2011 Jury Members

James M. DeFrancia
Jury Chair
Principal, Lowe Enterprises, Inc.
Aspen, CO

James M. DeFrancia is President of Lowe Enterprises Community Development, which provides development management and advisory services on planned communities throughout the U.S. and abroad. DeFrancia is engaged in residential, commercial and resort development. He has been involved in real estate development for more than 30 years; prior to that, he served as an officer in the US Navy.

DeFrancia is a Life Trustee of the Urban Land Institute where he has participated in or chaired more than 20 Advisory Service Panels helping communities and organizations address strategic issues of land use, development and revitalization. He is a past national director of National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), a former Virginia representative to the Southern Growth Policies Boards and a former member of the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. He has been a guest lecturer/panelist for the Bank Lending Institute; the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; George Mason University and George Washington University.

DeFrancia is a graduate of the US Naval Academy, with postgraduate studies in business and finance at the University of Michigan.

Ronald Altoon, FAIA
Founder and Partner, Altoon + Porter Architects, LLP
Los Angeles, California

Ronald Altoon is founding design partner of Altoon + Porter Architects, LLP, an international architectural, urban design, and planning firm with professional practice entities in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Moscow. He is responsible for designs for complex projects in Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

Altoon’s practice encompasses urban infill, retail, commercial mixed-use, higher education, transit, and residential projects. He has authored three books on the work of his firm, as well as two for the retail industry on international projects and the influence of context and culture on enabling community.

A ULI leader, Altoon served on the ULI New York World Trade Center Summit 2006 Blue Ribbon Panel and speaks at ULI conferences, both domestic and international. He was national president in 1998 of The American Institute of Architects.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bart Harvey
Retired, Chairman and CEO, Enterprise Community Partners
Baltimore, Maryland

Bart Harvey is the immediate past Chairman and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that has raised and invested, along with partners, over $10 billion of private resources that have helped produce over 250,000 homes for low income households. Under Harvey’s leadership, Enterprise brought together leaders from the environmental and community development fields to create the Green Communities® initiative in 2004. This $555 million initiative exceeded by 50 percent its five-year goal of building more than 8,500 affordable homes that promote health, conserve energy and natural resources, and promote easy access to jobs, schools and services.

Mr. Harvey currently serves on Fannie Mae’s Board as well as a number of nonprofit Boards. Mr. Harvey was appointed by Congress to the Millennium Housing Commission from 2000 –2002 and has been a Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta as well as on the Advisory Boards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He has served on numerous Boards including the Baltimore Education Scholarship Trust, Center Stage, the National Housing Conference, National Housing Trust, and Shepherd’s Clinic.

Most recently Mr. Harvey was chosen as the 2008 recipient of The Urban Land Institute J. C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, as well as the National Housing Conference’s 2008 Housing Person of the Year.

Neal Peirce
CitiStatrs Group and Washington Post Writers Group
Washington, DC

Neil Peirce is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and chairman of The Citistates Group, America’s only journalist team focused first and foremost on metropolitan regions. With Curtis Johnson, Peirce has co-authored the Peirce Reports (now called Citistates Reports), a publication focused on compelling issues of metropolitan futures for leading media in 25 regions across the nation. Recent reports include Boston Unbound, released in May 2004, and a series on the Charlotte Citistate for The Charlotte Observer.

Peirce is also a principal author of a major report on approaching global urban challenges, Century of the City: No Time to Lose, based on the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2007 Global Urban Summit in Bellagio, Italy. His 10-book series on America’s states and regions culminated in The Book of America: Inside 50 States Today and, more recently, has published Citistates: How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World; Boundary Crossers: Community Leadership for a Global Age; and Breakthroughs: Recreating The American City.

Deborah Ratner Salzberg
President, Forest City Washington
Washington, DC

Deborah Ratner Salzberg is president of Forest City Washington, Inc., and a director of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, Inc. Forest City is the chief private investor in The Yards development, planned for D.C.’s Anacostia waterfront. Based in Forest City’s Washington, D.C. office, Ratner Salzberg is responsible for both commercial and residential development in the area; also, she has worked in retail leasing, development, financing, and construction. Her current responsibilities also include asset management of commercial and residential properties. Prior to joining Forest City in 1985, she was a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Ratner Salzberg is associated with numerous community, charitable, and business organizations, including the American Committee of the Weizmann Institute of Science, of which she is the chairman in the Washington region; Arena Stage; D.C. Building Industry Association; Foundation for the National Archives; Jewish Federation of Greater Washington; Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies; Kenyon College; National Building Museum; and the Women’s Advisory Board of the National Girl Scouts.

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