CIMBEL

The built environments and landscape management field are in dire need of innovation, and CIMBEL (Center for Innovative Management of Built Environments & Landscapes) is a proposed nonprofit sustainable economic development organization that can work to bring positive change to these disciplines. 

While environmental, social, and governance paradigms continue to evolve due to the rapidly intensifying technological convergence occurring across the physical, digital, and biological realms, opportunities to solve these new challenges are also appearing, allowing land and buildings to create new competitive advantages for people, communities, owners, occupiers, and investors for the 21st century.

Embracing innovation in a very mature industry is not easy, and for this award, I envision CIMBEL tackling challenges that the private sector alone will not.  Specifically, working on the adaptive reuse redevelopment of converting existing central business district office and suburban office buildings into low carbon mixed use and mixed income housing due to their emerging functional obsolescence as office buildings.  Additionally, CIMBEL aims to work on upgrading buildings within the Justice 40 Census Designated Areas including, affordable housing, underserved commercial, nonprofit, and public buildings.   Each building CIMBEL upgrades will function as a “micro CLEAN-TECH & CLIMATE-TECH innovation center” working on applied R&D, solution adoption, and asset optimization at scale.

CIMBEL utilizes the intrinsic capacity of land as capital to fund building upgrades (project costs), while newly renovated buildings serve as the physical platform for applied R&D, solution adoption, and asset optimization at scale (micro-innovation centers).  This strategy utilizes the intrinsic capital capacity of land and buildings to create a technology and service-based innovation ecosystem reducing carbon through grid enabled buildings utilizing advanced building technologies, and natural resource conservation lands conducting afforestation.

CIMBEL will utilize existing, natural, and new technologies to pave the way for widespread adoption of sustainable economic development practices, using a grassroots management strategy to scale nationally and create a distributed network of CLEAN-TECH & CLIMATE-TECH micro innovation centers, as follows: 

EXISTING TECHNOLOGY:

Public-Private-Partnerships will manage land conservation and the building upgrade and redevelopment process.  This governance and management strategy allows CIMBEL to use a variety of technical assistance trade credit and sophisticated corporate and project level finance tools, including bonds, credit enhancements, senior debt, junior debt, and cash flow accruals to fund upgrades, and manage through a longer holding period than typical in the private sector.

NATURAL TECHNOLOGY:

Based on the emerging practices of classifying embodied carbon through life cycle accounting and other analyses, certain key landscapes and existing buildings contain immense intrinsic capital capacity to fund low carbon redevelopments. 

NEW TECHNOLOGIES:

Certain landscapes will support a change of use to afforestation conservation and stewardship, while existing buildings will be upgraded with a variety of low carbon new technologies including:

• Energy Efficient Electric Heating and Cooling Systems (regional specific)

• Building Envelope & Weatherization Improvements (regional specific)

• Prefab or Modular Construction Techniques

• Efficient Electrical Appliances

• Distributed Electrical Vehicle Charging

• Micro Electric Grids and Community/On-site Distributed Photovoltaic Solar Generation

• Building Electrical Panel Upgrades

• Distributed Renewable Energy Storage and Management Systems.

A preliminary stakeholder summary for CIMBEL is as follows:

Primary:  Local Community & Property Occupants 

Secondary:  Industry Community & Property Investors 

Tertiary: Global Stakeholders

Over the past eight years, I have been working in sustainable economic development and independently completed research on the shifting paradigms in the interdisciplinary field of built environments and landscapes management, and its correlation and application within existing innovation ecosystem archetypes, supported by a broad body of academic and industry research on the topic, and my knowledge as a professional with over 25 years of experience in the field. 

I have completed the fundamental feasibility analysis with a prototype site demonstrating proof of concept, and I am now looking for capacity building resources to launch pilot projects, grow, and scale. 

My solution is not launched and has no beneficiaries, currently.

I’m passionate about using my unique expertise to drive innovation and help improve communities for the 21st century.

My solution utilizes existing, natural, and new technologies to create solutions that can improve communities for the 21st century through:

• Testing Advanced Technologies & Management Methods
• Embodied Carbon Storage Impacts on Air, Soil, & Water Quality
• Increasing the Percentage of Generating Capacity from Renewable Energy
• Creating New Revenue Streams for Land & Built Environments
• Creating New Economic Values for Land & Built Environments

The result of which are potential commercial applications including:
• Advanced Building Controls & Artificial Intelligence (AI) Management Tools
• ECO-Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) or Green Bank Financial Services Platform
• Educational Topical Television Series
• Educational Topical Management Simulation Game

Next Year: Formalization of capacity and partnership building efforts leading to strategic planning and launching pilot projects, subsequently.

Five Years: Growth and scalable implementation across many project sites and geographic markets.

I have completed the feasibility analysis and am now applying to national award programs.

The built environment and landscapes (buildings and land) need to create new competitive advantages for a broad range of stakeholders.

Technological convergence across the physical, digital, and biological realms offers the potential to positively reshape communities for the twenty-first century, a phenomenon I’ve dubbed The Transformative Age Paradigm Shift.

As a lagging asset class, real estate will ultimately be impacted by inevitable changes in environmental, social, and governance paradigms brought on by this technological convergence as real estate occupiers redefine the competitive advantages offered by the built environment and investors redefine yield paradigms.  The four key change drivers my research identified as contributing to this paradigm shift are:

• Growth of Global Economic Circularity
• Scalable Application of Renewable Energy
• Digital Transformation & the Internet of Things
• Evolving Alternative Investment Landscape

The three core technologies that make this solution feasible are existing technology, natural, technology, and a variety of new technologies. 

Built environments and landscapes management has a legacy of lacking DEI and correcting and changing that is central to successfully completing this work in order to create ownership and management systems that are more reflective of local stakeholders contributing to global impacts.

CIMBEL will utilize is a sophisticated management and governance structure known as a public private partnership.  Public private partnerships are not new to real estate development and are commonly referred to through the acronym of “P-Threes” (P-3s).  However, a more advanced version of P-3s is the P-5 model which I believe is a governance structure that is needed to implement the scale of innovation required currently.

The P-5 model of public private partnerships is more robust and incorporates governance and funding resources from the nonprofit, philanthropic, public, and private sector to create sustainable economic development projects for the people. 

In my solution, CIMBEL would act as the lead nonprofit organization, and arrange collaborative solutions with stakeholders from across the other sectors.  Examples of collaborators include other nonprofit organizations, foundations, trusts, high net worth individuals, universities, local, regional, state, and federal government agencies, and real estate investment managers, developers, operating partners, and corporate occupiers.

CIMBEL will derive an operating budget from ownership interests in real estate projects during the pilot and implementation phases along with continual fundraising efforts.

CIMBEL is based on Dr. James Graaskamp's "Situs Theory" and the “Enterprise Concept”, both of which are well-established within the built environments and landscapes management field regarding land use planning and the fundamental capital capacity inherent to owning and managing these assets.