There is a poster in the hallway of my office building in St. Louis that features a quote from Russian physicist and short story writer and playwright Anton Chekhov that says, “Only entropy comes easy”. This quote reflects the second law of thermodynamics, the natural tendency for things to fall into disorder. In public private partnerships associated with economic development and real estate development, it often feels that like Chekhov’s quote, disarray is the rule, as opposed to the exception.
Play Above Partners was founded to bring order back to disruption, to bring alignment and peace back to public discourse and to projects. Instead of Susan Powter’s Stop the Insanity! (those of you not old enough have no idea what I am talking about), Its—Stop the Entropy!
Our methodologies to accomplish stopping the entropy in public-private partnerships are rooted in the fields of mediation and alternative dispute resolution – applied in a non-traditional setting – to community and economic development and real estate development. Successful project outcomes are more than just about initial public approvals or tangentially created and disparate community benefits agreements without any connection to deeper human understanding and alignment, rather, public-private partnerships should act as integrated systems born from successful conflict resolution and built around a previously unseen vision – city, neighborhood, developer – acting as one organized organism – for the long-term living health of the project.
Professionals at Play Above are trained in the field of Alternative Dispute resolution to bring mediative approaches to economic development, community planning, and real estate. Acting as the neutral advocate who understands all perspectives of a development deal, Play Above separately caucuses inside projects with developers, city officials, neighborhood and community groups, and other interested actors to reduce conflict and align priorities and community outcomes in a way that achieves long term project success for all. Through what we call Alternative “Deal” Resolution, our process uncovers the real issues around support, opposition, and misunderstanding, and neutrally advocates a winning collaborative solution.