(From left to right) RED Club Members Kristen Hunter, Ian Klein, and Elli Lobach

April 21, 2010: The MIT Center for Real Estate Alumni Association (“AACRE”) is excited to announce the results of this year’s inaugural 2010 MIT Boston Open: Harvard Graduate School of Design took home first place honors, NYU Schack took home second and the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business placed third. All three teams presented in front of a live audience and were judged by some of the industry’s contemporary leading practitioners including: Phil Bakalchuk (Water Street Investments), Jeff Cushman (Cushman & Wakefield), Kathleen MacNeil (Millennium Partners) and Eric Nelson (The Bulfinch Companies).

Each team’s submission was thorough, detailed and creative g especially given the difficult aspects of the proposed property and the team’s understanding of the tight credit markets the development industry faces today. All teams engaged traditional highest and best use analysis combined with sophisticated private / public financing schemes that thoroughly impressed judges and the audience. Ultimately it was Harvard’s innovative and creative submission that addressed Boston’s need for student housing and a dynamic financing strategy that vaulted them into first place.

“The small scale and historic landmark status of the site posed a host of interrelated physical and economic challenges to its redevelopment. Formulating an acquisition strategy required identifying viable programming options that could function within a tight building footprint and compete against forthcoming supply. The proposed uses also had to offer reasonable near-term financing prospects and sufficient risk-adjusted returns,” said Harvard teammates Kristen Hunter, Ian Klein and Elli Lobach.

MIT hosted more than fifty attendees the evening of the 16th at the Prudential Center. Attendees included students, academics and practitioners. This year’s event was sponsored by gold sponsors Credit Tenant Capital and Cushman & Wakefield, silver sponsors The Bulfinch Companies and Cabot Cabot Forbes and Boston Properties provided the venue. “Without these industry-leading firms that obviously see the benefits of investing in the industry’s future, this year’s MIT Boston Open would not have been successful. We are very grateful for them,” said Mike Tilford (SM ‘09 and AACRE Co-President).

Commenting on the success of the event, Mike Lam (SM ‘09), this year’s Co-Chair said, “The event was an overall success. We accomplished what the Alumni wanted to do: 1) put together a world-class event to host graduate schools during the ULI Spring Council and 2) provide a venue for peer schools to showcase the industry’s future talent. We had interest from over ten schools, proving there is interest for an open format real estate graduate competition. We look forward to making this a long-standing tradition moving forward.”

ALIGNING INTERESTS:

DELIVERING AFFORDABLE AND

MIXED-INCOME HOUSING

A Discussion Panel Moderated by Professor Nicolas P. Retsinas

Director, Harvard University Joint Center For Housing Studies
Professor, Harvard Business School

Gund Hall, Portico 123
Tuesday, April 20th, 6:30 – 8:30
networking reception to follow

Panelists Include:

Peter Roth
President, New Atlantic Development
Peter Roth is a Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Founder & President of the New Atlantic Development Company, a Boston-based development company focused on adaptive re-use, historic preservation, affordable housing, and community economic development.  His work particularly emphasizes service-enriched housing for special needs populations. Mr. Roth earned Master’s degrees in both Architecture and Real Estate Development from MIT.

Richard Thal
Executive Director, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation
Mr. Thal has been active in the community development movement for more than 25 years, and assumed his current role as Executive Director of the JPNDC in 1994.  The JPNDC’s mission is to promote equitable development and equal opportunity in Jamaica Plain and adjacent neighborhoods through affordable housing, organizing, and economic opportunity initiatives that improve the lives of low- and moderate-income people.  The JPNDC has become one of the most successful non-profit CDCs in the state, developing more than 480 homes and creating more than 1000 jobs.

Joseph L. Flatley
President and CEO, Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation
Joe Flatley has led the MHIC since it was founded in 1990 as a private non-profit whose mission is to be an innovative financier of affordable housing and community development. Since its inception, MHIC has invested over $1.35 billion in 320 projects for the creation of more than 13,500 units of affordable housing, and more than one million square feet of commercial space, and  has been a leader in the creative utilization of the New Markets Tax Credit program. Mr. Flatley is a graduate of MIT and Harvard University, where he earned degrees in city planning.

