Candace Damon has devoted her 40-year career to crafting sustainable urban redevelopment strategies. Her work spans the master planning of large-scale downtown and waterfront revitalizations, ensuring the long-term viability of urban open space, leading organizational planning for non-profits and institutions, and addressing the financial challenges of making commercial and multifamily residential buildings energy efficient.
Across her diverse range of experience and decades of service, Candace’s work is unified by her ability to develop a narrative that builds on best-quality data analysis to drive public and private investment for community benefit. She is known for work that goes beyond policy prescription to tackle tactical implementation, including organizational change, partnership building, budgeting, and staffing. Her clients include cities, private landowners, non-profit institutions, and civic coalitions.
Her work on downtown and waterfront revitalization includes multiple projects for non-developer landowners — families, investor groups and non-profit institutions — seeking to add value to their holdings by taking projects through the vision development, feasibility assessment, incentives negotiation, and public finance stages of pre-development, culminating in developer selection and negotiations. Typical is her work for the investor group that brought Denver’s Broadway Station to market. Likewise, she has worked extensively for counties, cities, and quasi-governmental downtown organizations to increase value in community centers. Recent work includes a rethinking of the governance of Pennsylvania Avenue and development of a downtown strategy for San Antonio.
Candace has built an internationally unique practice focused on developing sustainable sources of operating funds for public open space. Her clients, who are bothadvocates for particular park investments and the stewards of park systems, look to her to advise on how to build mixes of funding derived from the General Fund, value capture mechanisms, earned income, and philanthropy. She has also advised those clients on assembly of capital, procurement of design talent, and long-term governance. Her 100+ past and current parks clients include Brooklyn Bridge Park, Shelby Farms Park, the Cities of Seattle and Dallas, and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
Candace currently leads the firm’s Climate practice, which focuses on both adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. Candace helps clients realize the competitive advantage gained by investments in decarbonization, efficiency, and resilience.
She is particularly engaged by the design of policies and programs to incentivize private investment in more efficient buildings. Recent work in this area includes several projects for Con Edison focused on characterizing the market and estimating demand for envelope retrofits and increasing incentive program uptake by low- and moderate-income housing owners.
Candace has served on numerous boards, accepted hundreds of speaking invitations, and been awarded a variety of honors, notably being made an Honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architecture. As of 2025, she is the Chair of the Operations Committee of +POOL, the NYC-based not-for-profit advancing an inclusive recreational and swim safety agenda, and a member of the board of the Connecticut River Conservancy. She lives in Vermont.
Candace holds a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.
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Board of the City Parks Alliance and the Urban Green Council
- New York City YMCA Real Estate Advisory Committee
- Advisory Board and President Emeritus of the Atlantic Avenue Local Development Corporation
- Member, New York City YMCA Real Estate Advisory Committee
- Member, Urban Land Institute Redevelopment and Reuse Council; Chair, ULI Placemaking Council; Chair, ULI Prize Jur; Co-Chair, Reinventing Market Street Ideas Competition Jury
- Treasurer, Urban Green Council
- Honorary Member, American Society of Landscape Architecture
- “Women of Influence Award,” Real Estate Forum, 2008
- Chair, Operations Committee +POOL
- Treasurer, Connecticut River Conservancy
Projects
HR&A Advisors worked with Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Planning to demonstrate the economic potential of transforming the abandoned High Line railway into a public park. Through detailed impact analysis and an innovative rezoning strategy, HR&A helped create a world-renowned public space that has generated $52 billion in economic activity and reshaped Manhattan’s West Side.
HR&A Advisors guided the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation through a comprehensive predevelopment planning process that transformed 85 acres of vacant, post-industrial piers into one of New York City's premier waterfront destinations. By creating an innovative self-sustaining funding model and facilitating complex stakeholder engagement, HR&A broke a 20-year implementation stalemate, enabling the award-winning Michael Van Valkenburgh-designed park to move from vision to reality.
HR&A led a multidisciplinary team to develop a comprehensive Master Plan for Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market, addressing financial sustainability, declining farmer presence, and shifting visitor demographics. Working with the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority, we delivered a strategic roadmap to revitalize the Market by embracing Pacific Northwest "Food Life" and reconnecting with local audiences.
HR&A advised the Sarasota Performing Arts Center Foundation on financial strategy for their $275M performing arts center at The Bay waterfront district. Our work delivered actionable funding scenarios, refined operating models, and comprehensive economic impact projections that strengthened the Foundation's case for public investment and philanthropic support.
Since 2020, HR&A has supported Con Edison’s strategy for incentivizing building decarbonization throughout New York City and Westchester County. Leveraging our deep experience in New York City real estate and our quantitative modeling capabilities, we are helping Con Edison achieve the ambitious goals of New York State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which commits the State to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050.
HR&A developed a comprehensive strategy enabling Con Edison to significantly scale its energy efficiency investments in low- and moderate-income (LMI) multifamily housing across New York City and Westchester County. Our work delivered both immediate tactical tools to meet near-term targets and a 10-year strategic plan that positions Con Edison to achieve climate goals while directing benefits to underserved communities.
HR&A advised Broadway Station Partners on market-supportable development planning and public financing strategies for one of Denver's largest transit-oriented development sites, the former Gates Rubber Company plant. Our work directly contributed to the Denver City Council's unanimous approval of a $140 million public infrastructure financing package, including $90 million in tax increment financing—the second largest ever approved in the city—enabling groundbreaking in 2018.
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