San Francisco's Future of the Waterfront

Ms. Greaner is Regional Vice President, FivePoint, a position she assumed when her prior role as Chief Operating Officer in Lennar’s Bay Area Urban division transitioned into FivePoint in July 2016. In both her current and most recent positions, she oversees the commercial strategy and operations for the platform that is responsible for The San Francisco Shipyard, Candlestick Point, Treasure Island and the Concord Naval Weapons Station. Ms. Greaner joined Lennar Commercial in January 2014 as Executive Vice President responsible for Lennar Commercial’s operations. Ms. Greaner attended Boston University and brings over 30 years of commercial real estate and operations experience. From 1978 - 1985, she managed multiple retail operations in the northeast US. Ms. Greaner joined Mainstreet Investments in south Florida in 1985, where she specialized in the marketing and development of residential single-family properties. In 1988, she established her own Miami-based real estate company as Managing Partner developing multiple locations for Walgreens, Publix and other national retailers, in addition to overseeing asset management and leasing for shopping centers and suburban offices throughout Florida. In 1999, Ms. Greaner merged with Ram Realty Services, a midsized firm with a southeast U.S. footprint, to create Ram’s commercial development, leasing and asset management division. As the company’s Chief Operating Officer, she oversaw company operations, actively served as a member on the Investment Committee, oversaw multifamily assets and directed all commercial activities for retail and office including asset management, leasing, property management, redevelopment and ground up development. Throughout her tenure at Ram Realty, she actively sourced opportunities and played a key role in fund raising for two of the company’s private equity funds. Ms. Greaner is an active member of the International Council of Shopping Centers (“ICSC”), served as the ICSC Government Relations Chair for the State of Florida, participates in Government relations for the organization at the federal level and currently serves on ICSC’s National Economic Committee. She is involved in a variety of mentor programs for young real estate professionals, is on the Florida State University Real Estate Advisory Board and holds real estate broker licenses in Florida and North Carolina.

Lou Vasquez is a Founding Partner and Managing Director of BUILD, where he oversees the firm’s business strategy and executive management. Over the course of his 30-year career in real estate development, Lou has participated in the acquisition, entitlement, development, construction and management of more than $1 billion of residential and commercial product. Prior to forming BUILD in 2004, Lou worked in senior management at a number of prominent residential and commercial real estate development companies in the Bay Area, including Trammell Crow, Greenbriar Homes, Bay Communities, Oxford Development, and Archstone Communities. Through his volunteer work as a board member of Habitat for Humanity and as a founding board member of the Mission Preparatory School, Mr. Vasquez is committed to ensuring that San Francisco remains a diverse city providing opportunities for its most vulnerable citizens.

Mr. Geoff Smick is the President of WRA, Inc. He focuses on biological consulting, environmental regulatory compliance and permitting for development, restoration, and mitigation projects for a variety of clients at the private, commercial, and public sector levels. Mr. Smick excels in finding common ground between development clients and regulators on complex issues. He brings experience from case studies in habitat restoration and public access as well as redevelopment efforts that strike a balance between economic vitality with public access to natural environments in an urban context. Mr. Smick serves as WRA’s principal on a number of high-profile restoration and public access projects as well as Bay Area redevelopment projects; collaborating with developers, architects/engineers, and public agency staff to plan and implement healthy and sustainable waterfront sites. WRA is involved with notable projects along the San Francisco Bay fringe including India Basin, Treasure Island, Pier 70, Mission Bay, and Brooklyn Basin.

Michael Keinath is a Principal with Ramboll Environ and leads the San Francisco Air Sciences and Climate Change Group. He has over 15 years’ experience in environmental science and engineering, with specialist expertise in air quality and climate change, human health risk assessment and product stewardship. He has advised clients from various industries, including ports and rail, quarries and mines, foundries and recyclers, chemical manufacturers and consumer products suppliers, in addition to property developers and local planning agencies. Michael has led the air quality and greenhouse gas analyses for entitlement of a number of San Francisco’s landmark waterfront projects, including Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Phase II, 34th America’s Cup and James R. Herman Cruise Terminal, Forest City’s Pier 70 and the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center. For the Warriors, Michael also led the effort to gain Leadership Project (AB900) designation from Governor Brown through a detailed climate change analysis showing no net additional greenhouse emissions. Michael is currently co-chair of Ramboll’s Liveable City initiative in the US, which aims to bring Ramboll’s proven track record of designing healthy, safe urban areas in which people can thrive, communities can grow, and the environment can flourish. The initiative draws on Ramboll’s complete and integrated service that combines urban development strategy, city planning, and world class technical expertise within transport, water and energy infrastructure, buildings, and urban landscaping. Since 1945, Ramboll has enabled sustainable development in the Nordic capital cities of Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki, which like San Francisco, are examples of waterfront cities that are dedicated to minimizing environmental impact and improving the lives of people while maintaining economic growth and social equality.

