Oakland Construction and Development Update!

Randy is a mechanical engineer from the University of California-Berkeley with a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering and Construction Management from Stanford University. He is also an executive, with a range of hands-on experience in construction, engineering, and manufacturing. He is the company’s visionary, with over a decade of success as an owner and principal in design-build development, consistently excelling by applying RAD’s vertically integrated project delivery approach.

Charles A. Long is a developer specializing in mixed-use infill projects, including acquisition, entitlement and public private partnerships. He served for eight years as city manager in Fairfield, California. Since 1996, he has worked as a consultant to public and private clients on development and management. He has held interim positions for several cities in finance, redevelopment and management, including Interim Town Manager of Mammoth Lakes and Interim City Manager of Pinole and Hercules, California. His assignments have been diverse including negotiating development agreements, writing redevelopment plans, pro-forma analyses, strategic planning, economic development, organizational development, capital and financial planning, budget reform, base reuse and alternative energy development. He has overseen over $600 million of public financing in his career. Mr. Long is a full member of the Urban Land Institute and, within ULI, a member and Vice Chair of the Public Private Partnership Council. He is a faculty member of the ULI Real Estate School, teaching both in the US and internationally, and a faculty member at San Jose State University Urban and Regional Planning Department. He has worked on eighteen ULI Advisory Panels, chairing panels in Salem, OR, Boise, ID, Dallas, TX, Buffalo, NY Pasco County, FL and San Bernardino, CA. He received the 2012 Robert M. O’Donnell Award for distinguished service in the advisory program. He is co-chair of the Sustainability Committee for the San Francisco District Council and, in that capacity, initiated several reports including recommendations for streamlining California’s environmental review process, a directory of financing sources for building efficiency and a survey of resiliency best practices in the Bay Area. He also delivers a program called Real Estate 101 for Public Officials, working with ULI District Councils around the country. He is the author of the book, Finance for Real Estate Development, published by ULI in April 2011 and winner of the 2012 National Association of Real Estate Editors Silver Award. Mr. Long has a BA in economics from Brown University and a Masters of Public Policy from U. C. Berkeley. He served in the U.S. Army as an infantry platoon sergeant.

Charles Kahn is the managing principal of Studio KDA, a 25-person architecture firm specializes in multifamily housing, retail centers, and restaurants with services ranging from master planning to interior design. Studio KDA is diverse in project type but unified in its mission: to use design to create places that are true to their culture and context, that are engaging and lasting, and that foster social interaction. As a former developer and general contractor, Charles’ perspective is informed by a deep understanding of his clients concerns and objectives. He enjoys working with people and is often sought for his aptitude in building consensus with municipalities, neighborhood groups, and local businesses to get complex projects entitled and built efficiently. Charles is a frequent lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, a panelist at ICSC events, and is a current member of the City of Berkeley’s Zoning Adjustments Board and Design Review Commission. He received a BA from Harvard University and Masters from U.C. Berkeley.

Specializing in Real Estate Strategy for stok, Warren helps clients realize sustainability goals throughout their entire real estate portfolio, allowing for maximum impact through the sustainable built environment. Having worked with major corporations and NGOs to develop, retool, and implement sustainability programs across the globe, Warren has industry insight that spans corporate, retail, hospitality, and governmental sustainability and strategic real estate programs. He applies his international experience in high performance buildings and project management to enable stok’s clients to realize their most ambitious sustainability goals. As trusted advisor to the world’s most iconic and innovative companies, he is working on the design of some of the most ambitious buildings globally.

Jeff Brink has over 20 years of structural design experience with significant developments up and down the west coast, ranging from Performance Based Design high-rises to mixed-use projects at Candlestick Point, the SF Shipyard, and Yerba Buena Island. Current projects include the City of San Francisco’s new office tower at 1500 Mission Street and the Virgin Hotel adjacent to the Moscone Center. Jeff’s technical expertise at integrating innovative structural systems, combined with his broad understanding of the construction industry, allows architecturally decisive projects to be achieved while still maintaining the project budget.

Danny Haber is the co-founder of oWOW, a B2B and B2C real estate company. An innovative entrepreneur, with a flair for providing workable solutions to the burgeoning housing crisis in California, Haber has been labelled the ‘Oracle of Oakland’ with visionary solutions to the housing crisis. His company, oWOW develops, designs, and constructs net new housing units for consumers and also builds modular units for resale to developers. As a vertically integrated corporation, oWOW operations are geared towards cost-cutting measures, and luxury living courtesy of adaptable units.

