Weekend Interview: LA’s Coming Olympic Spotlight With ULI LA Director Kellie Kao Miles

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the deal-makers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities who keep CRE interesting.

The eyes of the world have been focused on Paris for the last two weeks, and the thrill and excitement of watching Olympic competitors face off on venues that seem knit into the city’s urban fabric (beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower, anyone?). 

But after the games conclude Aug. 11, at least part of that attention will be directed toward Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Games. Suddenly, four years doesn’t seem like a lot of time, especially considering the state of the city’s infrastructure investments: The car-free games has quietly been shifting to a transit-first games due to the bottleneck of transit buildouts, and still somewhat vacant downtown, with a very visible reminder in the form of the graffiti-spackled Oceanwide Plaza site. 

While the Paris Games has unexpectedly found an ambassador in Snoop Dogg, Los Angeles and its real estate sector may soon be looking for a way to portray itself on the world stage.  For recently appointed executive director of the Urban Land Institute's LA chapter, Kellie Kao Miles, part of the challenge is embedded in the bigger challenges her organization is facing. With LA’s Olympic planning spread across the region, the opportunities for growth and development are there, but there’s the ever-present issues of affordability, development hurdles and trying to make the real estate industry more reflective of LA at large. 

Bisnow spoke with Miles about her views on the city’s progress towards increased housing construction, what the Olympics can mean for LA, and why even on the weekend when she’s away from the office, she loves to hop onto Zoom.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: What has watching the Paris games made you think about the potential and challenges of hosting the 2028 games in Los Angeles, especially in terms of its impact on the commercial real estate industry? 

Miles: I think that the most striking thing about watching the games from Paris, obviously is just the beautiful backdrop. It's almost like you're watching a movie. I think the fact that we’re able to host the games across a very wide region and utilize our existing sports venues and infrastructure, including some very iconic venues, like the Coliseum and Rose Bowl, all that is going to provide for just a phenomenal Olympics. And I think it's also a very sustainable model and a very financially responsible model for the city to be following.

Bisnow: What is the impact that may have on the real estate industry, and how may commercial real estate take advantage of this very unique opportunity? 

Miles: Even though we’re not making any public investments in new venues or new infrastructure, I think the opportunity is still there for private investment, right? There’s some conversation about whether or not we’ll have enough hotel rooms. The industry is looking and thinking about the opportunity for just upgrading and renovating some of our existing buildings and hotel stock, and looking at some of our high-vacancy buildings across the region and their reuse potential. 

Bisnow: Another aspect of watching the games in Paris right now is that you're able to see this miraculous change they’ve made to their transportation system. It seems like in LA, we’re backpedaling on some of the transit investments and projects we promised. It feels like this is a huge opportunity to really help real estate, and transit-oriented development and density, by completing these investments. Are we on track here? 

Miles: The goal of car-free, that was a very audacious goal, considering where we are now as a city and region. It’s good to set a goal and see if we can get there. I think all these things need to continue to be planned out and executed, to make sure the pieces come together. 

We in the private sector should do what we can to support that. Mobility and public transportation has a much broader impact than the Olympics. It’s about how we want to build our city and our region for the future. The whole concept of transit-oriented development, which is something that our members are very much involved in and supporting, anything that could allow us to build more density along transit corridors, would really help with our housing shortage and have a tremendous impact on the homelessness issue as well. 

Bisnow: ULI recently held a homelessness summit. Homelessness and housing are going to be two key issues leading up to the games. What are your thoughts about some of the big initiatives on this front, Measure ULA (a transfer tax on residential and commercial real estate) and Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1 (a mayoral initiative to streamline production of affordable housing)? How are they helping, and how are they impacting the broader multifamily market?

Miles: To say upfront, ​​ULI is a nonadvocacy organization. Our mission is to provide a platform, a convening, of voices on different sides of an issue. Our focus is to look for ways to try and increase housing production in our region. And I think some of the ways that ULI and our members think are important in that conversation are the following. One is where do we find the sites to build additional housing.

Toward that end, our member organization actually spent their volunteer time and actually came up with a database of available surplus public land that we think could potentially be redevelopment opportunities. The second issue is obviously the availability of capital, and how do we make these developments financially feasible. And the third part of that is a focus on design innovation and new typologies, that is, different kinds of housing types that we can actually bring to bear for permanent housing but also for temporary housing. 

Bisnow: Do you have anything you can say about ULA or ED1, just in terms of, “Hey, here's what we've seen, here's what our members are telling us?” Anything along those lines?

Miles: I think it probably affects how they underwrite deals, that's a big part of it, right? When they're making an investment decision on doing any type of development, they now have to take that into account in their underwriting. And I think that can pose an issue, a challenge in terms of getting projects off the ground or even started. But we also have members who are on the affordable housing side and benefit from the allocation of funds from ULA.   

Bisnow: Is there anything else ULI recommends in terms of making zoning alterations or enacting policies that would really help speed things up?

Miles: In principle, any streamlining of the entitlement process is going to be very helpful. And I think ED1 was meant to do that, and I think that the data that we've seen on it, certainly the number of approvals, has been a very positive outcome. But the next step is, how do we get those units built? Then it becomes a financial consideration. 

I think the mayor has been very public about her focus in the area of wanting to address not only the homelessness issue but the overall housing shortage issue by streamlining the entitlement process by bringing, or continuing to bring, attention to the issue.

Bisnow: How do you change the perception of developers in Los Angeles? And by that, I mean, there's a widespread view that it's really hard to do business here. It's so expensive, there are gatekeepers everywhere. How do you maybe change that perception so more people are doing that in Los Angeles, so you're attracting the next generation of developers? 

Miles: That I think is the key question. The perception is as you describe. I think that really is going to take kind of the public and private partnership and working together and towards the same goal. And I think we're beginning to see that. I also think improving our community also must more expressly include the concept of inclusive growth, right? As a matter of fact, ULI actually did extensive work in this area and actually defined what we call the 10 principles to embed equity and inclusion into the practice of real estate. You have to have diverse voices around the table all coming up with solutions to address the problem and the issue that we have.

Bisnow: Can you make a bold prediction for the next year in real estate? 

Miles: I don't want to come off like I'm trying to be flip, but I think it'll be an interesting, interesting year.

Bisnow: Outside of ULI, what are some of your favorite things to do on the weekend?

Miles: Relax, go to the farmers market once in a while, catch up on some fun reading or shows. I have a big, close-knit family, and every weekend we do a family Zoom call.  We're all over the country, so it's a good way for us to see our faces on screen.