John Hesse
Director of Project Management; Director of Sustainability
Commonweal Conservancy, Santa Fe, NM
- PRE year of Graduation: 2004
- Concentration: Sustainability
Looking back:
During the annual Urban Land Institute conference (in Denver that year), I ran into a classmate who was working on feasibility analyses for acquisitions in the hotel industry. I commented to him that it was great to have a network of classmates that we could call for advice, help, and support. However, I had been working on a “conservation development” in Santa Fe, NM and didn’t believe that I’d ever call him for anything. Sure enough, a few months later we were considering a boutique hotel for our village development, so I contacted him to better understand this particular segment within the industry. Within a few days he had set me up with an industry colleague who helped me understand the opportunities and challenges of boutique hotels. Though the conversation effectively killed the concept, it saved a lot of wasted research and planning time on a concept that would have been “challenging” at best. Regardless, the post-graduation value of the Program’s small class sizes, student team projects, close student-teacher relations, and broad based curriculum could be not be understated. I regularly keep in touch with a good percentage of my classmates, sometimes sharing industry information and experiences and a lot of time just passing on a good joke or two!
Overall, the program was critical to my current career. While I had had some background in finance ten years earlier, it was really the Program’s broad exposure to a variety of areas that provided the more in depth understanding of the real estate development process (legal issues, entitlement and due diligence, marketing concepts, feasibility, land use, contract management, etc). With my particular focus on sustainability, I was able to more easily find employment within a sector of the real estate industry that is relatively narrow.
Career:
During my final semester at Cornell, I met my future employer who had been working on a “conservation development” in Santa Fe, NM. Having come from the land trust industry, his concept was to embrace real estate development as a means to fund large scale open space protection. Fascinated by the concept, I was able to arrange a one credit research course my spring semester in which I helped prepare a feasibility analysis for the project. The project itself entails the conservation and restoration of 13,000 acres of over-grazed ranch land while also executing a density transfer of all building rights into a 300 acre building envelope. Within this area, we are in the process of planning a 965 unit mixed-use, mixed-income village that will host a variety of housing product types and commercial and civic uses. To date, we have received Master Plan Approval and recently submitted our Preliminary Plat Plan to Santa Fe County for review and approval. Because of our extensive community outreach program, large-scale conservation effort, and inclusion of 30% affordable and workforce housing, there wasn’t a single voice of opposition when our public hearings for approval were held (unprecedented in Santa Fe county). In the process of planning our village, I have probably utilized no less than 70% of my coursework skills learned during my time in the Program.
Going forward, I have discussed with my employer the possibility of getting into the vertical development of the village. We are currently only planning to sell lots to local and regional builders. My interest is in promoting the burgeoning industry of LEED certified prefab housing. There are some great contemporary concepts that are coming out of factories in Denver, Phoenix, and Albuquerque that are cost effective, provide a very marketable contemporary product for a large segment of the market, and could also be a solution for building higher quality, green designed affordable units in our village. My employer is highly supported of this professional path - which hopefully will roll out over the next two years (much research and feasibility analysis still required!).