Elaine Forbes was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee as Executive Director of the Port of San Francisco in October 2016, with the recommendation of the Port Commission. Forbes is one of eight women Port Directors in the United States. Before her appointment as Executive Director, she served as Interim Director and Deputy Director for Finance and Administration for the Port. Prior to joining the Port, Elaine Forbes held executive management and leadership positions at both the San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco International Airport. In addition, she has worked for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget Analyst’s Office providing fiscal and policy analysis and evaluating and reporting on complex municipal issues. Before beginning her tenure with the City and County of San Francisco, she worked as a redevelopment agency planner for the City of Oakland. She also has worked for several non-profit land use policy and economic development organizations including the Urban Strategies Council and the California Budget Project. Forbes holds a Master’s degree with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in Community and Economic Development, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mills College in Oakland. Forbes was born in San Francisco and resides in the Castro neighborhood with her partner.

Jack Sylvan is founder and principal of SDG, LLC, a San Francisco-based investment, development and advisory company delivering exceptional value to investors, partners and clients on complex and innovative mixed-use development opportunities. Jack has 25+ years of real estate investment and development experience on transformational, multi-phase, extremely complex mixed-use real estate projects in the San Francisco Bay Area leading acquisition, entitlement, negotiation of complex transactional and public-private partnership agreements and development activities. The projects represent more than 16 million square feet of mixed-use, commercial office, life science/biotech, multifamily, retail, historic rehabilitation, arts and community space, and hundreds of acres of parks, streets and infrastructure. Prior to forming SDG, Jack served as Senior Vice President of Development for Forest City Realty Trust and Brookfield Properties where he built and led the local development team responsible for all aspects of entitlement and development of three of San Francisco’s largest redevelopment projects -- Pier 70, 5M and Stonestown Galleria -- representing 8 million square feet of residential and commercial space. Prior to this, Jack spent 8 years in the San Francisco Mayor’s Office overseeing large public-private real estate development projects including leading the planning and negotiation process for the approximately 8 million-square-foot Treasure Island redevelopment project, where he successfully negotiated agreements with the private development partner, an affordable housing consortium, and the historic agreement with the U.S. Navy for the transfer of the property. Early in his career, he spent time with CB Richard Ellis/Sedway Group providing real estate consulting and financial analysis to private and public clients.

Cynthia A. Parker, President & CEO, is responsible for the overall direction of BRIDGE Housing, a leading nonprofit developer, owner and manager of affordable housing. She joined BRIDGE as President and CEO in February 2010, bringing over 30 years of diverse and relevant experience to the organization. She previously served as Regional President for Mercy Housing and President of Intercommunity Mercy Housing. Prior to her tenure at Mercy, she was Senior Vice President of Seattle-Northwest Securities, a public finance firm, where she oversaw affordable housing, commercial and public facility real estate financing in five Northwest states. A partial list of her real estate financial advisory clients includes: The Port of Seattle, Port of Olympia, City of Redmond and City of Seattle; the housing authorities of Portland, Everett, King County and Seattle (HOPE VI); the University of Washington, Pacific University, and the University of Portland; and the school districts of Edmonds, Seattle, and Portland. In Alaska, her clients included the Municipality of Anchorage and the Alaska Railroad. Ms. Parker established the Housing Office of the City of Seattle and served as the City’s Director of Housing under two separate mayors, with responsibility for the City’s housing investment strategies, $100 million annual capital budget and $824 million loan portfolio. Ms. Parker previously developed over 3,500 units in Oregon and Alaska with mixed financing. She assisted the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation with the design of both taxable and tax-exempt housing bond programs and has provided syndication services for tax-credit placements. A former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Ms. Parker has chaired the Sound Families Initiative for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and currently serves as a director of the National Affordable Housing Trust, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, Housing Partnership Network, Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future, the Beneficial State Foundation and the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, and is on the Board of Governors of the California Housing Consortium. Ms. Parker is a graduate of Portland State University.

Will joined ODI in 2012. Previously, he worked for CRD Analytics in New York City, and the Spannocchia Foundation in Siena, Italy. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in American History and earned an M.S. in Sustainability Management from Columbia University. Will currently works on the Historic Pier 70 rehabilitation project in San Francisco.

Zander Sivyer has led Holmes Structures for over a decade with a focus on historic building assessment and retrofit as well as new institutional buildings. Prior to joining Holmes Structures, Zander worked in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Zander has completed numerous projects using Performance Based Engineering (PBE) in accordance with ASCE41-06. This technically robust methodology gives a strong indication of expected performance levels of buildings both existing and new construction. Zander is committed to the preservation and adaptive reuse of buildings. He contributes to local and national professional organizations including the development of new building codes including the Port of San Francisco Building Code. Holmes Structures has been the structural engineer on numerous San Francisco projects including: Piers 1.5, 3 & 5, Autodesk- Pier 9, Swiss Consulate and SwissNex- Pier 17, The Pilara Foundation- Pier 24 and Pier 35 evaluations. Currently Holmes Structures are in design on Piers 29 and 38. Zander also leads large scale projects throughout the region including, AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, Intuit in Mountain View, and Adobe Utah.

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.