Lark Jurev Palermo
President and CEO, Habitat for Humanity Greater Boston
Ms. Palermo was appointed as President and CEO of Habitat Greater Boston in November, 2005. Prior to joining Habitat, she was General Counsel at The Community Builders, a nonprofit affordable housing development company. She is the former Commissioner of the Division of Capital Asset Management and a former partner in the real estate department of WilmerHale, LLP. She is currently a Trustee at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and is a graduate of Boston University and Suffolk University Law School.

Rebecca Regan
Chief Operating Officer and Loan Fund President, Boston Community Capital
Ms. Regan joined Boston Community Capital in 2005.  As Chief Operating Officer, she provides leadership and coordination in the administrative, business planning, financial management and budgeting efforts of the organization. As President of the Loan Fund, she has overall responsibility for the Loan Fund’s lending activities.  Becky brings to her position more than 15 years of experience in commercial real estate lending, with a focus on community development.

Sponsored by:

Harvard GSD Real Estate Development Club

Cosponsored by:

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies
HousingGSD
HUPO: Harvard Urban Planning Organization
Harvard Law School Real Estate Association
Harvard KSG Social Policy Professional Interest Council

Gerald Hine's ULI 2010 Competition

April 8th marked the end of 2010 Urban Land Institute (ULI) Gerald Hines Student Urban Design Competition in San Diego, California.  Members from the Real Estate Club, Macy Leung and Ignacio Correa, along with Harvard GSD students Fai Au, Phyllis Xue Zhou, and HBS student Shane Campbell, competed in the ULI national finalists competition against students from the University of Pennsylvania, University of Maryland, and North Carolina State University/University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (this year’s winning team) for the national title and $50,000.

The competition began in January, with an initial phase of two weeks. While some schools, like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, originally had 10-20 individual team entries submitted from each school,  other schools, such as University of Maryland, chose only one team for the competition.  There were a total of 137 teams, and after advancing to the finalists stage, the final four had to competed in an oral presentation in San Diego on April 7th and April 8th.

Harvard’s proposal for this year’s competition is titled “Celebration of Arts”, which consists of a mixed-use residential/retail development, a central art galleria, a man-made canal, and art-themed parks throughout the site.  The 73 acre redevelopment scheme aims to celebrate the North end of a trolley station on the site, Park Boulevard and Broadway Street, and provide linkage from nearby parks and neighborhoods to the waterfront.  In addition, the proposal aims to revitalize the neighborhood and use it as a catalytic development to influence the rest of the San Diego region.

Team Members:

Macy Man-Sai Leung (Team Leader – Architecture/Economics/Urban Design);   Ignacio Correa (Urban Design/Masterplanning/Real Estate);    Fai Au (Architecture/Technology);    Phyllis Xue Zhou (Landscape Architecture/Arts);    Shane Campbell (MBA/Engineering).

Official Team Advisors:

Professor Richard Peiser (Michael D. Spear Professor of  Real Estate and Development at Harvard University Graduate School of Design);  Brian Canin (Principal of Canin Associates)

Harvard Team (Left to Right: Fai Au, Ignacio Correa, Macy Leung, Phyllis Xue Zhou, Shane Campbell)

Graduate School of Design Late Night Group Meeting

We received news in February that our team had advanced to the finalist stage, and we had one month to further develop our original scheme in addition to revising the proforma.  We had to submit four additional boards in addition to the original six, and prepare a business plan and a powerpoint presentation.  We worked feverishly together despite everyone’s busy schedule, up until the final hours before we flew out to San Diego for our presentation.

Our team arrived in San Diego on the morning of April 7th – everyone was working on the presentation speech/business plan/graphics on the airplane, then we immediately went to Hotel Indigo for a mock presentation.  Undaunted by the lack of sleep and time zone change, our team practiced a few more times in the hotel room, re-wrote our speeches, and handled some last-minute printing in San Diego (UPenn/Maryland also printed on site) before joining the rest of our competitors for dinner at the hotel terrace.

