Recent Features
Featured Graduate: Sarah Abrams (MSRED '85) Donor and Mentor
Featured Summer 2010
Twenty-five years ago, Sarah Abrams was in law school at Cornell studying to become a real estate lawyer. Then the MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT/CRE) opened its doors to offer the first-ever Master of Science in Real Estate Development, and for Abrams, that changed everything." Read feature article...
Featured Research: Ciochetti Introduces the 1K House to Kenya
Featured Summer 2010
Even though East Africa is one of the largest single-bloc regional markets in Africa — rapidly transforming from an agricultural to a service economy — 40% of Kenyans are unemployed and many live in inadequate housing. Center Chairman Tony Ciochetti traveled to Kenya to introduce the 1K House, the visionary MIT/CRE project that seeks to design reliable and sustainable houses for the phenomenally low price of $1000 apiece. Read article...
Featured Profile: MIT/CRE Hosts Green Developer Jonathan Rose: " Cities Are the Answer"
Featured Spring 2010
Long before green was cool, developer Jonathan Rose was putting into practice the "triple bottom line" of people, planet, and profit. He brought his message to the MIT Center for Real Estate on Friday, April 2, 2010, as part of the Center's 25th Anniversary Leaders in Real Estate Series, stressing the vital role that cities must play in a sustainable future. Read feature article...
Featured Profile: Building Productive Relationships Takes Time
Featured Winter 2009
Real estate markets can change almost overnight when the global economy is convulsing -- even in nations with vast petroleum reserves. MIT/CRE Chairman Tony Ciochetti saw this firsthand when returning to the Middle East last spring after only a few short months. Read full story....
Featured Thesis: A Complex Job Just Got Simpler
Featured Winter 2009
It's no news to a real estate developer that his or her job is complex. What is news is that the job can now be simplified substantially with a tool long used in an entirely different industry. Called the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), the tool has been applied for the first time to real estate development by two MIT/CRE grads in their award-winning thesis. Read full article...
Featured Event: Center Launches New Tagline for 25th Anniversary
Featured Fall 2009
Kicking off its yearlong 25th anniversary celebration, MIT/CRE has launched a new tagline, one emphasizing the Center's connection with MIT as a springboard for redefining the nature of real estate. The new tagline - Leveraging Science, Developing Innovation - echoes MIT's purpose of improving the world through excellence in science and engineering, and also puts real estate development squarely within that purpose. Read full article.
Featured Class: Students visit San Francisco, Portland, and Chicago to learn the two realities of Realty
Featured Summer 2009
MSRED '09 candidates recently visited Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs (sadly) lose to the the Dodgers, but that defeat didn't keep students from continuing their tour of domestic real estate projects — 35 companies in 3 cities. Read full travelogue.
Featured Profile: Center's Globetrotting Chairman Takes MIT/CRE to the World
Featured Spring 2009
In November 2008, Center Chairman Tony Ciochetti met MIT alum Kier Riemersma for breakfast in Dubai, on a deck overlooking the world's largest manmade marina. Despite the gathering clouds of worldwide recession, the UAE real estate market was sizzling. "In the one-mile radius surrounding us," said Riemersma, "there are perhaps 100 high rise towers that have been completed or started in the past 36 months." It's exactly that kind of economic optimism that inspires Ciochetti to travel the world, connecting MIT/CRE with the people, projects, and ideas that keep vitality in the global real estate market. Read feature article.
Featured Research: The "Kinetic City" Is Key to Development in India's Urban Boom
Featured Winter 2008
India's rapidly growing population centers are rich with development opportunities. But to be successful in India's urban boom, developers must understand the two faces of its cities. On Friday, September 26, as a part of the MIT Center for Real Estate's Graduation & Alumni Reunion Weekend, Prof. Rahul Mehrotra explored the importance of the "static city" and "kinetic city" to urban real estate ventures in India. Learn more!
