Redeveloping Black Communities | Learnings from American Urban Planning
As we develop our urban spaces how mindful are we of the shared experiences of those we build for? The community trauma that black people experienced, and continue to experience, within the USA and beyond must be assessed and thoughtfully considered as we grow new suburbs and spaces.
Join US urban planner, lawyer, and real estate developer Baye Adofo-Wilson Esq to hear about his transformative work in redeveloping and reinventing black communities.
This Judith Neilson UTZON Lecture will be hosted by UNSW's Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair in Architecture Professor David Sanderson, and is open to all.
Baye Adofo-Wilson, Esq. is a real estate developer, lawyer and consultant with an expertise in arts and cultural districts, sustainability, affordable and mixed-income housing development. He has a real estate development and consulting firm, BAW Development LLC, where he focuses on developing transformative, residential and mixed-use projects in urban communities. He is Of Counsel to Post Polak, PA focusing New Jersey Redevelopment Law and Opportunity Zones.
Currently, BAW Development, LLC, in partnership with RPM Development, are the developers of the Hinchliffe Stadium Neighborhood Restoration Project, a $94 million-dollar project which includes 75 senior housing units, a restaurant/exhibition space dedicated to the Negro League, a 314-parking structure and the restoration of Hinchliffe Stadium, a 7,800-seat stadium which was once the home of the New York Black Yankees. Baye Adofo-Wilson has also built 100 units of housing, including mixed-use, mixed-income and condos.
Baye Adofo-Wilson was Deputy Mayor/Director of Economic and Housing Development (EHD) for Newark, NJ. While Baye was at EHD’s helm, Newark had unprecedent development, including over $2 billion dollars of development, annually 2000 units of housing built, three million square feet of commercial and industrial development, respectively. As the Director of EHD, Mr. Adofo-Wilson managed the departments of housing, property management, real estate, economic development, planning, zoning and the office of sustainability.
Mr. Adofo-Wilson was an 2014-2015 Urban Design Critic at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a member of the 2013-2014 Loeb Fellows class at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before Harvard, Mr. Adofo-Wilson co-founded of the Lincoln Park/Coast Cultural District, a non-profit organization redeveloping the Lincoln Park neighborhood in the City of Newark. He led a comprehensive effort to transform a low-income Newark neighborhood into a sustainable cultural district that included affordable housing and mixed-use developments, urban agriculture, music festivals, historic restoration and workforce development projects.
Mr. Baye Adofo-Wilson is on the Boards of Berkshire Bank, Berkshire Foundation and the Black Voters Matter Fund. He is also a US Army Veteran, has a BA from Rutgers-Newark, a MRP from Cornell University and he is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
