What we do

CoolTown Studios is the ‘weekdaily’ newsite blog of CoolTown Beta Communities, which focuses on implementation (see diagram here) as a crowdsource-based placemaking and economic development firm committed to codeveloping natural cultural districts for creatives, by creatives. This newssite blog (and only the blog!) is a free public service (including all 1300+ archived entries) toward building better places to live/work/play.

Who are we?

Neil Takemoto is the founding director of CoolTown Beta Communities, a crowdsource-based placemaking and economic development firm codeveloping natural cultural districts with creatives. His work over the last 14 years has been committed to the development of places with significant economic, environmental and social benefit, currently working in Syracuse, New Orleans and Washington DC.

Neil is the founder of CoolTown Studios, a ‘crowdsourcing cool places for creatives’ blog/news site that attracts 30,000 unique visitors a month. It has been featured in Architect Magazine and the ULI’s annual developers conference.

He is also the cofounder of CoolTown Investments, linking investors with developers of urban smart growth developments for the creative class. CoolTown Investments’ partner is a capital management company with a $150M resource seeking to invest $2-$10M in equity in redevelopment projects in second/third tier cities in the eastern half of the U.S.

With Andres Duany, Neil co-founded the National Town Builders Association in 1997, the only business trade group of Smart Growth/New Urbanism real estate developers. Prior to that, he founded a national nonprofit educational clearinghouse for the New Urbanism field.

Contact

CoolTown Studios
2451 18th Street NW 2nd Floor
Washington DC 20009
Email | 202.518.6300