Serving on the Boston District Council of the Urban Land Institute are: (from left) Anne Meyers, John Griffin, District Chairman Richard W. Reynolds and Susan Leff.

Can’t we all just get along? When it comes to the oft-contentious issue of land planning, members of the Urban Land Institute’s Boston chapter insist there is a way.

The 600-member group, encompassing a range of real estate disciplines, is repositioning itself to play a larger role in regional land policy, both in promoting greater understanding of such matters and helping communities and public agencies deal with specific development quagmires.

“We’ve got some real talent available and we want people to be aware of that,” Boston District Council Chairman Richard W. Reynolds said last week. “That’s really our primary focus right now.”

Founded in 1936, ULI’s mission has been to encourage a more reasoned approach to land usage. The Washington, D.C.-based group today features more than 17,000 members nationwide that includes everyone from developers and landlords to architects, engineers, urban planners and public-sector professionals. Along with providing white papers and analysis on various trends in land development, ULI also assembles project teams that can swoop into a community at its behest to address a given development issue, perhaps revitalization of a downtown or creation of affordable housing.

The panel advisory sessions, as they are known, can run as long as a week and do usually require that the sponsor pay for transportation and other expenses incurred by the volunteer team members. More recently, ULI has encouraged its chapters to apply that model at the local level, something Boston is taking to heart.

Following a recent strategic planning session, members of the Hub chapter now are actively offering their services to regional communities and agencies. According to Reynolds, the local sessions would likely run only a day or two, but would be available either for free or for a nominal cost.

“Whatever the mix of expertise [needed], we will put that together and provide professional advice that has no vested interest in the outcome,” Reynolds said, adding, “We’ve got a lot of horsepower focused on this right now.”

The Boston group is considering other ways to interact as well, with member Anne Meyers and her public outreach subcommittee hoping to adapt a national ULI program that teaches real estate fundamentals to high school students. Not only would Meyers like to see the curriculum in place at various Bay State schools, efforts are also underway to provide a version that would be offered to adults, perhaps community residents or town officials.

“It’s a simulation that teaches you about the [development] process, but not in an adversarial way,” explained Meyers, who has been a ULI member for 20 years. The curriculum begins with a request for proposals, then follows the plan as it deals with strategy, permitting, financing and development of the hypothetical project.

A former official with the Massachusetts Port Authority and now president of the Downtown Crossing Association in Boston, Meyers said she has found ULI invaluable through the years in doing her own work, at times gauging how peers might cope with an issue in other parts of the country and determining whether it can be applied to her own situation. “It is a very important network of people, as well as resources,” she said.

‘A Different Way’
Along with its other strategies, the Boston ULI chapter is also preparing a series of topical roundtables and programs devoted to land use and the built environment. One program, cancelled due to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., was to have focused on Boston’s Seaport District and prospects for development in that burgeoning area. The group hopes to reschedule the event at a later date.

Attorney John Griffin, who chairs the Boston chapter’s program subcommittee, said the events use both local professionals and ULI’s stockpile of national experts to either dissect a specific area or possibly address more general land-use policies.

The Boston chapter, for example, currently is planning a session with former Indianapolis Mayor and ULI member William Hudnut, who is writing a book about the so-called inner-ring phenomenon occurring in many metropolitan areas, including Boston. It would look at how older areas on the fringe of downtown markets can be tapped to provide needed expansion space vs. building on virgin land in the suburbs.

The ULI Boston programs are usually developed by the subcommittee, said Griffin, with the members regularly meeting to assess what are the new issues in the industry and determine who would offer the best insight into those trends. One likely topic in the future, he said, will be the ramifications of the World Trade Center disaster on office space, with the incident already expected to have vast impacts on how future space is designed and where it is located.

“We want to give things time to settle down and then see where we can start the dialogue,” Griffin said. “Right now, I don’t think anybody has the answers [on the effects], but it certainly will make things different.”

Griffin is a strong advocate of ULI, having been a member since 1978 and a long-time lecturer in a university that the organization operates. An attorney with Hutchins, Wheeler & Ditmar, Griffin said he believes ULI has helped by exposing him to other real estate disciplines that he might not otherwise encounter in the specialized world of real estate law. “I feel it has broadened my perspective,” he said. “It makes me think about things in a different way.”

Griffin said he believes the recent changes at ULI’s Boston chapter has positioned it to raise the group “to another level,” with one key step being the hiring of a staff member to assist in planning programs and coordinating membership. But the group is not stopping there. Reynolds noted that ULI members provided financing to restore a Dorchester park and now is aiming to work with the Boston Society of Architects on another grant program. In those ways, ULI is able to directly improve the community vs. merely talking esoterically.

The Boston chapter also wants to employ ways to increase participation by women and minorities, two groups that are under-represented in the commercial real estate industry at present. The group is hoping to encourage younger professionals to join as well, Reynolds said, and also is reaching out to the public sector. “If we want to have a meaningful place at the table, the more people who belong to ULI and can be out there talking it up, the better,” he said.