Veteran developer Sherman joins CNU board

Samuel Sherman Jr., cochair of the CNU XV local host committee, and a former suburban housing developer who has become a major force in Philadelphia’s development community since adopting New Urbanism as a guiding philosophy, joined the CNU Board in 2007.
After 24 years in the suburban housing industry, building homes in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Sherman swore off sprawl in 2000, when he heard a radio interview with Andres Duany as he sat stuck in traffic on Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Expressway. In 2003, he began Sam Sherman Associates LLC to pursue New Urbanist developments in Philadelphia.

New Urbanism useful
“What (New Urbanism has) really done is given me a set of tools to articulate what I didn’t like about what I was doing in my previous career,” Sherman says. “It gave me a toolbox and resources, talented people that I could learn from and who influenced what I’m doing now.”
In 2004, Sherman and his partners in New Urban Ventures began Spring Arts Point, whose first phase (53 townhouses, 6 live/work units, and 6,000 square feet of retail space) is rising on blocks that had languished for decades under Philadelphia’s “urban renewal” plan. The brownfield development won the Bronze Award from 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania, for excellence in design and sustainability, and kudos from Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron, who wrote, “Plenty of new rowhouse clusters have sprouted recently, but few are knitted so seamlessly into the existing city as Spring Arts Point.”
A 17-year resident of Philadelphia, Sherman is a board member of CNU’s Pennsylvania chapter, Association for the New Urbanism in Pennsylvania. He is president of the Building Association of Philadelphia and its national legislative representative to the National Association of Home Builders. He also sits on the board of Neighborhoods Now! Sherman also served on Philadelphia Mayor-elect Michael Nutter’s sustainable development committee, and was part of Nutter’s transition team. Sherman says being a CNU Board member gives him credibility to speak out on sustainable urban development.
Looking to the future, Sherman says CNU must grow in a way that New Urbanism becomes the default for development. “The organization needs to grow in a way that suddenly, enough people get it; that New Urbanism becomes the natural way to develop,” he adds. “The only way to do that is to educate, and through public policy, to have policies in place that reinforce the sensible development patterns that we advocate.”