The Incremental Development Alliance in the News

Jen Acosta is a developer, housing strategist and IncDev faculty. Here, she shares the story of one of her current pioneering projects in Bay City, Michigan—a contaminated former mill site that is being remediated and turned into over 80 new apartments and commercial spaces.

With insight and encouragement from Incremental Development Alliance, Cameron Brewer tackled the adaptive reuse of a 1930s garage, reinventing it as a restaurant and center for community in Norman, Oklahoma

Joel Dixon is a faculty member at the Incremental Development Alliance and Co-Principal of Urban Oasis Development, a real estate company focused on residential and commercial development on Atlanta's south and westside. Born and raised on the westside, Dixon is dedicated to building secure, inclusive neighborhoods in the community that raised him.  Perhaps his most unique and forward-thinking project is the new 918 Dill Ave development, which unites a community land trust, grocery store, gathering place, and apartments.

Family can be seen at the heart of the projects Greg has developed. His family’s history and future is found in both their local restaurant, Johnson’s Boucainiere, and the St. John Street development. 

Gregory started out in the construction industry over 30 years ago, working with his father, C. Phil Walls. He started his firm, Walls-Studio in 1994.

Gregory is philosophical about his early years in the field: “I wish I wouldn’t have had to build in subdivisions for the first 10 to 15 years of my life, but it was a path for me to be able to do this, now.”

I first became aware of incremental development through listening to a podcast from the Switchyards team in Atlanta on which they interviewed Eric Kronberg. He was discussing human scale design and breaking the city down into micro economies. I had the pleasure of spending some great quality time with Jim on a couple occasions when he visited Greensboro, and he said no one should have to go outside of their neighborhood to get essentials: Basic groceries, coffee, a meal, a beer, or a place to meet friends.

When IncDev alumnus Pete Cioe first purchased the fixer-upper, it was almost literally his only possession. Pete had sold everything he owned in North Dallas and purchased a small trailer that he parked behind the house. He lived in the trailer throughout construction, trying (and often failing) to prevent break-ins. At the time, asbestos was covering two-thirds of the house. It needed a new driveway, new windows, and new siding. But Pete saw the house’s potential. He was still a relatively new resident of Dallas, and he wanted to live in a neighborhood with a strong sense of place and feeling of home. He realized that no one else was coming to create that place for him, so he decided to bet on himself.

Nathaniel Barrett, a Dallas-based accountant, attended IncDev’s second workshop in Oak Cliff, TX in 2016. Going into the training, he had a side-hustle development project in mind, but working with IncDev cofounder Monte Anderson helped him realize that the project wasn’t doable. Disappointed but undeterred, Nathaniel went back to his Old East Dallas community and purchased an abandoned commercial building on the 500 block of S Fitzhugh Ave, just down the street from his house, that had been on the market for years with no interest.

Nathaniel says it quickly became evident why the nearly 9000 square foot space hadn’t sold; it was “in terrible, terrible shape.” He thinks many developers in his shoes would have torn it down and built from scratch.

Georgia native and IncDev alumnus Jonathan Digioia is a self-professed nerd. A transportation engineer by trade, he spends his days thinking through systems and processes, and he’s invested in best practices for city planning.

“I want to help do things well and do things right as far as designing places goes,” he says.

Jonathan learned about IncDev through a member of his church who had attended a workshop and thought it might be up his alley. At the time, he’d never done a development project, but he and his wife Katelyn were starting to discuss buying their first home. They initially intended to purchase a standard, single-family home, but attending the workshop opened their eyes to other possibilities. 

Neil Heller is an urban planner, designer, and small-scale developer based in Portland, Oregon. A member of IncDev’s faculty, Neil emphasizes “pro forma-powered planning,” ensuring that local land use policies (like zoning) align with what’s economically feasible. 

His work on Portland’s Residential Infill Project helped to allow for additional density in neighborhoods in exchange for affordable units. Heller’s development math—informed by real world experience—showed how the extra units would help affordable housing developers be able to compete for land in high-amenity neighborhoods. 

In the last year, a group of collaborators outlined a solution to restrictive zoning requirements: the Maine PlaceCode, an ambitious open-source zoning code designed to legalize historic neighborhoods and promote similar development. The PlaceCode is a simple, digital-first library of zoning that emphasizes form—the way a building looks and meets the street—over use restrictions and arcane metrics like floor-area-ratio.

Joe Silins is a small-scale developer based in Tucson, Arizona. Joe has a passion for environmental conservation. His career started in planning, then switched to part-time work at a local non-profit that connected people with the environment and part-time residential contracting.

With an interest in natural construction techniques, Joe decided to try out his first project: building a strawbale casita (i.e. accessory dwelling unit (ADU)) as a guesthouse in his backyard. 

Jeff and John Dunbar are part of a growing movement of incremental developers building community and working to shape where they live. 

Having returned to their hometown of Rockingham, Vermont after years of being away, the brothers were interested in reinvestment. “We saw the decline, and that not a lot was changing,” says Jeff. “We decided if we were going to live here, we were going to invest our energy and resources.”

There’s hardly a Main Street in the world that couldn’t use another graceful, elegant three-story mixed-used building: you know, like we used to build. I recently had the chance to sit down with Kiya and Denis Lachman to talk about their new building, 502 Deering Center, in Portland, Maine.

502 Deering Center is a the epitome of a polite, handsome building that does its job well, providing three on-street retail spaces and six upper story apartments. But how did that building get built, on a street which hadn’t had a new building like that in many years? What was the financing like? How did the neighbors feel about a new three-story building?

Washington architect Cary Westerbeck spent most of his life in suburbia, far from anything dense or walkable.

“I didn’t even realize how important walkability was to me until later in life. And it’s funny, because I did embrace that in college. It was awesome to walk to clubs and shows and all the stuff you do when you’re 20,” he laughs. “When I was introduced to the concept of walkability, I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve done that, and I loved it!’”

Newly energized to invest in his neighborhood in the center of Bothell, WA, Cary used a standard 30-year mortgage to buy a .06 acre property in April 2014. He moved his family into the existing building in 2015 and set out to become a developer. But he quickly realized that he had a lot to learn.

IncDev alumna Erin Claussen, Principal and Owner at Toledo Revival, is starting construction on the Hotel Royal in Toledo, OH in April. The property is 8,000 square feet of rehabilitated, mixed-use space in Toledo's Middlegounds neighborhood and contains 2,900 square feet of commercial space and three two-bedroom apartments. From Erin: "I attended a workshop in Memphis in 2017, and the info that I took home from there was so helpful, in addition to what I've gleaned from the small developer [Facebook] group. We are finalizing construction documents, have a tenant for our entire commercial space, and are currently seeking investors to secure construction loans."