When Will Hotels Rebound + What’s a 15 Min. City? 🏫 📈

EDITION 15 / WEEK 30

As we move into Q4, the world seems as topsy-turvy as ever. Since the global shut down in March we’ve shared 14 editions of Bright Brothers “COVID-19 Cliffs Notes on Response + Recovery”; featuring hundreds of data points, and oodles of special reports, best practices and inspiration for urban placemaking practitioners over the last 30 weeks! Now, more than ever we’re “all in this together” and we look forward to continuing to bring you world-class news, journalism, insights and MarCom recommendations. Cheers to sticking with us, and to our Edition 15, “youz guyz”!

– Your Bright Brothers Team

Real estate prices are about to take a plunge. Despite a recent lift in single family home sales, the Urban Land Institute and PwC are predicting an overall 10% decrease in real estate values in the coming year. We’ve all seen doom and gloom articles about the collapse of cities due to COVID, and how rents are bottoming out in cities like San Francisco and Manhattan (empty rental apartments in Manhattan tripled, nearly hitting 16,000, with vacancy rates hitting 6% and net effective rents dropping by 11%). But the real challenges stem from our hardest hit sectors: restaurant, retail and hospitality.

Byron Carlock, head of PwC’s U.S. real estate advisory practice predicts that hotels won’t rebound until 2024. With the lion’s share of group and meeting revenues evaporating, and many large-scale functions being booked at least a year out – the net effect of COVID is being cast for years to come. Smaller venues may be nimble enough to survive if they’re able to host weddings and limited groups (as individual regions re-open and increase their public gathering capacities), but for large scale ballroom and convention center sales – we hope you’ve amped or upgraded your CVENT profiles, because you’re gonna need all the help you can get!

Give us a shout. We can help.

Photo by: Alexandr Hovhannisyan

The concept of the “15 Minute City” has really come to the forefront during the pandemic for multiple reasons – including radical changes to transportation infrastructure. The average New Yorker spends 43 minutes to commuting to work! Championed by Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, the 15 Minute City means living in a neighborhood with viable access to the pedestrian things you need on the regular – as a pedestrian! Can you walk 15 minutes to get groceries, visit a pharmacy, schools, parks…etc.? Here in the U.S. where we have lower overall population density as a country, due to the enormity of the continent and where the car is king, it’s more difficult to map to a 15 minute neighborhood unless you’re in a major metro. Wanna see how well your neighborhood fairs? Click here to check your access to living essentials.

We may think of placemaking as a modern UPMO practice, however placemaking practitioners may wish to take a cue from history, and a pioneering promotional stunt pulled by Madison Avenue to tout one of the world’s best known brands; Coca-Cola. In this 1960 activation, ad execs used Venice, Italy’s venerated St. Mark’s Square as the backdrop for promoting the secular soft drink. How could something like this be done on a similar scale in your downtown? We know you’ve got the pigeons. Now put them to work to put your name on the map – literally!

One of our “Placemaking in a Time of COVID” top picks goes to the Chestnut Hill Conservancy (CHC), just outside of Philadelphia, PA. We’re big fans of their annual “Night of Lights” activation; projecting historic images on street-level facades along the main thoroughfare, that’s taken place over the last three years. Typically only a handful of nights, this year’s event has been extended to more than two weeks’ worth of visual stimulation – as a safe and socially-distanced art installation. The CHC collaborated with local historic societies to create an interactive storytelling of Chestnut Hill’s rich past, further reinforcing a sense of place. Catch it before October 25^th if you can!

Downtown Hudson’s BRIDGE District in New York state boasts a post-industrial urban look and feel that resonates with Millennials; while retaining a diverse housing stock that includes historically-designated single-family homes, townhouses and high-rise apartments. The neighborhood includes attractors like a breadth of dining and shopping destinations located in refurbed and adaptive re-use historic structures. Recent development has positioned Hudson for the next phase of renaissance, and as the recipient of a $10M Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI), a portion of those funds were directed to work with local artists on some creative placemaking. Recently more than 50 community volunteers came together to add a splash of vibrancy to two pedestrian-friendly, traffic calming initiatives at intersections, as reported on by NJ-based urban design agency Arterial Streets.