Community Designer

Job Description

Job Description

Community Designer

FLSA Exemption: Salaried, exempt

Reports to: Vice President of Community Placemaking & Design

Job Description

The Community Designer participates on a team of architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers to implement the real estate development vision through placemaking and quality neighborhood design.

Primary Duties

Land Use Planning

• Prepare land use plans for master-planned communities of various scales, integrating local land use code, transportation, engineering, unique site characteristics, and business and placemaking goals.
• Prepare design standards and guidelines such as community plans, and pattern books, and modify these tools when necessary.
• Coordinate platting of land use plans with engineering teams to ensure placemaking outcomes are achieved in the context of grading, easements, utilities, lot sizes, setbacks, etc.
• Define special addresses within land use plans to elevate placemaking outcomes in high visibility and important areas. Articulate special address requirements for affected lots, including architecture, landscape and other parameters, and coordinate with members of the Placemaking Team to ensure the special address outcomes are achieved.
• Conduct site visits, as necessary, to ensure planning and placemaking outcomes are achieved. 

Visualization

• Create graphics for analysis and presentations, including community and neighborhood designs, open space plans, signage / monumentation.
• Transform sketches, diagrams, and site data into 3D models to help internal and external groups visualize preferred outcomes.

Design Review

• Review and approve site plans for residential, commercial, and industrial projects for compliance with design standards and best practices. Meet regularly with internal teams and builder / developer partners regarding design review issues.

Research & Innovation

• Research and analyze precedent projects and places to understand their physical attributes that create strong placemaking.
• Research market trends associated with planning, placemaking and urban design and make recommendations on those topics.
• Identify strategies for improving community and neighborhood planning quality in the context of market conditions and business objectives.

Education & Training

• Coordinate with, train, and educate engineering teams, residential builder partners, and commercial partners—and their subcontractors—to improve planning and design outcomes.

Entitlements

• Assist with entitlement related issues related to LHM Communities projects. 

Coordination

• Develop constructive relationships with development partners and government staff.
• Work with internal and external teams on planning-related issues, such as urban design and placemaking.
• Coordinate with outside consultants on planning and design related issues relative to Larry H. Miller Communities projects. 

Experience & Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in planning, urban design, or landscape architecture, or a related field plus five years of related experience.
• Thorough understanding of urban design principles, particularly as they relate to neighborhood-scale development: the lot, the block, and the street.
• Ability to carefully arrange lots on a block in a manner that integrates principles of engineering, architecture, and landscape architecture and creates positive placemaking outcomes.
• Strong visual and verbal communication skills, with an emphasis on 3D models and rendering.
• Ability to learn quickly and synthesis ideas and constraints from broad set of design disciplines to improve landscape outcomes.
• Software knowledge: AutoCAD, Sketch-Up, Rhino, Twin Motion, Adobe suite, and/or other visualization tools, Microsoft Suite, GIS a plus.

Physical Requirements

• Primarily in-office setting, with some infrequent walking, standing, and climbing stairs in/around construction sites, apartment homes, models, and properties.
• Must have the ability to read and comprehend large quantities of information, operate computer equipment, speak, hear, bend, stoop, reach, lift, move, and carry up to 25 lbs. independently.
• Regularly required to sit, stand, bend, reach, and move about office setting.
• To perform other duties as required.

To perform the job successfully, an individual should demonstrate the following competencies to perform the essential functions of this position.

Manage Complexity: Make sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively analyze situations and identify solutions. 

Collaborates: Builds partnerships and works cooperatively with others across the organization to achieve shared objectives.

Plans and Aligns: Plan and prioritize work to meet commitments aligned with organizational needs and goals.  Includes ability to break down objectives into appropriate initiatives and actions while anticipating and adjusting effective contingency plans.

Instills Trust: Gains the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity by following through on commitments, keeping confidences, and showing consistency between words and actions.

Strategic Mindset: Sees ahead to future possibilities and translates them into breakthrough strategies.  Achieved by anticipating future trends and implications accurately and articulating credible pictures and visions of possibilities that will create sustainable value.  

About Larry H. Miller Real Estate

Larry H. Miller Real Estate (#LHMRE), a portfolio company of the Larry H. Miller Company, is a vertically integrated real estate platform that engages in site acquisition and development, project and construction management, financial and capital structuring, and property and asset management. LHMRE’s development projects and assets include large-scale master-planned residential communities; commercial, industrial, and entertainment venue development and asset management; and a growing portfolio of joint ventures with leading real estate partners across the nation. The Larry H. Miller Company provides management and direction for its portfolio of well-known and high-performing companies and always seeks to support its mission to enrich lives and its vision to be the best place in town to work and the best place in town to do business.