Kurt Creager
Executive Director
As a 30 year practitioner, Kurt Creager has focused on policy, program and project implementation. In recent years this practice has centered upon place making and community building through mixed income and mixed use development projects in the Seattle, Portland/Vancouver, Phoenix and Los Angeles areas. As a public official, Creager has worked in planning and management positions responsible for local and regional land use, housing, economic development and environmental plans and policy.
Career Highlights
Kurt Creager serves as Executive Director for the Stardust Center, a housing and community development center within ASU’s College of Design. Stardust takes on community projects that begin with the issue of housing and then demonstrates the reach of housing into other areas including community development, finance, economic development, social justice, building technology and urban sustainability.
Creager also founded Urbanist Solutions; a consultancy and partner working to integrate affordable housing into transit oriented and master planned communities throughout the American West. In this capacity, Creager is a Financial Advisor to the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. He previously was senior vice president of Housing Development for CDK Partners in Phoenix, AZ where he originated 6,300 dwellings and three hotels for the private investment company. He also served as a real estate investment advisor for the company's principal equity partner.
Working in the public sector, Creager served as CEO of the Vancouver Housing Authority in Vancouver, WA serving communities in SW Washington for over 15 years. He led the development of 3,500 dwellings, helping transform the agency into a sustainable and dynamic local housing provider. The agency served as a community renewal agency and public development authority and was classified by Standard and Poor's as Strong with a Stable Outlook.
Creager is the former chief of Housing and Economic Development for Metropolitan King County in Seattle. There he established the Housing Opportunity Fund, a debt and equity fund which has invested in over 9,000 affordable housing units in over 40 localities to date. He served as a registered lobbyist in the state legislature. Creager began his career in the private sector where he was responsible for land use entitlements for commercial, residential and industrial developments.
Creager is past president of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), Washington, D.C., and currently serves on the NAHRO Board of Governors. He also serves on the board of the Housing Development Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He has served as an editorial advisory board member for Affordable Housing Finance magazine and as a trainer of entrepreneurship at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey and the Public Housing Authority Director’s Association in Washington, D.C.
Education
He is a graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Fannie Mae Fellow in the State and Local Public Executive Program; the University of Washington’s Cascade Management Institute, and Western Washington University, where he earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Environmental Planning and Architectural Graphics.