Featured Research: "Green" Theses Reflect Growing Commitment to Solutions
Featured Fall 2008
The built environment accounts for nearly 45% of all CO2 emissions in the U.S. (the other major sectors — industry and transportation — produce about 25% and 30% respectively). Students of real estate who are coming of age during today's "green revolution" will help to solve the looming climate crisis, finding ways to build both consciously and profitably. The three MSRED theses profiled here offer just a sampling of how MIT/CRE's class of 2008 is responding to the call for action. Full story
Featured Project: Clayton Lane Transforms District
Featured Summer 2008
Randy Nichols '89 and his Denver-based Nichols Partnership have helped to transform the city's Cherry Creek district with "Clayton Lane" – a 700,000 SF mixed-use development that includes world headquarters for the Janus Capital Group (shown above). Learn more.
Featured Project: Grad and His Banker Team Up to Teach
Featured Summer 2008
Entrepreneur Roberto Arista '96 and his banker Janet Spencer established a remarkably rewarding and successful business partnership — so much so that they regularly visit the Center to give students an inside look at its day-to-day workings. Their presentation series "The Entrepreneur and His Banker" is now in its 4th year, and details the evolution of their working relationship, the growth of his companies, and the mechanics of financing in good markets and bad. Learn more.
Featured Presentation: After 10 Year Wait, Real Options Project Takes the Option
Featured Spring 2008
After a decade in operation, Blue Cross/Blue Shield headquarters in downtown Chicago has begun its long-awaited vertical expansion. Among the world's most iconic expressions of real options theory, the building was erected in the 1990s to extend vertically while in full operation. Expansion from 33 to nearly 60 floors is now underway, and the project team visited MIT/CRE to share their innovative solutions to the job's unique challenge. Read article or download presentation overview (pdf, 146K)
Featured Project: Weekly Blog Follows NY Project from Developer's POV
Featured Spring 2008
A blow-by-blow development blog written by developers? It's high time, thought MIT/CRE alum Alison Novak '06. She and colleague David Kramer, principal with New York's Hudson Companies (where MIT DUSP alum Alan Bell '77 is also principal), are penning weekly posts on the company's latest Brooklyn project -- a 44-unit townhouse development at 111 Third Street. Called "Inside Third and Bond," the postings appear on www.brownstoner.com, a popular NYC real estate blog, and are following the project through demolition and design to opening day. Brownstoner editors asked Alison and David to bring just two things to their blog: "total transparency and a thick skin." Visit Inside Third & Bond.
Featured Project: The Waterview
Featured Winter 2007
Just over the Potomac River from Washington DC is Rosslyn, a city whose skyline is now fronted by the dramatic Waterview project. Developed by JBG Companies, the Waterview's two sleek 300-foot towers comprise 1,000,000 SF, including 625,000 SF of office space, a 154-room boutique hotel, 133 luxury condos, and 900+ parking spaces. MIT/CRE alum Alexandra "Sandi" Stroud '02, Senior Associate at JBG, recently visited the Center to discuss the development as a part of MIT/CRE's Real Deals series. She and colleague Brooks Blake, Senior Vice-President of JBG, presented the Waterview development in the context of Rosslyn's varied history. See slideshow (pdf, 4.5M).
Featured Research: Transportation
Becomes Architecture in MIT's City Car
Featured Winter 2007
If you own a car and live or work in a major city, you've doubtless had the experience of circling block after block looking for a place to park. How much time and gas did you waste before your "parking angel" finally came through? William J. Mitchell has wondered as well. In a guest lecture at MIT/CRE, the Director of the Design Laboratory at MIT's Media Lab presented his team's City Car, a revolutionary concept vehicle that could dramatically raise urban transportation's efficiency and lower its environmental impact. Read more.
