Ms. Johnston is a Manager in Keyser Marston Associates’ Berkeley office. Her work has focused on fiscal and economic impact analyses and financing plans, market assessments, implementation strategies, and financial feasibility analyses.
KEY ROLES
Fiscal and Economic Impact Analyses
Ms. Johnston’s work on fiscal and economic impact analyses includes numerous projects ranging from new development to annexations to conceptual evaluations of fiscally beneficial land use mixes. Studies have addressed residential, hotel, office,retail, and industrial land uses. Ms. Johnston’s experience involves the preparation of complete fiscal and economic impact evaluations, developing revenue and service cost estimations, IMPLAN impacts evaluation, and final analytical reports. Some projects have also included a municipal financing plan component to mitigate fiscal deficits. She has worked on fiscal and economic impact analyses in San Francisco, Cupertino, Oakland, Redwood City, Dublin, Petaluma, Santa Rosa, and Monterey County.
Market Assessments
Ms. Johnston has prepared market studies for Specific Plans and General Plans for clients including San Ramon, Emeryville, and Santa Clara. Her experience also includes market potential analyses for specific projects or land-use types. She evaluated a retail / commercial opportunity for sites in South Sacramento totaling 100 acres, and retail potential on a strategically-located site in Santa Cruz County. Most recently, Ms. Johnston worked on a highest and best use analysis for the City of Vallejo on a Mare Island former naval shipyard property.
Implementation Strategies
Regardless of the economic climate, cities require creative use of resources ranging from real estate assets to potential grants to get key projects underway. Ms. Johnston has been involved in preparing strategies to implement Specific Plans in San Ramon, Brisbane, and Fremont.
Financial Feasibility Analyses
Ms. Johnston has analyzed financial feasibility for a variety of projects as a basis for advising clients on developer negotiations. This work involves evaluation of costs, revenues, and returns in relation to comparison projects and industry standards.
Specific projects have included retail, hotel, and market rate and affordable residential proposals for Sacramento, San Jose, Union City, and Richmond. In addition, Ms. Johnston collaborated on an evaluation of the potential city-wide effects on residential project financial feasibility of proposed increases in inclusionary requirements for the City and County of San Francisco.
Others
Additional recent work has involved such projects as evaluating the effectiveness of an affordable housing ordinance and collecting measures of developer strength to support a public client in selecting an entity to assist in the development or improvement of affordable housing.