about it,” said Reynolds. “I’m looking forward to having the freedom to work on the things that I want to work on and plan my free time when I want it.” Reynolds stressed that the departure from Spaulding & Slye was “amicable,” so much so that he expressed hope of doing consulting work for the firm.
‘Real Results’
Having held a variety of high-level positions during his Spaulding & Slye tenure, and most recently overseeing its Investment Sales Group, Reynolds said he plans to use the saved commuting time and reduced administrative responsibilities to advise clients directly on core real estate issues, such as evaluating properties, debating lease-vs.-own matters or how to finance expansion. Reynolds, who holds a coveted Counselors of Real Estate designation, said he also plans to increase his part-time work as an expert witness on real estate-related disputes.
Reynolds said he will remain active in ULI, a diverse group that promotes better use of resources and techniques in planning, developing and maintaining real estate. Based in Washington, D.C., the nonprofit entity boasts more than 22,000 members, including a host of real estate professionals such as architects, engineers, developers, contractors and public planning officials. A former principal with AEW Capital Management who started his own corporate advisory firm last year, Burdick had participated in several national ULI endeavors over the years, but said his focus has increasingly been on promoting the local council.
“I look forward to the opportunity,” said Burdick, noting that Boston has become among ULI’s largest and most active chapters. One of his main goals going forward, Burdick said, will be to ensure not only that the voluminous membership is receiving programming to improve their own knowledge, but also tapping ULI’s in-house talent pool to assist the region in various planning efforts.
“We need to work synergistically to make sure that our expertise gets out into the community and helps people make the best use of the scarce land that we have,” said Burdick, citing the Technical Assistance Panel program (TAP) that under Reynolds’ reign has provided ULI members to assess specific real estate conundrums throughout Massachusetts. An offshoot of a national ULI program that offers more extensive sessions for a price, the Boston council’s scope has been on holding free one-day events, with Mattapan, Milton, Somerville and Wareham among the communities that already have taken advantage of the program. ULI members might help brainstorm with local officials on ways to bolster a city’s downtown, for example, or find creative ways to restore underused parcels, such as a brownfields site.
Burdick said he hopes to increase the number of TAPs held in the region, and is also eager to expand the UrbanPlan program that ULI is trying to roll out nationally. Under that initiative, ULI members will work with certain high schools in the region to help students gain better understanding of real estate matters, creating mock projects or planning issues and rating the participants on how they tackle the given dilemma. ULI Boston member Anne Myers has been promoting the concept locally, and Burdick said he is eager to see that effort succeed.
“I want the district to be a leader nationally in it,” said Burdick, who also praised the chapter’s ongoing support of affordable housing construction, with ULI an active participant in the Commonwealth Housing Task Force that has brought several organizations and public agencies together to pursue that aim during the past few years. Spearheaded by developer Jerry Rappaport Jr., ULI’s Boston chapter has played a key role in bolstering the CHTF’s mandate to increase the affordable housing stock in the region.
Reynolds, who also has worked diligently for most of his 35-year career to increase affordable housing, called the ULI’s focus in that vein among the proudest aspects of his three-year chairmanship. Among the most tangible outcomes, he said, is just-passed legislation that compensates communities for encouraging construction of new housing units.
“It’s good stuff,” said Reynolds. “Everybody came together and worked together, and we produced some real results that will be important in helping cities and towns [accept] new housing.”
As for improving the real estate profession itself, Reynolds said he is also pleased with the popularity of the Boston council’s Young Leadership Group, which now boasts some 175 practitioners aged 35 years or under. The entity was formed partly because there was a gap of young people entering the real estate profession between 1990 and 1995, said Reynolds, and there was a sense that new arrivals could use networking opportunities and a chance to explore dialogue beyond their work cubicles.
“We want to integrate them to be able to think about a broad range of issues,” said Reynolds, who calls the YLG a chance “to grow the next generation of real estate professionals.”
Reynolds already has accepted a request to support the addition of new regional ULI chapters, such as one recently formed in Portland, Ore. As for his consulting group, Reynolds can certainly offer a variety of real estate expertise to clients, having worked extensively over the years on numerous institutional and private real estate endeavors. Besides holding the CRE, Reynolds spent time with the erstwhile New England Life real estate group, helped Hines Interests open its Boston development office and launched his own real estate firm, Reynolds Vickery Messina & Griefen, in the 1980s. During his stint at Spaulding & Slye, Reynolds assembled and sold a national portfolio of office buildings for one client, and helped the Boston-based real estate services firm on a plethora of strategic planning efforts prior to taking on the investment sales oversight position.