Featured Project: Liberty Hotel
Featured Fall 2007
Boston's Liberty Hotel — previously the historic Charles Street Jail — opened after an extensive renovation coupled with new construction. Tim Pattison ('85) and Robin Berry (‘88) played key roles for Partners HealthCare, which includes Massachusetts General Hospital, owner of the land. Developed by Carpenter & Company, Inc., the new hotel makes full use of the original granite edifice built in 1851, including a cruciform-shaped structure complete with a 90-foot central rotunda and cupola. Dramatic features include vestiges of jail cells within the hotel lobby bar, and magnificent oversize windows. Learn more.
Featured Project: Broadstone Sterling Village
Featured Summer 2007
Broadstone Sterling Village is a new 186-unit multifamily Class A rental development built on a 6.78 acre site (formerly a bowling alley and a movie theatre) in Vallejo, California offering luxury apartment homes with a state-of-the-art Resident Clubhouse. The deal was facilitated by two alums with companies on opposite coasts — Daniel P. McCadden (’96), Partner and Managing Director of Alliance Residential Company, the developer, and Mark Dunne (’88), Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Boston Capital Real Estate Partners, the equity provider — demonstrating the valuable partnerships that can form between MIT/CRE grads. See photo essay.
Featured Project: The Spire
Featured Summer 2007
On May 15, 2007, Denver developer and MIT/CRE graduate Randy Nichols '89 broke ground on The Spire, a $175 million, 41-story project designed to be the tallest residential tower between Chicago and Las Vegas. Opening in 2009 across from the Colorado Convention Center, the Spire will stand 483-feet tall, and will include 503 condos with 10-foot ceilings, and 602 covered parking spaces. It will be a "green" or environmentally friendly building, with a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) designation. Read more: download article (pdf, 33K) and view online.
Featured Project: Bachenheimer Building
Featured Spring 2007
The Bachenheimer Building in Berkeley, CA, is a mixed-use project with 44 residential units and 3000sf of office/retail space. Amenities include high-speed internet access, rooftop gardens, and stacked hydraulic parking lifts. It was completed in 2004 by Panoramic Interests, a Berkeley-based infill development company founded in 1989 by Center graduate Patrick Kennedy '85. His firm focuses on vacant and under-utilized parcels located near major bus and rail transit lines, encouraging greater use of mass transit.
Featured Graduate: Dave Paladino '00
Featured Spring 2007
David Paladino '00 is the founder of Landmark Management Group (the largest manager of single-family homes in Nebraska), Dino’s Storage (a self-storage chain with eight locations in Omaha, Des Moines, and Winnipeg), Foundation Capital Partners, and Gold Coast Technologies. These companies operate under the umbrella of Landmark Group, and have 60 employees in Nebraska, Iowa and Manitoba. In his free time, Dave is an amateur triathlete, and is also a coordinator with his wife Lisa for the Bullmastiff Rescue Association of America.
Featured Project: "Tarpon Rising"
Featured Winter 2006
MIT Center for Real Estate alumnus David Marvin ’89 recently commissioned a major work of public art for the Embassy Suites hotel that his firm Legacy Property Group developed in downtown Atlanta. Entitled Tarpon Rising, the suspended sculpture hangs in the hotel's enormous atrium and salutes the hotel's new neighbor, the Georgia Aquarium. Read more, and view short documentary (8:57) about sculpture's construction: • Broadband (220K) • Midband (80K)
Featured Graduate: Qian Wang '03
Featured Winter 2006
MIT/CRE alumnus Qian Wang ('03) established ZK Real Estate as a joint venture with MIT/CRE partner Zhongkai Group in March 2006. Before the company was even a year old, ZK Real Estate was developing over 6 million square feet of floor space in China's second-tier cities. U.S. private equity firm Warburg Pincus agreed to buy a 25% stake in the new company in January 2007.
Featured Partner: Zhongkai Group
Featured Fall 2006
Based in Shanghai and founded in 1994, the Zhongkai Group has rapidly become one of the largest real estate and development companies in China. ZK Group has initiated nearly a quarter of a million meters of high profile mixed use development in downtown Shanghai, and has more than 30 subsidiaries in nine major Chinese cities including Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Haikou, Nanchang and Chongqing.
