Members in the News – 1999-2001

Robert B. Ahlberg, AICP, formerly a senior planner with Thompson Dyke & Associates Ltd. in Northbrook, Illinois, has been promoted to vice president. He has experience in municipal planning, urban design, zoning, and administration. Prior to joining Thompson Dyke & Associates, Ahlberg served as a municipal planner in the Illinois communities of Glenview, Flossmoor, and Evanston.

Grieg Asher, AICP, is the new Planning and Transportation Director for Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn (15th District). Previously, Asher was manager of transit oriented development at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, California. He has also been the senior planner and rail manager for the Placer County Transportation Planning Agency in Auburn, California, and a regional planner with the Southern California Association of Governments in Los Angeles. He is a former board member of the Northern California and Sacramento Valley sections of APA's California Chapter.

Amanda L. Askew is the new Director of Planning for the Buckhead Coalition in Atlanta. She will be in charge of the nonprofit civic group's urban planning projects, such as an upgrade of Peachtree Road and a proposed Village Community Improvement District. Askew formerly worked in the city of Atlanta planning department. Before that, she was a planner in Plano, Texas, and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

John Beckman, AICP, has been appointed Principal of Wallace Roberts and Todd, LLC. He is currently directing the firm's work for the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, designed to bring investment and status to both sides of the District of Columbia's Anacostia River.

Juan Borrelli, AICP, will be responsible for project and staff management in the San Jose office of RBF Consulting, a design firm with 10 offices in the western U.S. Borrelli will also oversee client contracts, conduct client presentations, and facilitate public workshops and meetings. He has 12 years of domestic and international experience in planning. As a student, he shared an AICP award in 1996 for the Comprehensive Town Plan for Hahira, Georgia.

Lynette K. Boswell, a senior majoring in urban planning at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana was awarded a scholarship for $2,500 by APA's Planning and the Black Community Division. Boswell, originally from Calumet Park, Illinois, is involved in the Black Students Association, Students for Social Justice, and Student Planning Association at Ball State. She has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Muncie and Baltimore, and with the Muncie Industry Neighborhood. Upon graduation, she is interested in working in the public sector to better understand its functions, and then share that knowledge by working with a community development corporation or in neighborhood redevelopment.

David Cheeney, AICP, (photo left) has been named vice president by HDR, Inc. He joined the company in 1990 and is a department manager in the company's Alexandria, Virginia, office. Cheeney's experience includes urban planning, rail, transportation planning, and environmental management. He has worked extensively with federal agencies.

Elizabeth Clarke, AICP, is a newly appointed Principal of Wallace Roberts and Todd, LLC. Formerly in the firm's environmental planning practice for 15 years, Clarke will now head the company's new Lake Placid, New York, office.

David R. Clore, AICP, has been appointed the Managing Principal of the Berkeley office of LSA Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in environmental sciences, planning, and design. In his new role, Clore will continue to serve as Principal in Charge on large-scale environmental and land use projects.

Rick Draker has been appointed Chief Operations Officer at the consulting firm Resources for Excellence, Inc. Draker is also president of R.M. Draker & Associates, Inc., which has become a division of Resources for Excellence. He has 28 years of experience in operations management, government reorganization, land development project management, and property management in Canada, Michigan, and New Mexico. Draker is also President of Reorganization Solutions Group, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in government and corporate restructuring.

Nicole Faghin has been promoted to Director, Planning and Environmental Services Group, at Reid Middleton in Everett, Washington. She will oversee planning and permitting services. Faghin is a land-use and environmental permit specialist trained as a planner and lawyer. She is a member of the Legislative Committee of APA's Washington chapter.

Thomas J. Flynn, AICP, (photo left) has been elected to the International Economic Development Council Board of Directors. This new organization was formed by the unification of the Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED) and the American Economic Development Council (AEDC), and has a combined membership of about 4,000. It will have offices in Washington, D.C. The organization's purpose help develop bilateral contacts and common projects, provide an international learning exchange, develop networks, and bring groups together around common themes.

Jeff Fortin is now a planner in the Technology Services Department in the Municipal Planning Group of Ruekert/Mielke, Inc., of Waukesha, Wisconsin. He was previously the associate planning and zoning administrator of the City of Glendale and formerly was a planning technician for the City of New Berlin.

Carla Francazio, AICP, is a new Senior Associate with the firm Sasaki Associates in the Watertown, Massachusetts, office. Sasaki employs 300 professionals in the two offices of its interdisciplinary design firm.

David Freytag, AICP, has joined Jones & Stokes to manage the firm's Irvine branch office. Freytag has 12 years of experience in environmental planning, geographic information systems, and project management in Southern California and abroad. He has managed GIS and transportation projects, including statewide transportation plans, corridor alternative analyses, high-speed rail feasibility studies, and environmental impact analyses. Before joining Jones & Stokes, Freytag was Environmental/GIS Manager for the Orange, California, office of Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Alexander J. Graziani, AICP, (photo left) has been appointed executive director of Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County, a private community land-use advocacy group based at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Graziani has served as senior planner with Benatec Associates in Greensburg and as director of the Clearfield County Planning Department, where he helped write the first countywide subdivision and land ordinance. His role at Smart Growth Partnership of Westmoreland County is to work with business leaders, developers, educators, and government officials at all levels to develop planning principles that encourage economic growth without congestion.

