Chapter 52
Three days after Sebastian locked the screenshot in the drawer, the invitation letter from the Eastside tourism Phase Three client appeared in Parker Group's business development inbox.
The invitation was a single page. Polite wording, but the core request was blunt. [We respectfully request that Ms. Evelyn Kendall of Parker Group's Strategic Marketing Department lead her team in formal business discussions regarding overall investment attraction and operational planning for Phase Three of the Eastside tourism project.]
When Evelyn saw the forwarded email at her desk, her finger paused on the trackpad for two seconds.
They'd named her specifically.
Not "your company's team," not "relevant person in charge"—her full name.
She closed the email and opened the Pine Hill Phase Two work document. Pulled the cursor to the end of the brand tenant section. Typed a line on the keyboard, deleted it, typed another line, saved it.
Then she picked up her phone and sent Cedric a message.
[Got the invitation for Eastside Phase Three. I need three days to prep a full proposal.]
Cedric's reply came forty seconds later.
[Meeting's set for Thursday afternoon, 2 PM. Location is the client's headquarters, Conference Room Three. You decide the team configuration. No limit on headcount. Expenses come from Strategic Marketing's budget.]
Evelyn sent back "Got it" and set the phone down.
Three days.
She opened a new document. File name: Eastside Tourism Phase Three, Integrated Proposal (Draft).
The cursor blinked four times on the blank page.
She already had a framework in mind.
During her time at Ashford Group, she'd done complete foundational research for the Eastside project from Phase One through Phase Two. Plot info for Phase Three, floor area ratio restrictions, surrounding traffic planning—she'd been tracking all that public data for two months.
But what she needed to do wasn't repeat the logic of Phase One and Two.
That announcement Ashford Group released had said "all intellectual property rights for work completed at every stage belong to Ashford Group." The subtext of that line was clear: Everything you did belongs to us. All you took with you was yourself.
So she'd give them something they'd never seen before.
Evelyn opened her browser and entered three keywords: immersive tourism, digital twin, experience economy.
When the search results loaded, her finger swiped across the trackpad and clicked into the first industry report.
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Thursday afternoon, one-forty.
Evelyn stood at the entrance to the client's headquarters building, a folder tucked under her arm, flash drive in the left pocket of her blazer.
Two people came with her. One was Gary, a data analyst from the marketing department, laptop on his back. The other was Mr. Parkinson, a tech lead borrowed from Parker Group's digital tech division, carrying a portable projection device.
Three people total.
Evelyn hadn't brought a larger team. Too big a show would make the client think you were putting on a performance. Three was just right—one to present the proposal, one to handle data, one to manage the tech demo.
The receptionist led them to the third floor.
The door to Conference Room Three was open.
When Evelyn walked in, she scanned the people already seated.
Five people from the client side.
Sitting in the main seat was the client's general manager, Kevin Harrison. Early fifties, dark suit, glasses set on the table in front of him. To his left were the project department head and a young assistant. To his right were the CFO and a middle-aged woman Evelyn didn't recognize.
The woman wore a blue suit with a skirt, hair pinned up, a gold bracelet on her left wrist. The pen in her hand kept spinning.
In the three seconds after entering, Evelyn made two judgments. First, Mr. Harrison wasn't wearing his glasses, which meant he didn't plan to read paper documents today—he wanted to listen. Second, that unfamiliar woman was sitting between the CFO and Mr. Harrison, positioned closer to the main seat than the CFO. Her weight in the room was higher than the CFO's.
Evelyn walked to the spot beside the projection screen and set the folder on the podium.
"Mr. Harrison, everyone. The proposal for Eastside Tourism Phase Three is forty-two pages total. I'll present eighteen pages today. The rest will stay in the folder for you to review after the meeting."
Kevin picked up his glasses. Didn't put them on. Turned them over in his hand once.
"Ms. Kendall, please begin."
Evelyn pressed the page-turn remote.
The first slide wasn't a project overview. Wasn't a team introduction. It was a photograph.
The photo showed an old street in the Eastside district. Buildings from the 1970s lined both sides of the street. Half the storefronts below were closed. At the end of the street stood a sycamore tree. A street sign was nailed to the trunk. The lettering on the sign had faded white from sun exposure.
Evelyn didn't explain the photograph.
She pressed the page-turn button. The image jumped to the second slide.
A set of data points.
"Over the past three years, commercial vacancy rates in the Eastside old district have risen from twelve percent to twenty-three percent. Foot traffic has dropped seventeen percent year-over-year. Within a three-mile radius, four new commercial complexes have been built."
She paused for a beat.
"The average occupancy rate for those four complexes is sixty-eight percent. In other words, new spaces were built, but they can't be filled. The old spaces are still there, but no one's going to them."
Kevin's fingers paused on the arm of his glasses.
Evelyn flipped to the fifth slide.
"The core logic of the Phase Three proposal isn't to build more commercial space. It's to activate the existing space."
A three-dimensional model appeared on the projection screen.
Not a traditional architectural rendering. A digital twin model.
Mr. Parkinson operated the laptop beside her. The 3D model began to rotate. Inside the model, every building in the Eastside district, every street, every storefront had been precisely recreated. The facades' colors, building heights, storefront dimensions—all labeled with data.
"This is a digital twin model of the Eastside district that we built based on public cadastral data and on-site surveying."
Evelyn's pointer clicked on an area in the center of the model.
"The Phase Three plot is here. North side borders Phase One's commercial street district. South side connects to Phase Two's cultural experience zone. East side faces the old residential area. West side runs along the main city road."
She zoomed the model in to the Phase Three plot's boundaries.
"The traditional approach would be to build a new commercial complex on this plot. Attract tenants, operate it. But here's the problem—half a mile away, there are already four commercial complexes. Combined, they still can't rent out thirty percent of their space. Build another one, and the odds it won't fill are over seventy percent."
The woman sitting beside the CFO lifted her head. Her pen stopped spinning.
Evelyn flipped to slide eight.
"So Phase Three won't build a new commercial complex."
The conference room went quiet for a second.
"Phase Three is positioned as a 'digital tourism experience hub.'"
A functional zoning map appeared on the projection screen. The Phase Three plot was divided into four zones, each marked with a different color. Experience pavilion zone, data center, creative space, public service facilities.
"The experience pavilion zone takes up forty-five percent of the total area. Not a traditional exhibition hall. An immersive space based on digital twin technology. After visitors enter the pavilion, they can use AR devices to see what the Eastside district looked like fifty years ago. They can walk into virtually recreated old teahouses, old movie theaters, old bookstores. Each scene corresponds to real historical archives and oral history records."
Evelyn pointed the remote at the center of the experience pavilion zone.
"The exit from the pavilion connects directly to Phase One's commercial street district. The old teahouse visitors saw in the virtual space—walk out of the pavilion five hundred yards and they can drink tea brewed by descendants of that same teahouse. The connection between virtual and real isn't a gimmick. It's a traffic funnel."
Kevin's fingers moved off the arm of his glasses.
He put them on.