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“We are honored to be part of The New York Times’ unprecedented efforts to have Chicago journalists produce local news for America’s premier newspaper,” said CNC co-founder and editor James O’Shea. “Despite the financial challenges faced by all media, The Times’ commitment to readers in Chicago speaks worlds about the paper’s values and dedication to quality journalism. The city is a better place with added voices providing local news.”

WTTW public television is a co-founder of CNC, which will also collaborate with WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and other outlets to extend its reporting over the air and on the Web. In 2010 CNC will introduce a Web site combining news programming designed to educate and activate with social networking intended to connect people who share common interests.

O’Shea, former editor of the Los Angeles Times and past managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, will lead CNC’s team of news industry veterans and new-media journalists. James Warren — an MSNBC analyst, past Tribune managing editor and current publisher of the Chicago Reader — will write a regular CNC column that will appear in The Times’ Chicago pages.

Other CNC journalists include David Greising, former Tribune business columnist, and Jessica Reaves and Bill Parker, former Tribune reporters. José M. Moré, a Tribune photographer for 28 years, will spearhead CNC’s photographic efforts.

Dan Mihalopoulous, who has covered Chicago’s City Hall for the Tribune since 2003, will head up CNC’s coverage of city government. Katie Fretland, previously a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, will join Mihalopoulous on the city beat.

CNC has brought together an advisory board chaired by its co-founder, Peter Osnos, the founder of PublicAffairs books, who has a background in journalism, publishing and social entrepreneurship. Other members of the advisory board are James O’Shea; Dan Schmidt, president and CEO of WTTW; Newton Minow, senior counsel at Sidley & Austin and chair of the Federal Communications Commission in the Kennedy administration; Martin Koldyke, former chairman of WTTW and founder of the Golden Apple Foundation; Ann Marie Lipinski, Pulitzer Prize-winning former editor of the Chicago Tribune and current vice president of Civic Engagement at the University of Chicago; Michael Davies, president and CEO of AlphaZeta Interactive; Bruce Sagan, owner and publisher of the Hyde Park Herald; Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo, a Publicis company; and Dawn Sinclair Shapiro, a broadcast journalist and documentary film director at Woodlawn Avenue Productions.

“At a time when so many news organizations are in a forced retreat, it’s exciting to be part of a venture that has set out to build more and better news coverage,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. “Working with the Chicago News Cooperative will allow us to expand our coverage of Chicago with sophisticated reporting by local journalists with deep roots in the community.” The Times added pages and a blog focused on the San Francisco market in October.

Like other news services, CNC will receive payment for its Times coverage. CNC expects to create a self-sustaining business model based on diverse revenue streams including advertising, membership and service fees. In its startup phase, CNC has received support from WTTW, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, Winston & Strawn LLP and civic leaders interested in funding substantive journalism for a democratic society.

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Briefing

• Carefully weigh the go/no-go decision.
• Research the client and the competition.
• Focus on how you can benefit the client.
• Follow the rules set forth in the RFP.
• Make your proposal easy to read.
• Make every proposal better than the last one.

LAUNCH

Step 1: Pull the trigger (or not). In a tough economy, it’s tempting to chase every opportunity that comes along. Resist that temptation. Instead, consider whether the project fits your company’s capabilities, business model and bottom-line objectives. Ask yourself these key questions:

• Can you do the work? Can your existing staff handle it? Will you need to staff up or partner with another firm? Can you pull together a team in time to develop your proposal?
• Can you win the work? Who’s the likely competition? What strengths can you leverage against them? If you submit, would you rate your proposal a shoo-in or a long-shot?
• Do you want the work? Is it a good fit? Will it be profitable? Will it enhance your reputation? Will it help you enter a new market?

Be honest. If the assignment isn’t for you, save your time and energy for another opportunity.

Step 2: Start the countdown. The moment you decide to “go,” chart all the mileposts in preparing the proposal, from assembling the team to packaging the final product. Counting backward from the delivery deadline, allocate time for each task. Add extra time, especially if you’re submitting with another firm, and leave a buffer for contingencies.

Step 3: Mobilize the team. Forge whatever partnerships you need to round out your team. Establish roles and responsibilities for everyone, and communicate them clearly. Determine who will spearhead the project, gather information, draft content, develop budgets, design the document, produce and deliver it. Critically important, assign someone — better still, a team — to review the final document front to back while you still have time to make changes. Touch base at intervals to make sure the team has everything covered and no vital requirement has fallen by the wayside.

