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Internal material for the Now City team and invited collaborators.

Meeting Guides · Wednesday, July 22

Companion to the Programmatic JV Playbook. Each guide runs about 45 minutes of material; pick the threads that the conversation earns. Both meetings end with the same two closers.

Meeting 1 · Rudy Kadlub, Costa Pacific Communities

Who he is for our purposes. CEO of Costa Pacific (Wilsonville). Residential co-developer of Orenco Station in Hillsboro (1,834 homes, NAHB Master Planned Community of the Year 1999) inside PacTrust's master plan, and developer of Villebois in Wilsonville across two decades. Costa Pacific took on an outside investor group in 2001, so he has lived both sides of our situation: the vertical developer working inside someone else's master plan, and the sponsor courting programmatic capital.

Frame to open: "You have sat in both chairs we care about. We are the master developer courting patient capital, and we are also recruiting builders to work inside our plan the way you worked inside PacTrust's."

The master developer relationship (our Door 3, from the other side)

  • What did PacTrust do, structurally, that made it work for Costa Pacific as the vertical developer? What would have made you walk?
  • How were land takedowns priced and triggered? Fixed schedule, appraisal at takedown, or formula? Who carried entitlement risk versus vertical risk?
  • What did the master plan hold constant (standards, design, phasing) and where did you have real freedom? Where did the boundary chafe?

The capital partnership

  • The 2001 investor group: what did their paper get right, and what did you renegotiate later?
  • On approval rights: where is the line between a partner protecting capital and running your company? What thresholds actually worked day to day?
  • Promote structure across a decade-long community: crossed, per-phase, or something else? What would you insist on now?

Market and product

  • Orenco's lesson everyone quotes is walkability; what is the lesson nobody quotes?
  • Villebois ran through two cycles. What kept capital and city aligned through the 2008 trough?
  • Attainability: what actually moved the needle on delivering homes below the metro price point?

Salem-specific

  • Does a state-capital submarket change the underwrite in your eyes? What would make you believe Salem absorbs 1,000 homes in a decade?
  • Who from the Orenco/Villebois era should we know? (Capital, city, builders.)

Meeting 2 · Jim Atkins and Dike Dame, Atkins Dame

Who they are for our purposes. Principals of Atkins Dame Inc. (formerly Williams/Dame and Associates). Dame co-led the Pearl District and South Waterfront in Portland, the exact precedent our own materials call Edgewater's closest structural mirror. Their current project is Eugene's Downtown Riverfront, The River District: a 2020 development agreement with Eugene's Urban Renewal Agency on city-owned riverfront land, six residential buildings planned toward 500 to 1,000 homes, Heartwood delivered, an affordable building partnered with Homes for Good, and a recently approved ~$20.7M tax exemption for riverfront housing. It is our play, eight years ahead, one hour south.

Frame to open: "Our site names the Pearl as Edgewater's closest structural mirror. You are running the next version of it in Eugene right now. We want your scar tissue."

The development agreement (the City Compact, made real)

  • How does the Eugene DA allocate infrastructure obligations between the URA and you? What is the takedown mechanism on the city land, and what triggers each phase?
  • What did you learn from the Pearl's developer-city compact (density for streetcar and parks) that you changed for Eugene? What translates to a still-smaller capital city like Salem?
  • The ~$20.7M exemption fight: what won it politically, and what would you do earlier next time? (Our analog: Salem MUHTIP, single-property TIF, the URA grant ladder.)

Capitalizing early phases in this environment

  • How were Heartwood and the early buildings capitalized: bank debt, agency, HUD, and whose equity? What did the 2022 to 2025 rate run break, and what fixed it?
  • Rolling takedowns versus one land close: how do you keep a capital partner committed to buildings four through six before one through three have seasoned?
  • Did you run programmatic capital (one partner across the buildings) or building-by-building raises? Why, and would you choose differently?

The master developer craft

  • Pearl, South Waterfront, Eugene: what is the invariant in how you structure the master developer position? What do you never give up?
  • The affordable partnership with Homes for Good: how is it structured so it strengthens rather than complicates the market-rate program? (Our analog: Salem Housing Authority.)
  • Placemaking sequencing: which early public-realm moves bought the most private capital confidence per dollar?

Salem-specific

  • You know the I-5 corridor: what is your honest read of Salem as the next riverfront district market?
  • Would you look at Edgewater as advisors, as friendly critics, or ever as participants? (No ask beyond the door being open.)
  • Who else should we be learning from before we structure our capital partnership?

Both meetings · the two closers

  1. The scar-tissue ask. "If you were us, structuring one patient capital partner across a four-phase, ten-year district: what is the one term you would never sign, and the one you would insist on?"
  2. The relationship ask. "May we keep you close as this takes shape? Even one call a quarter would change our odds." (Bench and advisory roles only; no capital ask, no compensation talk in the room.)

Afterward: each meeting gets a dated addendum in the Playbook (section 9): what we heard, which section it changes, what we now believe that we did not before.