Rob Hunden Discrimination Allegations Fact-checked (2024)
Rob Hunden of ISHC asserts that he has extensive experience in managing organizational development and the viability and execution of major real estate projects. Since establishing Hunden Strategic Partners, he has characterized himself as a sought-after consultant for numerous hotel, convention, mixed-use entertainment, and retail developments, in addition to other master plans and tourist and economic development projects. Rob Hunden’s strategic planning initiatives have also helped businesses shift their emphasis and course.
Before starting the company, Rob Hunden served as Vice President of C.H. Johnson Consulting in Chicago. He says he collaborated with the company on almost a hundred destination development projects, with a focus on convention center developments, hotels, sports, conference centers, and urban entertainment-retail districts.
Rob Hunden claims to have overseen a large portion of the company’s efforts on performing arts and tourist programs during his five years there. Among the significant projects are the refurbishment of the Nassau Coliseum, the new Omni conference hotel in Fort Worth, the Erie Bayfront Conference Center and Sheraton, arena developments in Kansas City and Albuquerque, Fourth Street Live! in Louisville, and the Kansas City Power & Light District.
Rob Hunden explains that he worked on real estate finance and transaction activities for a range of projects for several years at Landauer Associates and Grubb & Ellis before joining CHJC.
As a result, Rob Hunden claims to have a direct understanding of how banks and other financial actors assess different real estate efforts because he pursued financing for hotels and other real estate projects around North America in this role. He has experience with deals involving retail, hotel, residential, and commercial real estate.
Rob Hunden lists his affiliations with the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), the International Downtown Association (IDA), the International Land Institute (ULI), the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), the International City-County Management Association (ICMA), and the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). Rob Hunden earned a B.S. in Finance from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
About Hunden Strategic Partners (Rob hunden’s Company)
With offices in Chicago, San Diego, and Minneapolis, Hunden Strategic Partners, also known as “Hunden,” bills itself as a leading real estate and destination development consultancy organization.
The firm offers a full range of advisory, market and financial feasibility, economic, and impact analyses for specialty destination assets like sports facilities, mixed-use and entertainment districts, convention and expo centers, hotels, entertainment venues, theme parks, recreation centers, and other economic development projects.
Additionally, Hunden has experience selecting and soliciting developers, which aids in taking ideas from concept to financing. Among Hunden’s clients are governments, cities, universities, DMOs, government agencies, and private developers. Rob Hunden has completed more than 1,000 studies and made contributions to the creation of more than $20 billion in active, open projects worldwide.
Rob Hunden is facing criticism over his racist retweets while the city reviews a contract
A $98,000 city contract to conduct an economic impact assessment at Ryan Field is being offered to a Chicago-based consulting firm whose official Twitter account has made shocking and anti-Black sentiments.
The contract with Rob Hunden Strategic Partners, which was suggested by city staff, was scheduled to be put to a vote by the city council on Monday night. However, the council removed the item from the consent agenda and postponed the vote.
A now-deactivated account called Hunden Partners reposted anti-fascist conspiracy theories in 2020 amid Black Lives Matter demonstrations. “Former liberal” Brandon Straka, who was given a three-year probationary sentence for his involvement in the Capitol incident on January 6, 2021, was also tracked by the official business account.
The Community Alliance for Better Government’s leader, Lesley Williams, concurred: “That a business like Hunden Strategic Partners would permit something like that on their corporate Twitter feed deeply shocked and disappointed me.”
Lesley stated This wasn’t a worker’s personal Twitter account. This was posted on Twitter by the business.
The retweets were uncovered by David DeCarlo, one of the founding members of the Most Livable City Association.
According to DeCarlo, some content on Hunden’s official Twitter account saw them retweeting right-wing bloggers who were spreading conspiracy theories about Antifa regarding the Black Lives Matter turmoil that would occur in 2020. “To put it mildly, I just thought that was strange for a company to be doing that and, secondly, racially insensitive.”
When The RoundTable reached out to Hunden for an explanation of its actions on Twitter and its plan to delete its account, he was made aware of the claims made by Williams and DeCarlos.
“On both a professional and personal level, we take comments such as these very seriously,” responded Rob Hunden, president of Hunden Strategic Partners. “As a gay man who grew up in a mixed-race home, I find their commentary offensive in addition to being inaccurate.
Encouraging diversity in terms of race, gender, age, religion, identity, and experience is only one aspect of the job we do every day for our clients in the public sector.
We ensure that the outreach is inclusive of all communities and stakeholders by interacting with the public and stakeholders on behalf of our customers in the most varied communities in the United States. Having been in business for 17 years, Hunden Strategic Partners is dedicated to providing unbiased analysis for the communities it works with.
According to Rob Hunden, the Twitter account was removed because “it had potentially been compromised.”
In response to a question about whether he was implying that Hunden Partners was not the source of the Twitter activity, Hunden said that “we can only guess what happened,” as many former staff members had access to the company’s social media account. We were surprised to hear about the situation today because we had assumed the account had been closed for some time.
Before deleting its Twitter account, Hunden Partners followed a plethora of Fox News and conservative commentators, including Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Laura Ingraham, Gregg Jarrett, and Sebastian Gorka.
On May 30, 2020, conservative commentator Candace Owens was retweeted by Hunden Partners. On Twitter, Owens stated, “These #AntifaTerrorists are targeting black kids & neighborhoods.”
The Hunden Partners Twitter account shared a video on August 12, 2020, showing protesters in Chicago “looting” during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. In their Twitter video, Hunden Partners utilized the phrase “Ugh Chicago.”