INTEL

Step 4: Conduct intelligence. If you’re not already familiar with the prospective client, find out all you can about the organization, the project and the goals behind it. If you’ve worked with the client before, find out what’s new. Ask what other firms got the RPF and how yours was selected to receive it. Scout out the strengths and weaknesses of the other players. (Conducting regular competitive audits will save you a step here.) Attend any pre-bid conference. Caution: Some proposals set rules of engagement for how you may contact the prospective client. Play by the rules. They’re especially important with public agencies, but even with a private company, an unsanctioned call can disqualify your proposal.

Step 5: Push the hot buttons. Determine the ultimate decision-makers in the selection process and learn all you can about their preferences. Read the RFP carefully; it’s full of clues if you know how to find them. Note any areas where you’re confident you can outperform your competition. Above all, focus on the client and the tangible benefits you can deliver. If you’ve gone through a branding and positioning process, you’re ahead of the game. When you’ve worked out your key messages, put them front and center in your cover letter and executive summary.

ROLLOUT

Step 6: Hone the message. Share your key messages with all team members contributing content to the proposal, and speak with one voice. Decide whether to write the proposal in first person (we, our) or third person (the firm, the joint venture). Agree whether to refer to the prospective client as “you” — less formal but more engaging — or “XYZ Corp.” Having a style guide for your company saves time and promotes consistency. If you’re submitting with other firms, use the same template for all company profiles, bios and project sheets, and read through every page for consistency.

Step 7: Take the scan test. As much time as you put into your proposal, the reader may take only seconds to give it thumbs up or thumbs down. Long stretches of dense text can work against you. To make the proposal reader-friendly, lay out the pages with enough white space to let the eye rest. Then focus the reader’s attention where you want it, using subheads, callouts, bullet points and graphic elements to highlight key messages.

Step 8: Follow the marching orders. At many organizations, especially government agencies, reviewing proposals begins with a compliance audit. Someone sits down with a stack of proposals and weeds out any documents that deviate from the RFP’s checklist. Great, creative thinking can land in the trash because the addenda were labeled 1 through 5 instead of A through E. If you decide to organize your proposal differently than the RFP specifies, include a matrix clearly showing where every required element appears in your proposal — and understand you’re taking a risk.

ENDGAME

Step 9: Debrief. Win or lose, after each proposal gather your team to review lessons learned. Include everyone from the top of the org chart to the people in charge of production and delivery. Ask what went right, what went wrong and how you can do better next time. While the experience is fresh, you’ll get good ideas and a head start on your next win.

Having a solid game plan in place can move more proposals to the win column. Many companies work with a marketing team to help them set up a system and polish major proposals. More importantly, your marketing team can help you raise your profile with key industry players before they issue their RFPs — because receiving the RFP is the most crucial step in winning any proposal.

About DickinsonGroup
DickinsonGroup is a national real estate marketing firm. Our clients cover the full spectrum of commercial and residential real estate, from developers and architects to brokers, property managers and professional service firms. We’re a one-stop resource for branding, print and digital communications, and public relations. Fusing strategic thinking and creativity, we help our clients build awareness that builds business. To learn more, visit www.dickinsongroup.com, or contact Colleen Scrivner at 312-239-1102 or cscrivner@dickinsongroup.com.

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Less than a year after she paid $141,500 for her two-bedroom unit, one of only eight people who bought a condo in the converted apartment building, Harris Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the developer. The property, at 70 S. Buffalo Grove Road, is now in receivership.

“Who knows if I would even get what I paid for it?” says Ms. Osada, 55, who closed on her unit in October 2008.

Stories such as Ms. Osada’s are a common hangover symptom from the heady days of Chicago’s real estate boom, when even those who waited out the worst of the excess ended up burned. Now, with the area’s housing market finally showing signs of improvement, the question is what, if anything, developers and real estate agents can do to win back the trust of the newly sober public. If they fail, observers warn, the nascent recovery may lose momentum.

The problem: Not everyone can agree on how to fix what’s broken. And some are still debating whether the market really has hit bottom.

There is good news. Now that financing for new housing developments is neither cheap nor easy to obtain, many of the inexperienced or unscrupulous developers who have left new-home buyers stranded in half-completed subdivisions and condos have been weeded out. Another factor: the $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. The National Assn. of Realtors says an extension of the federal credit could help fill empty homes and keep the recovery going.

But Chris Eigel, CEO of Chicago-based residential brokerage Prudential Rubloff, argues that the biggest unknown may still rest with the buyers themselves, who must adjust their mindset and abandon hope of timing the bottom.

“People can’t just look at their houses as an investment — it’s where you live,” he says.