I have over 10 years of experience in project management for for-profit and non-profit organizations in real estate development and urban planning. My work has focused on infill housing, mixed use neighborhoods, and capital improvements that improve urban places by making them more livable, equitable, and sustainable while generating profits to investors and an enhanced tax base for municipalities. Throughout my career I have successfully managed teams of consultants, partner organizations, and public entities through projects and processes to achieve completed buildings, entitled properties, and implementable plans and policies. Specialties include: • Infill housing, adaptive reuse, mixed use and TOD planning, entitlement, design, and development; • Project management of large multidisciplinary consultant teams; • Management of design processes including development of concepts, detailed review of plans, coordination of architects and engineers; • Constructive public-private partnerships; • Public process strategy and facilitation; • Sustainability at building, neighborhood and city scales, including LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND); • Grant writing and management for public subsidies for development; • Design and layout in Adobe Creative Suite including development of sales/marketing information, investment offerings, presentations, proposal books, and bids;

Michael E. Johnson is President and Chief Executive Officer of UrbanCore Development, LLC which he founded in 2012 to focus on public-private, mixed-income residential development projects. Prior to establishing UrbanCore, Mr. Johnson was the President of Em Johnson Interest, Inc., a real estate development company based in San Francisco for 20 years. Over the combined last 25 years, his companies have been one of the largest African American businesses in the Bay Area. This is as a result of recent completion or current undertaking of over $800 million in project development activity, representing over 3,000 housing units and several mixed-use projects. He has served as the Managing Partner of award winning redevelopment projects such as the Fillmore Heritage Center, an $85 million mixed-use project in San Francisco; the $32 million Easter Hill HOPE VI project in Richmond, California; and the $45 million Mary Helen Roger Senior Center in San Francisco. Mr. Johnson has recently completed projects in Sacramento, San Francisco and San Diego. This includes the completion of the $40 million Cannery Place 180-unit Affordable Housing project in Sacramento, the $35 million Warren-Eviva both in Sacramento (118 units), and the $50 million Eviva-Mission Bay project in San Francisco (129 units). UrbanCore also is currently completing construction on the largest modular housing project in Oakland, the $56 million, 110-unit Coliseum Connections apartment project scheduled to begin occupancy in March 2019, and is in the final pre-construction phase of the LakeHouse Commons - mixed income $250 million apartment project near Lake Merritt, and in Oakland which is schedule to break ground in the 3rd quarter of 2019. Mr. Johnson previously was a co-Managing Partner of the $102 million North Beach Place redevelopment project completed 2004, which has received numerous awards. Mr. Johnson has two degrees - a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Urban Planning in 1976, and a Master of Architecture with a concentration in Real Estate Development in 1979, from the University of Maryland and the Georgia Institute of Technology respectively. While at the Maryland, Michael was a student-athlete as a member of the track & field team, and was an Atlantic Coast Conference Champion in 1974. Mr. Johnson is currently a Member of the University of Maryland’s Board of Trustees and also serves on the Oakland Zoo Planning Advisory Committee, along with serving on the Board of the national non-profit Neighborhood Development Collaborative. He has also served on the Board of Trustees for the St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland, on the Planning Commission, YMCA and Library Boards while in Atlanta, and the Board of Glide Memorial Church’s Housing Corporation in San Francisco. Mr. Johnson also lectures regularly at the University of Maryland’s Colvin Institute of Real Estate Development.

Rich Elder is a Partner in Lubin Olson's Litigation, Real Estate and Construction Law Practice Groups. He specializes in construction law and handles both litigation and the negotiation and preparation of construction contracts. As a seasoned construction attorney, Mr. Elder represents property owners as well as design-build, engineering and construction firms in construction claims involving delay, defective design and engineering, unforeseen site conditions and breach of warranty and in the negotiation and drafting of contracts and related project documents. Mr. Elder also has experience in general commercial litigation, including matters relating to securities, trade secrets and other business disputes. Prior to joining Lubin Olson, Mr. Elder was a partner at Burke Williams & Sorensen LLP in Oakland.