Value is made by assembling and master-planning the whole, not by buying finished buildings.
A single building is bought at market price. A district is assembled and planned, and that is where the value is made. Across the most-cited mixed-use and innovation districts of the last two decades, the largest, earliest gains came not from vertical construction but from controlling underused land, assembling it, securing entitlements, and master-planning a coherent whole. That work converts a set of ordinary parcels into an entitled platform worth far more than its raw basis, and opens a buildout opportunity many times larger again. The capital that funds the assembly captures the steepest part of the value curve. At the district, Now City plays that role as master developer: assembling and entitling the district, then developing and holding the phases as a long-term owner-operator, with the option to bring in specialist builders on individual parcels.
Nearly every comparable district started on underused land at a modest basis: a highway corridor, a brownfield, federal or port land, an aging harbor, a ballpark parking lot. The entry point is the opportunity.
The platform-creation capital is small next to the value it releases, and its largest line, infrastructure, is mostly funded by public and project sources. The developer equity at risk is the highest-leverage capital in the project, and the hardest to access later.
Once assembled and entitled, the platform is worth a multiple of its basis, and it carries a full-buildout opportunity an order of magnitude larger, delivered in phases over a decade.
The pattern is consistent enough to read as a sequence. The value compounds at each step, and the return on capital is highest at the front, where the assembly and entitlement happen.
Take low-basis, underused parcels under control through purchase, option, lease-to-own, or contribution.
Stitch separate sites into one contiguous, developable district, the step a single owner cannot do alone.
Win the zoning and master plan, and stage the early infrastructure that makes the whole buildable.
The entitled, master-planned district now trades at a large step-up over its raw-land basis.
Deliver vertical product in phases, with recurring liquidity windows, against the value created.
Comparable mixed-use and innovation districts, ordered by acreage. Read across a row to see the land basis, planning and entitlement spend, and infrastructure investment add up to the total platform-creation capital, which a district then converts into a large platform value and, over a decade, a multibillion-dollar buildout. Every figure in the final column is total development investment, what it costs to build the district out, on a consistent basis: across these precedents, the completed market value is rarely disclosed publicly, so we do not imply one. Infrastructure is broken out because it is the largest line, and, as the next section shows, the one most often carried by public and project sources rather than developer equity. Figures are drawn from public reporting for each district.
| District | Acres | Initial land basis | Planning & entitlements | Infrastructure investment | Total platform-creation capital | Platform value after entitlement & infrastructure | Full buildout investment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mission Rock San Francisco, CA | 28 | ~$100M to 200M | ~$50M to 100M | ~$300M to 400M | ~$450M to 700M | ~$750M to 1.2B | ~$2.5B |
| The Yards Washington, DC | 48 | ~$50M to 100M | ~$30M to 60M | ~$100M to 200M | ~$180M to 360M | ~$400M to 700M | ~$2.0B |
| Harborplace Baltimore, MD | 20 | ~$50M to 100M | ~$25M to 50M | ~$50M to 100M | ~$125M to 250M | ~$250M to 500M | ~$900M to 1.0B |
| 195 District Providence, RI | 26 | ~$20M to 50M | ~$20M to 40M | ~$50M to 100M | ~$90M to 190M | ~$150M to 300M | $800M+ |
| Port Eastside East Hartford, CT | 30+ | ~$30M to 60M | ~$20M to 40M | ~$75M to 125M | ~$125M to 225M | ~$200M to 400M | ~$850M |
| Cortex St. Louis, MO | 200 | <$100M | ~$50M to 100M | ~$100M to 250M | ~$200M to 450M | ~$500M+ | ~$2.3B to 2.5B |
Infrastructure, roads, utilities, grading, and the public realm, is usually the biggest component of platform-creation capital. Across these districts it is rarely carried by developer equity alone. It is funded through a public-private stack: public participation, urban renewal and tax-increment financing, state grants, infrastructure debt, and contributions from the vertical projects the infrastructure makes possible. The developer and GP equity share is a minority of the total, which is what keeps the equity at risk small relative to the value created.
| Public participation | 25% to 50% |
| Urban renewal / TIF | 20% to 40% |
| Developer equity | 10% to 25% |
| Infrastructure debt | 10% to 25% |
A district here would follow the same pattern: developer equity carrying a minority of platform-creation capital, with the balance drawn from urban renewal, state programs, infrastructure debt and vertical project contributions. Which of those tools actually apply in Salem, and on what terms, is question 04 in the study plan.
