Hyperlocal Missions: Union Square Partnership's Executive Director Julie Stein on Solving Puzzles and Finding Alignment
Julie Stein by Jane Kratochvil.
By Julia Gamolina
An accomplished urban planner and economic development strategist, Julie Stein is the Executive Director of the Union Square Partnership (USP), New York City’s first and oldest business improvement district. A champion for the Union Square neighborhood, Stein facilitates strategic partnerships and builds relationships with key stakeholders to support commercial tenants and implement community programming. Her work reimagines the Union Square-14th Street district, making the neighborhood a desirable place to live, work, learn and do business.
JG: Union Square was my introduction to New York when I first spent a semester here as an architecture student, and it has been one of my favorite places in the city ever since! You recently completed two years at the helm of the Union Square Partnership, and I'm curious what you're thinking most about as we near the end of 2025, and what you look forward to for 2026.
JS: Everyone has a Union Square story! Union Square is central to the fabric of New York City. 380,000 people pass through the neighborhood every day to visit the iconic namesake park or the Greenmarket, to come to work or return back home. The subway station is the fourth busiest in the city. We have an incredible concentration of schools, medical institutions, diverse office and residential spaces and unbelievable food and beverage as well as entertainment institutions. So Union Square connects with a wide range of New Yorkers.
Top of mind right now is the recently announced public-private partnership between our organization (USP), the NYC Department of Transportation, the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Meatpacking District Management Association. Together, we are commissioning a new design study to modernize Union Square Park and reimagine the entire 14th Street corridor. This effort builds on the momentum of Union Square Partnership’s 2021 USQNext Vision Plan, which was crafted under the organization’s prior leadership and has been an incredible blueprint for the district’s future. The vision plan was developed through an extensive public engagement process and aims to create a world-class public realm—with a greener, safer streetscape, 21st-century design features and a best-in-class pedestrian experience.
The timing has been exactly right for pushing forward an ambitious public space modernization effort, as we’ve found tremendous alignment with NYC Chief Public Realm Officer Ya-Ting Liu’s goals for transforming and enhancing New York City’s public spaces.
Union Square Tulip Day 2024. Photography by Jane Kratochvil.
You studied Public Policy at Brown, and then City Planning at MIT. What were you looking to do in the world each time?
When I arrived at Brown, I was interested in a lot of seemingly disparate classes —Introduction to Environmental Studies, Introduction to Public Health, Macroeconomics, City Politics. It didn’t take too long to figure out the common theme, and luckily, Brown is one of the few schools that offers an undergraduate degree in Public Policy and American Institutions. By my senior year, I became really interested in the spatial impact of public policy decisions—in particular, the fundamental role that housing policy played in 20th-century America’s development patterns and the influence housing had on social welfare outcomes.
At MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, my track was the policy-focused Housing, Community and Economic Development, but I also completed all the requirements for an Urban Design Certificate. This is a very unusual combination academically — Urban Design Certificates are usually reserved for students in the more real estate-focused City Design and Development track — and I couldn’t quite articulate why I wanted to structure my training this way at the time. Fifteen years later, it makes near-perfect sense with my work in place management. Place management isn’t a term of art that I was introduced to until I entered the business improvement district (BID) world, but it’s a field that I wish I had been formally introduced to earlier. The combination of placemaking and public space activation, economic development, and community engagement—I think we should be building a stronger pipeline from urban planning training to BIDs and park conservancies.
“Success is about being a good steward of the places we can influence—understanding a place’s history and its future, as well as the needs of the diverse audiences that use a place.”
How did you get your start in New York City before going to NYCEDC?
I started working at City Hall when I was twenty-two, during the Bloomberg administration, one year out of college. It was an incredible level of exposure—in meetings with Deputy Mayors and agency heads, with leaders of powerful NYC non-profits, and some of the most talented co-workers in and around government. In school, I learned all about the quantitative and qualitative tools that you supposedly use when making public policy decisions. However, the reality was so much more complicated—the bureaucracy, the politics, the robust civil society that powers New York City. You can’t get that kind of education in school.
You had quite a long tenure at the EDC! Tell me about this, and the lessons learned there that you apply to your role now.
Going in, I thought I’d stay at EDC for three to five years, but I ended up staying through three mayoral administrations, just for over twelve years. I started in the Neighborhood Strategies group, working with an interdepartmental group of EDC staff across real estate, government and community relations and capital planning to advance big, ambitious economic development ideas through the community engagement and visioning process, interagency coordination and public approvals and disposition. Projects get delegated to EDC because they are complex and can’t be unlocked by the government or the private sector alone, meaning there are incredibly challenging puzzles to solve every day. The complexity is a feature, not a bug. Sometimes this is exhilarating; sometimes it’s exhausting. But it was never boring—and it trains you to be very good at problem solving.
