It is hard to describe my feelings when looking back at this first year in business for myself. Creating Place Associates and launching projects with people who have been supporting me and providing me opportunities to help has been an exciting ride. It has been a wonderful year filled with great people and projects. I have been able to use my skills in design, facilitating and development to provide a variety of resources to clients, their projects and consulting teams. I will be documenting these successes and creating a place to share this work and these great projects. This past year Place Associates won the Town Planning award for 2022 from the Alabama Planning Chapter for our town center project with the Town of Harpersville. I have worked on several design projects such as Rehobeth’s and Elmore’s Town Centers and have designed parks and landscapes. I have had the pleasure to continue teaching the planning and infrastructure course for Auburn’s Master of Real Estate Development program. I have facilitated two mayor’s summits and several design charrettes for the cities of Foley, Muscle Shoals and Helena, AL with Design Alabama. My development work has focused on fee development services for a Birmingham grocery store and chain, along with a tax analysis project, work with both the City of Montgomery and Selma to develop economic tools for their use, connecting business to potential brick and mortar spaces, helping business write business plan and understand the development process and providing development feasibility studies for nonprofits and developers on their existing holdings.
As I look forward to 2023, I am excited to share the work we are doing with such great clients and projects. They include the City of Brewton’s mixed use center development, eight community projects across the state looking at park master planning and phase 1 projects with the ENI project led by the University of Alabama’s Center for Economic Development, along with multiple park, streetscape and site design services and a full schedule of teaching and facilitating. 2023 is going to be a great year for a lot of places and Place Associates would love to help you and your projects succeed!