At transit stations, riders appreciate a wide variety of retail outlets from newsstands to restaurants. However, the retail landscape is rapidly evolving due to a decline in transit ridership and a shift towards online purchasing. This webinar will show how innovative transit agencies, property managers, and developers are adapting to this changing retail climate – with strategies designed to enhance station amenities, attract more riders, improve safety, and increase transit agency revenues. This webinar is jointly sponsored by the Eno Center for Transportation and the American Planning Association’s Transportation Planning Division.
Speakers:
Laura Barr, Senior Vice President, CBRE
Charles Di Maggio, Chief Executive Officer, Greystone Management Solutions
Susan Fine, Principal, Fine Development Partners
Moderator:
Philip Plotch, Principal Researcher, Eno Center for Transportation
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Watch the Recording
Laura Barr leads a San Francisco-based team with a passion for the urban public realm and consumer trends, innovating “retail-as-a-service,” an approach to leasing and operations now used by top mixed-use developers and operators that demystifies the value creation for retail. As a result, Laura and her team get involved early on and advise clients on positioning or repositioning major assets and on consumer brand growth strategy. Laura and her team have advised on several landmarks including Ghirardelli Square, Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center, Mission Rock with the San Francisco Giants and Tishman Speyer and the widely publicized Springline project in Menlo Park for which the retail activation strategy helped set office rent records in 2022.
Laura served for six years on CBRE’s Americas Producer Advisory Board as its youngest member and co-chaired the Futures Committee, which produced research on the impact of autonomous vehicles on real estate.
Charles Di Maggio leads Greystone Management Solution’s leasing and asset management teams throughout the United States. Actively involved in real estate, management, law and construction in both the public and private sectors for over 35 years, Mr. Di Maggio provides our clients his broad experience in real estate law, lease negotiation, drafting, retail concession development, valuation and public sector procurement.
Prior to joining Greystone, Mr. Di Maggio was an executive vice president for Grenadier Realty Corp. He has also served as the City of New York’s lead housing and real estate lobbyist in Albany, the Assistant Commissioner for Local Government Affairs and Contract Management for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and as the Assistant Representative to the Board of Estimate for the Mayor’s Office of the City of New York under the administration of Edward I. Koch.
Susan Fine, principal of OasesRE and developer of the Turnstyle retail project, has built in New York City from the ground up (and sometimes below grade), coordinating every step of the development process – financing, leasing, developing, construction, and management.
Most recently, she completed a Senior Advanced Leadership Fellowship at Harvard University where she focused on how to use “bricks and clicks” to help micro businesses thrive and lead to wealth creation. She is organizing pilot programs in Massachusetts and Chicago. A summary of these efforts is attached.
Ms. Fine completed the first privately financed project within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s subway system, Turnstyle. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the subterranean marketplace presents a departure from the way the MTA has handled development” and is a model for future privatization. The New York Times complimented “the density, variety and clarity of the design” calling Turnstyle “a small scale evocation of a busy shopping street.”