Each of the comparables began the same way the district begins: a champion took underused land under control, assembled and entitled it, and master-planned a district that was worth far more than the parts.
Twenty-eight acres of Port of San Francisco land beside Oracle Park, long used as a ballpark parking lot, master-developed by Tishman Speyer with the San Francisco Giants. Entitlement turned it into a roughly 3.6 million SF waterfront district planned for about 1,200 homes at a 40% affordable target, with office and lab space and eight acres of parks. A first phase of four buildings and China Basin Park opened in 2023 to 2024.
Source: ULI ↗Forty-eight acres of former Washington Navy Yard land on the Anacostia River, master-developed by Forest City and now Brookfield with the support of a $90M city PILOT. Federal land became a mixed-use riverfront neighborhood planned for up to 3,400 homes, more than two million SF of office, 400,000 SF of retail, and 7.5 acres of park, anchoring the fastest-growing neighborhood in the DC region.
Source: The Yards ↗Two hundred acres of formerly blighted industrial land in St. Louis, master-developed by a nonprofit backed by five anchor institutions, on a master-plan target of $2.3B to 2.5B. The $1.33B invested to date has drawn 400-plus companies and 5,400 jobs, generated $2.1B in annual regional output, and lifted property values in its ZIP code faster than anywhere else in the region.
Source: Cortex ↗Twenty-six acres freed when Interstate 195 was relocated through Providence, master-planned by a state redevelopment commission. The reclaimed highway land has drawn more than $800M of private investment, the Wexford Innovation Center now home to 260-plus companies, Brown University, and 1,100-plus homes built or in development, with more in the pipeline.
Source: 195 District ↗A roughly thirty-acre Connecticut River frontage in East Hartford, assembled for an approximately $850M mixed-use redevelopment: about 1,100 homes, retail and entertainment, a riverfront greenway, and a pedestrian bridge to Hartford, supported by around $100M of public funding.
Source: Port Eastside ↗Twenty acres at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, master-planned by MCB Real Estate, a $900M to $1B rebuild of the iconic 1980s waterfront into four towers with about 900 homes and more than 200,000 SF of commercial space, with roughly $400M for the public realm, approved by city voters in 2024.
Source: Our Harborplace ↗The same assembly that creates platform value also creates jobs, tax base, housing, and talent retention that compound for the city around it. A district is one of the few real-estate moves whose payoff is shared by its neighbors. What that is worth to the people already living here is the part worth measuring, and the indicators below are how we would measure it.
Most places measure progress by regional GDP, population growth, or the size of the company they recruited. Now City advisor Michael Shuman, an economist and the author of The Local Economy Solution, argues those numbers mislead: a community grows stronger when its own economy gets healthier. These are the twelve signs he recommends watching, and the ones this district is built to move.
Whether the typical resident earns more, a truer gauge than averages a handful of high earners can inflate.
Whether the gap between richest and poorest, the Gini measure, is narrowing over five to ten years.
The share of work in small, locally owned firms, plus public and self-employed workers, who are almost all local.
How much of what the community needs it makes and buys locally instead of importing from elsewhere.
Whether the smallest firms keep surviving and multiplying, which is what a healthy startup economy looks like.
The count of firms certified for serving workers, community, and environment, not investors alone.
How many firms join local alliances for shared marketing, purchasing, contracting, and advocacy.
Whether those alliances sustain themselves on member dues and services rather than grants alone.
The share of public spending that flows to local businesses, and the income multiplier it sets off.
Capital raised locally through investment crowdfunding and community-backed local funds.
Less public money spent luring large outside companies with grants and tax breaks.
Whether young, talented people stay and return, which attainable housing makes possible.
The districts that compounded value did the unglamorous early work first. Salem is at that moment now. The questions that would settle it are in the study plan, or learn more at nowcity.co.