Steve Hohulin, AICP, is joining RBF Consulting's Phoenix office to oversee the office's planning efforts. Hohulin, the company's director of planning, has 17 years of experience in community planning, campus planning, transportation planning, land use law consultation, and redevelopment projects.

Philip W. Hanegraaf, AICP, (photo left) has joined HNTB as the urban design and planning director for the Chicago and Indianapolis offices. Hanegraaf will lead HNTB's comprehensive planning services, which include community planning, urban design, recreation, campus planning, land planning, and transportation enhancements. Before joining HNTB, Hanegraaf was a principal at Trkla, Pettigrew, Allen and Payne, Inc. in Chicago. He also has worked in the public sector as a planning director in several municipal positions.

Bruce S. Kaniewski, AICP, has joined the engineering firm of Ruekert/Mielke as a senior planner in the Municipal Planning Department. For the past 11 years, he has been the planning and zoning administrator for the city of Franklin, Wisconsin. He has also been a planner in Illinois, in Wheaton and Palatine. Ruekert/Mielke is located in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Gerrit Knaap has been named director of research for the University of Maryland's new National Center for Smart Growth Research, Education and Training. The center will examine the fiscal, environmental, and social impact of alternative development patterns. Knaap is currently a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He will begin research activities with the Smart Growth Center in the summer of 2001, and will become a full-time professor in Maryland's School of Architecture and Planning in January 2002.

Michael R. Martin, AICP, has been named Director of Transportation Planning and Traffic Engineering with Volkert & Associates in Alexandria, Virginia. Martin has 27 years of experience in comprehensive transportation planning and network analysis, including computer modeling, corridor studies, travel demand forecasting, transit studies, access and circulation studies, and traffic signal design. He founded Martin Enterprises & Associates, Inc., and previously served as Vice President of Patton Harris Rust & Associates, PC. Volkert & Associates's Mid-Atlantic region offices are located in Alexandria and Washington, D.C.

Laura M. Minns, AICP, (photo left) has been appointed senior planner in the Orlando office of Herbert-Halback, Inc., a planning, landscape architecture, and graphic design firm. Minns's experience includes eight years of community planning and parks and recreation planning. Prior to joining HHI, she was a planner for the City of Kissimmee's Long Range Planning Section.

Matthew J. Richard, AICP, has been appointed senior urban planner with the Division of Neighborhood Planning of the City of Syracuse, New York. He has a master's degree in urban and regional planning and has an extensive background in planning, both in local government and academia.

Angela Robbins is the winner of the 2001 Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism Award, given by the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Foundation. Robbins, a facilities planner with the Albuquerque public schools and a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, received the honors and $5,000 in prize money for her paper, An Analysis of Planning Practices Which Impact Albuquerque Public Schools: A Case for Concurrent Planning. The award recognizes writing and research on the question of how architecture, urban design, and physical planning can contribute to improving the quality of life in the American city.

Ted Schirmacher, AICP, has been named a new Associate in the Watertown, Massachusetts, office of Sasaki Associates. The interdisciplinary design services firm has 300 professionals in its Watertown and San Francisco offices.

Brian M. Slaugh, AICP, has been named a partner of the architectural and planning firm of Clarke Caton Hintz of Trenton, New Jersey. Brian Slaugh was formerly a member of the Collingswood Planning Board and a trustee of MEND, Inc., a nonprofit housing corporation in Moorestown, New Jersey. He has been involved in APA's New Jersey Chapter, most recently as awards jury chair.

Frederick Steiner, professor and director of the School of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Arizona State University and an internationally renowned expert on environmental planning, has been named dean of School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. The appointment is effective August 1, 2001. He replaces Dean Lawrence Speck, who stepped down as dean but will remain on the UT Austin faculty in architecture

In addition to his tenure at Arizona State University, Steiner also has taught planning, landscape architecture, and environmental science at Washington State University, the University of Colorado-Denver, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked on research projects in the Netherlands, Sardinia and Cremona, Italy, and Valladolid, Spain. In 1998, Steiner was the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation and Conservation at the American Academy in Rome.

Through the years, Steiner has worked with local, state and federal agencies on diverse environmental plans and designs. His research efforts have affected the urban development and preservation policies of the National Park Service, the state of Arizona, the city of Phoenix, and endangered landscapes.

Steiner received his Ph.D., a master's degree in city and regional planning, and another master's degree in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a master of community planning and a bachelor of science degree in design from the University of Cincinnati. He has received numerous awards and is the author of several books, including The Living Landscape, To Heal the Earth (with Ian McHarg), and Soil Conservation in the United States.

Silvia Vargas, AICP, has been named associate of Wallace Roberts and Todd, LLC. Vargas has worked on several of the firm's plans in Florida, including a carrying capacity study for the Florida Keys and campus master plans for the University of Miami Medical School and Florida Gulf Coast University.

Edwin Wells, AICP, (photo left) recently joined Gannett Fleming as the regional geographic information systems manager for the firm's Pittsburgh office. Wells is responsible for marketing and developing GIS and information technology services for GeoDecisions, a GIS resource and technology company, which is a division of Gannett Fleming. Wells will manage local projects, provide technical support, and offer GIS expertise in a range of sectors.

Joseph Zehnder, AICP, recently joined the SmithGroup JJR Chicago office as a principal and senior urban planner. He most recently served as the Senior Director of Urban Development for the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C. He is a former deputy commissioner with the Chicago Department of Planning and Development and has more than 18 years of experience in planning and community development.