RECOVERY SIGNS

For the first time in more than three years, the area’s home sales halted their free fall and posted modest year-over-year monthly increases in July and August. In the nine-county Chicago region, there were 7,009 homes sold in August, a 1.3% increase from August 2008. Sales in July rose 0.3% to 7,427, according to the Illinois Assn. of Realtors.

Credited for nudging sales higher was a combination of factors, including low mortgage interest rates, aggressive price cuts at many new condominium and townhouse projects and the federal tax credit. Nationally, as many as 1.2 million buyers have taken advantage of that tax break, according to data from the Realtors association. But the credit ends Nov. 30.

“If that tax credit expires, we’re going to see fewer sales,” says Michael Onorato, president of the association.

To be sure, the credit’s sunset is a big hurdle in the market’s path to recovery, but it is not the only one. Scads of homeowners want to move but can’t sell their homes because of competition from cheaper distressed or short-sale properties. Others are underwater, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, or they’re hesitant to plunk down money on a new residence because their net worth has tanked, or they’re fearful of losing their jobs.

Developer James Hanson says the economy has to get better before the market does.

“We’re looking for a recovery in confidence,” says Mr. Hanson, a principal at Chicago-based Mesa Development LLC. “We need people to feel good about their life and the economy and spending their money on real estate.”

Mr. Hanson is preaching patience, even though he has no plans to halt sales or cut prices at his 72-story Legacy at Millennium Park high-rise, near Monroe Street and Wabash Avenue.

About 90% of the tower’s 356 units are under contract, and the first wave of closings began in September. As that process continues, Mesa expects to lose a few sales to would-be buyers who fail to obtain financing amid tighter credit markets or who lose their jobs and find they can’t afford a new condo.

Still, he is optimistic that the housing market is slowly crawling out of its hole and expects to sell out the Legacy by next summer, an ambitious but achievable goal if the market keeps improving.

SEASONAL SLOWDOWN

The final months of the year are usually a slow time for real estate sales. That’s why the industry is holding its breath until first-quarter 2010, when observers will have a clearer idea whether the recent uptick was an anomaly or a small step in what’s expected to be a slow and winding recovery, says James Kinney, vice-president of luxury home sales at Chicago-based residential brokerage Baird & Warner Inc.

The recovery is threatening to leave behind the high end of the market, where the government stimulus has had little effect because buyers typically aren’t purchasing their first homes.

That’s one reason sales of new downtown homes — often more expensive than those in other neighborhoods — have shown scant improvement.

Even after a recent spike, downtown new-home sales this year will finish well below the 5,783 units sold in 2006 or the roughly 4,000 units in 2007, according to data from Chicago-based consulting firm Appraisal Research Counselors.

As a result, many downtown projects have cut their pricing, boosting sales.

The developer of the East Loop’s Metropolitan Tower credits discounts of at least 25% on selected units with boosting sales at the 30-story project. Buyers have now purchased about 80% of the 242 condos at the two-year-old development at 310 S. Michigan Ave., says Louis D’Angelo, president of Metropolitan Properties of Chicago LLC.

While Mr. D’Angelo is still trying to sell about a dozen discounted units, he may opt to take all of the tower’s unsold condos, even the discounted ones, off the market if the economy doesn’t improve.

“It’s not an easy decision to make,” he says. But by mothballing sales, “you’re betting on where the market will be in 12 to 18 months.”

AN UPSIDE

While buyers’ newfound circumspection might stall a recovery in the short term, it may turn out to be a positive trend in the long term. During the housing boom, many people were caught up in the frenzy and purchased without first reviewing developers’ track records. As a result, many buyers were burned.

Keith Forshaw estimates that he and other residents at his 23-unit Edgewater condominium complex, completed four years ago, have collectively paid about $165,000 for a new roof, sewer system and other improvements that the developer promised to complete but didn’t.

Mr. Forshaw’s development isn’t the only misfire from Chicago-based developer Venter & Associates Inc. Earlier this year, Libertyville Bank & Trust Co. repossessed a 64-unit apartment building at 4860 N. Rockwell Ave. that Venter also planned to convert to condos. Attempts to reach Ilie Venter, the company’s president, were unsuccessful.

Mr. Forshaw, 36, says he’s invested too much time and energy to go someplace else. But if he does ever decide to sell, he vows to do things differently.

“I would never move into a new place where I couldn’t talk to the people who lived there or find out the building’s issues,” says Mr. Forshaw, who paid $310,000 in March 2005 for a two-bedroom unit at 5059 N. Kenmore Ave.

“You’re making one of the largest purchases of your life, and there should be a lot more scrutiny.”

©2009 by Crain Communications Inc.