Mock Presentation Day at Hotel Indigo

On the day of the presentation, each team had to draw to determine the order of presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Arts.  Our team met at 6:00am in our hotel room to do another practice presentation before venturing to the presentation site.  North Carolina went first, followed by Maryland, then Harvard and UPenn last.  With two hours in between breakfast and our presentation, our team ventured to the nearby outdoor plaza to practice two more times, before some of us got coffee/took power naps from the lack of sleep in the past few days.  Needless to say, everyone did a great job and gave an excellent presentation to the jury and audience.  We were allotted 25 minutes to present, and 20 minutes for QandA.  I opened with the introduction and concepts, followed by Ignacio detailing the masterplan, Fai with the architectural typology, Phyllis with landscape, and Shane with the numbers.  Our presentation was very well received, and we walked away with a sense of relief, feeling a job well done, and waited anxiously for the result.

Jury

Macy Leung

Ignacio Correa

Fai Au

Phyllis Xue Zhou

Shane Campbell

Presentation

Jury Panel

Questions and Answers

San Diego, Museum of Contemporary Arts

For official ULI press release and Harvard team’s competition entries:

http://udcompetition.uli.org/finalists

http://udcompetition.uli.org/

What an amazing trip it was! While the majority of the class consisted of late nights working on presentations for the following day, we got to see how this project has truly catalyzed development in Bilbao, and hear some fantastic stories about how all of the stakeholders came together (Frank Gehry, IDOM, and the Consortium of the Guggenheim Museum) to create such a unique project.

There were some great takeaways on how to work with a internationally recognized architect, a public client, and manage multiple general contractors simultaneously. Another great lesson was the way that good architecture can create real estate value. The level of private investment around the museum is amazing, with a new shopping mall, office tower, and residential spaces coming online.

On the last day, we got to spend some time visiting some other famous works of modern architecture in the region: The Marques de Riscal Winery by Gehry, the Ysios Winery by Santiago Calatrava, and the López de Heredia Winery by Zaha Hadid. Notice anything in common with the three projects mentioned? To say it was a great time is an understatement. Our class really bonded over the course of this trip. This class goes to show that you can enjoy yourselves while learning a lot at the same time!

From the press release on the ULI Gerald Hines Competition Website:

Harvard University: “Celebration of Art” proposes an art-centric, multi-generational, European-scaled, sustainable development on the site of a former warehouse district. The project seeks to create over 1,500 jobs while attracting people to live, shop, and work in East Village. The design is unified by a central park and subdivided by four art-themed sub districts, each with its own art-themed pocket park. Team members include Macy Man-Sai Leung, Ignacio Correa, Fai Au, Xue Zhou, and Shane Campbell. The team is advised by Richard Peiser and Brian Canin.

Click here to download the ULI Competition Submission (PDF)

One session was on brownfield redevelopment, with a case study on Visitacion Valley in San Francisco. Another session detailed strategies for dealing with distressed assets. A particularly interesting session entailed the greening of the Empire State Building as part of the $550million capital improvement program being undertaken by Jones Lang LaSalle.

The session on workforce housing detailed out projects in Colorado and South Carolina. In the case of the South Carolina project, a contribution of the land as equity on the deal made significant inroads towards bridging the gap between development cost and the sales price on an affordable unit.

Susan Cutler and Helen Jung

Jung Min Hong, Susan Cutler, Helen Jung, and Joe Martinez

A model showing the Transbay Terminal development in San Francisco

Members are interested in various aspects of development, including real estate finance, public/private ventures, architectural design, international development, urban design and environmental planning. The RED Club is formed primarily by students from Harvard Design School, but is also open to members of the Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School.

Harvard University prepares graduates for careers in real estate development, finance and other private and public sector positions in urban development. It emphasizes analytical skills, decision-making, development processes, political, environmental, legal, and general urban context knowledge.