2008 Jury Members

Jeremy Newsum, Chairman
Group Chief Executive, Grosvenor Estate

Jeremy Newsum is chief executive and a trustee of the Grosvenor Estate, responsible for international strategy and development of the business. He is a director of TR Property Investment Trust plc; an adviser to Bidwells; chairman of the Property Advisory Committee for the Rector of Imperial College; chairman of the advisory board to the Land Economy Department at the University of Cambridge; a director of Sonae Imobiliaria (Portugal); a past president of the British Property Federation; and trustee of the Urban Land Institute.

Newsum joined Grosvenor in 1976 after reading Estate Management at Reading University. In 1979 he left to join Savills where he advised institutional and corporate clients on commercial property investment and development. In 1984, he established a London office for Bidwells, and in 1987 he returned to Grosvenor, where he has been chief executive since 1989.

Under his leadership, Grosvenor has expanded from its home base in London’s Mayfair and Belgravia neighborhoods to an international property development and investment group with interests across the United Kingdom and Ireland; the Americas; continental Europe; and Australia and the Asia Pacific. Grosvenor manages a portfolio valued at approximately $7.8 billion, with interests in 16 countries.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
Architect, Author, Educator

Plater-Zyberk is a founding partner of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) with her husband, Andrés Duany. The firm has designed over 100 traditional communities built to convey a small town atmosphere and easy pedestrian access. Seaside, Florida, is one of DPZ’s most famous projects and the one said to launch the new urbanist movement. Others include Kentlands, Blount Springs, and Windsor.

She and Duany are two of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism (1995). DPZ’s urban redevelopment plans include those for Stuart and West Palm Beach in Florida, and Los Angeles. DPZ has also prepared municipal urban codes and traditional neighborhood district codes for municipalities throughout the United States. DPZ has received numerous awards, including two State of Florida governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. With Jeff Speck and Duany, she wrote Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (2000).

Currently a trustee of Princeton University, Plater-Zyberk has been a resident fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and is currently dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Miami in Miami, where she has taught since 1979.

Deborah Ratner Salzberg
Developer, Investor

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.

Witold Rybczynski
Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism;
Professor of Real Estate at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania

Witold Rybczynski, of Polish parentage, was born in Edinburgh, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he also taught; he is currently the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. His architectural experience has included designing and building houses as a registered architect, as well as researching low-cost housing for which he received a 1991 Progressive Architecture award. In 1993, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and he has received honorary doctorates from McGill University and the University of Western Ontario. In 2007, he received the Vincent Scully Prize, the Seaside Prize, and the Institute Collaborative Honors from the AIA. He serves on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

Described as “one of our most original, accessible, and stimulating writers on architecture” by Library Journal, Rybczynki is currently architecture critic for the on-line magazine Slate. He has written twelve books on subjects as varied as the evolution of comfort, a history of the weekend, American urbanism, a search for the origins of the screwdriver, and the life of America’s greatest landscape architect. Home has been translated into ten languages, and was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Prize, while A Clearing in the Distance, a biography of Frederick Law Olmsted, received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, a Christopher Award, a Philadelphia Athenæum literary award, and was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction.

His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books, and The New York Times, and he has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic. His latest book (written with Laurie Olin) is Vizcaya: An American Villa and Its Makers. His new book, on real estate development, Last Harvest, will be published in 2007.

Witold Rybczynski lives with his wife Shirley Hallam in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia.

Paul Schell
Former Mayor of Seattle
Real Estate Developer

Paul Schell was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1937, and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Des Moines. He attended Wartburg College and graduated from the University of Iowa and Columbia Law School. He practiced law in New York City and Seattle, Washington, where he moved with his wife, Pam, in 1967.

Paul determined that his true interest was in the planning and building of urban communities. In 1973 he was appointed Director of the Seattle Department of Community Development. He founded and served as president of Cornerstone Development Company from 1979-87 that created twelve blocks of mixed use with historic preservation in Seattle, multi-block redevelopment in Tacoma, and Portland, Oregon.

In 1989 Paul was elected Commissioner for the Port of Seattle, becoming commission president in 1995. He was asked to serve as acting Dean of the UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning and did so from 1993-96. During that time he built the Office of Sustainability and enhanced the Rome Studies Program.

The Inn at Langley, one of the most awarded resorts in the Northwest, was created and built by Paul in 1989. He is at present adding to the 26-room inn by adding two penthouses. Paul and a friend built another inn in Langley, The Boatyard Inn.

Paul was elected Mayor of Seattle from 1998-2002. During that time he oversaw the building of a new symphony hall, opera house, downtown library and numerous branches, City Hall, Justice Center and 100 new parks and promoted the Seattle Art Museum’s sculpture park.

Upon leaving the mayor’s office, he became a strategic advisor for architectural firm, NBBJ. In 2004 he became a co-developer for a new Four Seasons Hotel and Residences in Seattle, which will open in 2008.

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