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Hot Topics Speakers
Aimee Storm – Land Revitalization Coordinator | EPA Office Brownfields & Land Revitalization
Aimee Storm works in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization as the lead for the Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Program. Her work supports communities who are developing area-wide plans and implementation strategies for cleaning up and reusing brownfield sites in order to help revitalize local neighborhoods, downtowns, and commercial corridors.
Katharine Burgess – Vice President | Smart Growth America/ National Brownfields Coalition
Katharine Burgess oversees SGA’s Land Use programs including LOCUS, the Form-Based Codes Institute, and the National Brownfields Coalition. Prior to Smart Growth America, Katharine led the Urban Resilience Program at the Urban Land Institute. An urban planner, Katharine has fifteen years of experience practicing in the US, UK, and Germany.
Amy Hovey – Executive Director | Michigan State Housing Development Authority
Amy Hovey is the first woman to lead MSHDA. Before joining MSHDA, she worked at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, where for six years she directed special projects in Flint. Most recently, she served as a contractor for the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) sharing her expertise on housing-related matters. As a well-rounded leader, Amy has more than two decades of prior experience in finance, government relations, commercial real estate, construction, housing and neighborhood revitalization.
Energy Transition Panelists
Michael Taylor – President | Vita Nuova
Michael Taylor is a leading strategist in implementing redevelopments at brownfield and Superfund sites. He works in many of the country’s most challenging areas, including remote rural locations, inner city environmental justice neighborhoods, and some of the most contaminated sites in the country. Mr. Taylor has trained more than 5,000 community, state, and federal officials involved in brownfields redevelopment. Mr. Taylor is the recipient of the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR) Lifetime Achievement: Excellence in Brownfields Thought Leadership Award (2019) and serves on CCLR’s Advisory Board.
Annika Colston – Founder and CEO | AC Power
AC Power is an impact development company specializing in repurposing contaminated and low value land into revenue generating solar projects. AC Power’s mission is twofold – to overcome barriers to development to bring as many solar projects to market as possible while maximizing benefits to the community that have been historically most impacted by the sites. With a portfolio of over 24 projects in operation or under development and a pipeline of more than 250 MW, AC Power is well positioned to be the market leader in solar development on contaminated sites.
Jon Grosshans – Senior Advisor | US EPA Office of Policy
Jon Grosshans works to align policies and resources that support environmental protection and community revitalization alongside City, County, State, and Federal partners. Much of this coordination focuses on recent Executive Orders and strategic initiatives such as coal and power plant community revitalization, supply chains, energy, critical minerals, and infrastructure.
Andy Mace – Vice President of Industrial and Brownfield Development | NorthPoint Development
Andy Mace leads environmental risk management efforts for the firm’s industrial portfolio, throughout the property lifecycle from acquisition through construction and long-term ownership. Since 2012, NorthPoint has redeveloped over 4,000 acres of brownfields, upon which over 28 million square feet of industrial buildings have been constructed.
Lifetime Achievement Awardees
Lifetime Achievement in Thought Leadership: Barry Hersh – Clinical Professor | Schack Institute of Real Estate, New York University
Barry Hersh is a full-time Clinical Professor at NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate. He designed and now coordinates the MS in Real Estate Development, teaching courses such as Land Use and Environmental Regulation, Sustainable Development, and the Development Capstone. He mentors students, advises their competition teams, and also hosts international exchange programs most recently with the University of Amsterdam, Netanya University, and China.
Barry is a core faculty member of both the NYU SPS Center for the Built Environment and the Urban Lab. He works on a new curriculum, and real estate events, and is an elected representative of NYU SPS faculty. His dedication to training the next generation of both real estate professionals and environmental regulators will be his lasting legacy to ensure that brownfields redevelopment continues to thrive and become a mainstream avenue for economic growth.
Lifetime Achievement in Public Service: Jim Tischler – Development Director | Michigan State Land Bank Authority; Award accepted by Ms. Michelle Aniol – Community Development Director | City of Dexter, Michigan |
Jim Tischler is a Michigan-based land use planning expert.
Jim presently serves as Development Director for the State of Michigan Land Bank Authority. In this role, he leads the agency’s land and project development and redevelopment operations, organizes and manages agency and inter-agency teams, coordinates State-sponsored development and redevelopment projects and consults regional/local development and land bank entities in their projects. A crowning accomplishment is his work to redevelop a contaminated paper mill site into a residential community with 500 single family homes in Monroe, MI. Jim also previously served as the State of Michigan’s Community Development Policy Director, leading formation and design of the Michigan Placemaking Initiative and redesign and advancement of the State’s technical and financial assistance programs to implement its directives. He has 34 years of experience in the fields of urban planning, real estate, community/economic development, and redevelopment, working for public organizations and consulting with private sector firms. He currently serves as the Chair of the Policy Committee for the National Brownfields Coalition
Lifetime Achievement in Redevelopment: Kofi Bonner – Chief Executive Officer | Bedrock Detroit
Kofi Bonner is the Chief Executive Officer at Bedrock, where he leads the full-service real estate company’s efforts to build thriving urban centers through transformational development, community partnerships and a commitment to support local small businesses. Since its founding, Bedrock and its affiliates have invested and committed more than $5.6 billion to acquiring and developing more than 100 properties, including some of the most significant new developments that Detroit and Cleveland have seen in decades. Bedrock’s portfolio totals more than 22 million square feet of office, retail and residential space within new construction and adaptive reuse projects. Kofi has extensive experience in leading complex development projects in metropolitan areas.
Prior to joining Bedrock, Kofi most recently focused on real estate development and technology ventures through his Bonner Enterprises, where he embarked on real estate ventures in the San Francisco area and Ghana, and invested in fintech companies BC Pay and Techgulf, which sources technology operations and services to West Africa.
