Aerotropolis Americas Live: Creating Aerotropolis Stakeholder Collaboration

The process of engaging, aligning and managing the numberous stakholder interests remains on eof the major challenges to a successul aerotropolis development. Hear how regional entities have worked collaboratively to attract compaines to their aerotropolis.

Moderator: John Walsh, CEO, President & Founder, TIG Real Estate Services. Member of the Management Committee of Vision North Texas.

Panel:

• Mike Rawlings, Mayor, City of Dallas, TX.
• Betsy Price, Mayor, City of Forth Worth, TX.
• Beth Van Duyne, Mayor, City of Irving, TX.
• Michael Hancock, Mayor, City of Denver, CO.

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Mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth Mike Rawlings and Betsy Price address the conference

MR "One of the reasons we have been able to develop the aerotropolis and increase our profitability as a region is the business mentality."

BP "We're excited to learn from you and what you're up to"

https://twitter.com/AirportCities/status/395560211496189953

John Terrell, vice president of commercial development, DFW takes to the stage to introduce the panel:

• Mike Rawlings (MR), Mayor, City of Dallas (MR)
• Betsy Price (BP), Mayor, City of Fort Worth (BP)
• Beth Van Duyne (BVD), Mayor, City of Irving (BVD)
• Michael Hancock (MH), Mayor, City of Denver (MH)

And moderator, John Walsh (JW), CEO and founder of TIG Real Estate Services Member of the Management Committee of Vision North Texas.

Vision North Texas is a multi-year collaboration of multiple stakeholders. Its innovation and leadership has been recognised for its non-partisan efforts to progress the economic development of the region.

Panel discussion begins

Denver is thinking alot about how the aerotropolis and airport will affect different stakeholders. "We look at it as a geographic location about 25 miles around the centre of the airport."

What are the challenges of building an aerotropolis?

BVD - You need economic impetus - without the economic impetus of the airport - the land we have built on would still be a ranch.

What would we look like as a region had we not in 1974 began collaborating instead of competing?

BP - Mike and I tend to think that the DFW region is a big city - it's the airport that anchored that. Businesses that come in really don't care if they're from Irving or Dallas or Fort Worth, they come to the region to do their business. They pick their city for their personal preferences and their region for its business credentials.

How do you foresee the airport impacting the region even more?

MR - if you don't cannibalise yourself, someone else is going to. In that sense competing is just wrong. We've got to plan ahead and think about the next 50 years. Look at the growth of urbanisation, which is going to happen more and more.

• We have to break down the silos between organisations and cities.
• We need to pay attention to detail, think about the intricacies of development.
• We need to make sure that people's needs and interests are taken care of.
• Ground transportation is a huge consideration.

http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_19084668

What will the airport look like under your supervision in Denver?

MH - Regions that don't figure out how to work together will be left behind in the 21st century. Denver has to get this together and work together - my vision is this: It's better to work as a unit to attract international opportunities and develop commonalities to leverage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas%E2%80%93Fort_Worth_metroplex

How will DFW grow in the future?

**Arts tourism is a growth area for DFW**

BVD - There are 6.5 million people in DFW at the moment - we're expecting the population to double by 2015.
- DART rail system and road infrastructure is expanding rapidly, we're investing in that to accommodate and encourage visitors and businesses

BP - $16.5bn will be spent in the region in the next few years in transportation

https://twitter.com/AirportCities/status/395567217883893760

How do changes in communication affect things?

BP - It allows us to look to other parts of the world and take inspiration and learn.
- The ability to pick up the phone and communicate with our board members is key to developing change

BVD - cooperation is key - our first function as Mayors is bringing other organisations from other parts of the country into our region. We have lost opportunities to other regions because we competed.
- It's not just the transportation, it's also our parks and recreation grounds and education facilities - communicating with our partner cities gives us inspiration for how to improve our own areas.

**Pull your resources to talk about a common issue and how you deal with it**

https://twitter.com/routesonline/status/395569673665654784

https://twitter.com/AirportCities/status/395569543013089280

How do you work with neighbouring communities on transportation lines to encourage growth in the region?

MH - Denver has invested in a 122 mile transit
- Transit systems in their very nature encourage regional development
- We understand that the development of the airport will increase pressure on the existing infrastructure
- The only way we can afford these developments to improve the transport infrastructure is through regional cooperation

MR - 'Man plans and God laughs' - things won't always go your way, but that's ok. There's a lot of detail to go through. Create an organisation that can bring all parties together and persevere.
- Innovation is the mother of necessity in DFW because "we have a kinda goofy governance system".

JT - When DFW opened it was a transportation destination - there wasn't even a place to eat in the airport - what we need to do is move our aerotropolis development to a human scale.

How do you create the scale of an aerotropolis from fresh?

MH - Very slowly! You start looking at business needs and opportunities
- we like to market to people the speed and ease of travelling from Denver, you can get to Denver, play a few rounds of golf and get to New York by dinner time.
- We spend a lot of time around the world trying to create connections

How do you deal with rapid expansion?

MR - I have two main concerns - one is debt: what is the appropriate risk/reward
- the second is the education of our children. We have to make sure that everything we do now is not wasted in the future.

BVD - we also have to make sure that we retain the workforce
- so much of what we do is the sprinkles on the cake, the add-ons. What we do together is deal with the cake itself - all of the foundations

BP - The airport has encouraged diversity in the region- we have 34 different languages spoken in our community
- we have to learn how to accommodate that

What are best practices that we learn from each other and borrow?

MR - what we saw in the growth of arts in Fort Worth was the need to keep up with that and it was a direct friendly competition and a bit of envy. I look to all our cities and say "Why can't we have that in our city?"

What lessons do you want to learn from DFW as Denver expands?

MH - I want to know what problems you have had - I believe you learn more from the 'Nos'

BVD - Light rail has been a problem in getting alignment with our communities - in Texas we love our cars!

MR - in order to develop together we have to combine finances as well, when an area doesn't agree to that, it slows everything down.

JT - DFW is a very long-term strategy, collaboration takes time

What are the challenges our region has now to ensure 30 years from now we are great?

MR - our governance is not optimised - we need to get our voters engaged
- there's also an attitude issue. Looking at education the kids spend a great deal of time out of school - we need to change these issues
- We've got a programme called Dallas Connect looking at best practices in scaling the solutions to these challenges. Dallas Connect crosses all city regions.

BVD - water and energy are a problem. We know that they are essential to communities and as the communities grow we need to look at how to support that need. We are working as a region to address this issue. In Irving it's our number one focus.

BP - the key issue for me is transport. We need to ensure the 'cosiness' of letting people know they won't be stuck in traffic for hours but they'll be tucked up at home

MH - I think history is a problem. In Denver we need to look forward not backwards. It's about looking beyond a limited vision and ensuring we build the foundations.

JT - Development around an airport has to be done via democracy, in face-to-face, collaborating and combining our resources.