Six years in, I got tapped to run EDC’s Sunset Park portfolio under the Asset Management group—including overseeing the Brooklyn Army Terminal’s four million square feet of industrial space. I loved this job. It was my first real taste of place management—the interlocking layers of leasing and tenant relations, campus planning and capital construction, facilities and field operations, events and programming, marketing and community engagement. We could plan a public event for the next week, sign a lease for the next month and create a master plan to be developed over ten years. From this role, I was promoted to co-lead the revenue department of the Asset Management group—that experience was invaluable. Asset planning, contract negotiations, budgeting, procurement, human resources—the laser focus on business operations and managing a large staff gave me the nuts and bolts experience I needed to confidently run a non-profit now.
Finally, at the beginning of the Adams administration, I was offered the most significant opportunity of my entire tenure at EDC—to lead the New New York Panel, Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul’s joint blue-ribbon panel on business district recovery coming out of the pandemic. Working for Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, alongside panel co-chairs Dan Doctoroff and Richard Buery and sixty prominent panelists, we had the urgent task of developing an action plan for the equitable economic recovery and resurgence of New York City in 2022. This 30,000-foot view of the city’s commercial district landscape and recovery policy positioned me to step into my current role — leading a business improvement district.
Courtesy of USP.
Union Square Park Spring 2024. Photography by Liz Ligon.
How did you get to USP? What have you learned in these past two years?
During the New New York Panel, I had the great privilege of working closely with a few BID directors. One of them suggested I apply to the Union Square Partnership role. The place management work has been such a good fit for my interests and skills from day one. And, of course, it makes all the difference that my staff is so talented and dedicated. I appreciate the hyperlocal nature of our work, the focus of our mission and the interconnected disciplines that we rely on for success.
These past two years have been all about alignment. Aligning cross-functional teams within a strategic framework to better clarify our collective purposes and thus, work together to achieve successful outcomes. Aligning how we spend our time and resources to maximize Union Square Partnership’s impact on the ground. Aligning USP’s verbal and visual identity with our neighborhood to accurately highlight the unique characteristics that appeal to our various audiences in an era of digital storytelling. Aligning our business model to achieve long-term financial sustainability. This alignment helps focus our work on our mission, keeps staff empowered and engaged, and delivers improvements for our members.
“Relationships are everything. Show up authentically, put your best foot forward, and be a person that people want to work with—because you are reliable, because of your good humor, because you’ll give honest feedback.”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
The public-facing work we do as urban planners is really hard. And it should be—it’s a big responsibility to work in government or government-adjacent roles that can have significant impacts on people’s everyday experiences. There’s a Leslie Knope quote from Parks and Rec that I use as the introduction to a public meetings training I developed called Answering Difficult Questions: “What I hear when being yelled at is people caring loudly at me.” It can feel really vulnerable to stand up in front of a community meeting where there are as many opinions as there are attendees. But what I teach in that training is: remember, it’s not personal. People are just caring loudly at you. You are there to listen. Sometimes you’ll find alignment, sometimes you can address divergence, sometimes you won’t have the answer. The point is the long-term, authentic stakeholder engagement.
Who are you admiring now and why?
I am so impressed by the friends and colleagues I came up with at school or through the early years of my career who are now building their own design or urbanism projects and practices. Like Sara Zewde, founder of Studio Zewde design firm, practicing landscape architecture, urban design and public art. Busayo Olupona, who built the fashion brand Busayo. Louise Yeung and Daphne Lundi’s Romantic Urbanism, which explores the features of cities that can help foster love. The founders and leadership of BlackSpace, a collective committed to Black-centered planning and design. To not just go to work every day and make an impact, but to build something new, something entrepreneurial—I have so much admiration for what it takes to go above and beyond what exists today and imagine these new futures.
Union Square Busway Mural 2025. Photography by Jane Kratochvil.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
I think that NYC is the best city in the world—a unique and exceptional place of opportunity that has been the foundation of my family’s story and so many others’. I’m dedicated to place-based work that makes a difference in the lives of New Yorkers, new and long-standing, work that is often at the intersection of equitable access, modernization and vibrancy.
Success is about being a good steward of the places we can influence—understanding a place’s history and its future, as well as the needs of the diverse audiences that use a place. Not to mention the economic trends and trajectories, design and activation innovations, urban technology and so much more that goes into the equation. When you can use these factors as tools and resources to improve spaces for all users — that is an exciting success.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Relationships are everything. Show up authentically, put your best foot forward, and be a person that people want to work with—because you are reliable, because of your good humor, because you’ll give honest feedback. My secret weapon is the telephone—email communication only goes so far. Pick up the phone to make a call, even if it seems like extra work; it will pay dividends in your relationships.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.