Williams claims, “It demonstrates a deep disrespect for African Americans and the emotions that African Americans experienced during the George Floyd demonstrations.” “And to be honest, those tweets have a fairly overt anti-Black tone.”
Another conservative broadcaster, Benny Johnson, was retweeted by Hunden Partners on May 31, 2020. The tweet has a video of two white guys spray-painting “BLM” on businesses. Johnson calls these folks “ANTIFA.” Johnson was sacked by BuzzFeed in 2014 due to plagiarism.
The RoundTable sent emails to Luke Stowe, the city manager of Evanston, Patrick Deignan, the director of communications, and Paul Zalmezak, the manager of economic development. In response to questions from RoundTable on whether the city verifies companies’ social media accounts before hiring them, neither Evanston city officials nor members of the city council answered on Monday.
The company has already been discussed at the local level. The Administration and Public Works Committee postponed voting on the contract to look into other companies for the independent Ryan Field study that the city was conducting on January 23.
It was advised that Hunden Partners be chosen above AECOM and Civic Economics. The consultant will be paid by the city through a contingency account in the budget of the city manager. Municipal personnel provided the council with a report outlining six reasons to proceed with Hunden’s proposal even though it was more costly than the other two.
According to the memo, Rob Hunden was selected by the city because he possesses “the most experience with stadium and concert/event economic studies.”
The renovation of Ryan Field is expected to bring in $1.2 billion for Cook and Lake counties, based on studies from Northwestern University, which opponents claim is overly optimistic. Ten yearly concerts and alcohol sales are scheduled for the 35,000-seat stadium. However, several community people and local officials are leery of the school’s proposal.
A consultant firm specializing in economic, real estate, and tourism development is called Hunden Strategic Partners. A new NHL stadium in Tempe, Arizona; a new baseball stadium in Dallas; and the proposed Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights are all the subject of analyses by Hunden.
William’s statement: “It surprises me that the city of Evanston would be considering working with this company to do our economic impact study. It also seems like the staff who recommended Hunden should have done better research on the company because these tweets were easy to locate.”
Williams emailed the three tweets to the RoundTable on Monday morning after DeCarlo informed her.
Over the weekend, several neighborhood associations released a press release explaining their opposition to Hunden Partners’ request for the contract. DeCarlo didn’t discuss the tweets because he didn’t find them until Monday morning.
The news release was released by Students Organizing for Labor Rights, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, Northwestern University Graduate Workers, Community Alliance for Better Government, and Most Livable City Association.
“The city would just be throwing a lot of money at this firm,” DeCarlo clarified. “It would be very disappointing if the council decided to move forward at this point with all of these community concerns raised, including this most recent one.”
Concluding with a little abstract on the laws and punishment related to racism
It is easy to think that hate crimes and racial discrimination have never been tolerated in free countries. However significant legislation did not appear until the 1960s and 1980s, respectively.
The 1960s saw the enactment of anti-discrimination laws in the US, which were followed by laws against hate crimes in the 1980s and 1990s.
A thorough analysis of this history shows how the nation most dedicated to freedom in some areas was the first to give it up in others, and how expansive its laws have gotten against the use of racial opinion as justification.
After that, it discusses developments in Europe. Though rarely with the same fervor, many European governments have followed the US lead in passing laws prohibiting racial discrimination and hate crimes.
An in-depth analysis of the US, the UK, and Germany shows the beginnings, evolution, and boundaries of criminalizing racist belief as justification in liberal democracies.
This chapter concludes by highlighting the internal tensions and cross-national variations among nations that attempt to reconcile upholding freedom with battling racism in several domains.
A consultant firm specializing in economic, real estate, and tourism development is called Hunden Strategic Partners. A new NHL stadium in Tempe, Arizona; a new baseball stadium in Dallas; and the proposed Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights are all the subject of analyses by Hunden.
William’s statement: “It surprises me that the city of Evanston would be considering working with this company to do our economic impact study. It also seems like the staff who recommended Hunden should have done better research on the company because these tweets were easy to locate.”
Williams emailed the three tweets to the RoundTable on Monday morning after DeCarlo informed her.
Over the weekend, several neighborhood associations released a press release explaining their opposition to Hunden Partners’ request for the contract. DeCarlo didn’t discuss the tweets because he didn’t find them until Monday morning.
The news release was released by Students Organizing for Labor Rights, United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America, Northwestern University Graduate Workers, Community Alliance for Better Government, and Most Livable City Association.
“The city would just be throwing a lot of money at this firm,” DeCarlo clarified. “It would be very disappointing if the council decided to move forward at this point with all of these community concerns raised, including this most recent one.”
Concluding with a little abstract on the laws and punishment related to racism
It is easy to think that hate crimes and racial discrimination have never been tolerated in free countries. However significant legislation did not appear until the 1960s and 1980s, respectively.
The 1960s saw the enactment of anti-discrimination laws in the US, which were followed by laws against hate crimes in the 1980s and 1990s.
A thorough analysis of this history shows how the nation most dedicated to freedom in some areas was the first to give it up in others, and how expansive its laws have gotten against the use of racial opinion as justification.
After that, it discusses developments in Europe. Though rarely with the same fervor, many European governments have followed the US lead in passing laws prohibiting racial discrimination and hate crimes.
An in-depth analysis of the US, the UK, and Germany shows the beginnings, evolution, and boundaries of criminalizing racist belief as justification in liberal democracies.
This chapter concludes by highlighting the internal tensions and cross-national variations among nations that attempt to reconcile upholding freedom with battling racism in several domains.
