2021 ULI Hines Student Competition Kick Off Webinar

[Music] well good morning and welcome to the 19th annual uli hinds student competition my name is gwyneth jones cody i'm the president of the urban land institute in the americas region and i'm speaking to you from my home in washington dc which is also the base for uli's global headquarters this competition is one of the highlights each year at uli not just because it's fun but because it epitomizes core values of uli interdisciplinary learning and collaboration best practice and knowledge sharing perhaps even better it offers a glimpse into how you the next generation of city builders are thinking about design and development and how our communities will change going forward the incredible and evolving global crisis and city responses to it confirm the need for you for all of us to practice and maintain the collaborative skills you will be using for the next few weeks in a normal year we simply email the challenge for you to all students on the first day of the competition which is how you find out which city you will be studying this year we wanted to try something different and offer a live introduction to the host city and to the people behind this competition i will begin this webinar with a bit of information about the urban land institute then welcome jeff heinz to give a few remarks next representatives from this year's host city will announce and then describe the competition city and site and then you will hear from members of last year's winning team gretchen swinney from uoi will conclude with a few logistical notes and a q a we will email the challenge brief to all competitors after the conclusion of this webinar uli is an organization built on collaboration in my role at uli i am responsible for the 52 district councils in north america where our members deliver the uli mission at the local level in activities and initiatives relevant to their market this competition has been in 19 different cities each year receiving incredible support from leaders and members in the district council in that city and i'm responsible for our 65 u.s product councils where members convene across markets to explore issues and share best practices related to specific development products and processes we hope you will join the uli network and turn to us as a source of support both during school and upon graduation we offer resources and a network of people and employers that can help you clarify and accelerate your career goals uli members have immediate access to industry experts timely information and cutting-edge research essential for making informed decisions we offer courses and certificates at uoi learning online and on-demand taught by world-class professors who are among our members this competition exists due to the vision and generosity of gerald hines an industry legend and a uli member from 1960 until his passing last year jerry was the chairman of the hinds real estate organization which he founded in houston over 60 years ago we miss him greatly and are forever indebted to him for his support of uli and for creating this competition we are particularly delighted that jeff hines has joined us to say a few words well thank you very much it is a pleasure to join you this morning i i'm speaking to you from my house in houston and apologize for the technical glitches and i've got lawnmower going in the background so welcome to the world of doing business during covid so sorry for the glitches houston is the home of our global headquarters and it's where my dad founded heinz it all started with one warehouse he built for a neighbor in 1957 and today the firm is involved in real estate investment development and management in 225 cities in 25 countries around the world with over 144 billion dollars of assets under management it's incredible to see what can be accomplished through a clear vision a passion for improving the built environment and our communities and cities and a commitment to delivering the highest quality and value with integrity in 2003 when uli recognized dad's contributions to real estate by presenting him with the uli prize for visionaries in urban development he declined the prize money and asked that the uli used the funds along with his own generous contribution to create this competition dad felt so strongly about keeping it going that he subsequently endowed the program in perpetuity his vision for the competition was clear design is critical but the competition should be more than design and probably of critical importance to the students the cash prize should be substantial to each of the three finalist teams fifty thousand dollars to the winning team and ten thousand dollars to each of the remaining teams those components have made this competition one of the most successful graduate student competitions in the country and one that challenges students in ways few others do we are pleased that you chose to take part this year despite the upheaval the pandemic has brought and hope you find this to be a great learning experience with the loss of dad last year this year's competition is going to be even more meaningful he truly loved being a part of the competition each year and traveling to the host city of the finals attending the presentations interacting with the students and absorbing the great ideas that came up in their presentations the hines family appreciates both how capably the uli is carrying his torch of excellence and how future leaders in real estate and urban planning will continue to raise the bar in the built environment as dad hoped best of luck to you all and with that i'd like to turn it over to michael collins who will announce the host city thank you jeff hello my name is michael collins i've worked in real estate for 10 plus years and currently service managing director of jdon capital partners the real estate investment arm of j dunn construction which is focused on active equity investment and project finance solutions for uh commercial real estate health care and public private partnerships across the country more relevant to you all here today is that i'm based out of this year's host city which is kansas city missouri i serve on the board as chair of uli kansas city and we are excited to host this competition for this year uli represent uli kansas city represents over 300 members across the kansas city msa i've been a member of uli for more than five years and being a member has helped me gain more insight on the connect interconnectedness of the built environment within the city the integration of urban planning real estate finance and vertical development this year as of last our district council focuses on three initiatives equitable development transportation and public private alliances in 2020 we launched a 16-week webinar series called a city we all can afford which is available on our website that can give you additional insight into the challenges and opportunities we face in kansas city i look forward to seeing the results of your work and with that i'll pass it over to lauren canone i'm lauren cano a uli member based in kansas city and a landscape architect i became a uli member when i was a graduate student at kansas state university and participated in this competition i was inspired by the competition to make an urban design project that is not only functional and responsive to its context but to also make it financially feasible and driven by market demands the competition brings together many elements of real-world scenarios and allows us to bridge the gap between design and real estate since then i have continued my uli membership as a way to connect with other professionals take on leadership positions and grow in my understanding of my own work now i'd like to walk you through a few quick slides all of the information i will cover here is also in the challenge brief kansas city missouri lies just up the cross just across the missouri kansas border from kansas city kansas at the confluence of the kansas and missouri rivers while the city proper includes four counties across 319 square miles the metropolitan area spans 7 900 square miles across 14 counties in both states downtown kansas city is a series of linked centers generally running north south from crown center in the south to the central business district in the middle to the river market and columbus park in the north here you see the central business district surrounded by a circle of highways we call the downtown loop you will be focusing on an area called the east village which is in the east part of the central business district here the competition site and study area boundaries are highlighted you can see the study area extends to i-70 to the east and ilist park to the west here we've zoomed in the site which consists of 25 parcels across almost eight city blocks these parcels total approximately 16.2 acres excluding public right-of-way your proposal must address all parcels on the site and this image from the 1940s shows the central business district from the direction of the competition site before highway construction and urban renewal efforts led to what exists there today a swath of surface and structured parking with few buildings that's city hall in the middle in the foreground and here is a view of the site today looking northwest you can see city hall again to the left and interstate highway i-70 on the right side as you can see it needs your help the challenge asks you to create a catalytic vision and development proposal for a mixed-use mixed-income neighborhood that will serve not only downtown but the city and the region and now i'd like to welcome members from last year's winning team whose proposal titled la mezcla offered a bright future for a site in miami florida i'll let them introduce themselves and offer a few insights on how to best organize yourselves and how to get the most out of the competition hey everyone um i'm john honk just wanted to start off by congratulating all of you for taking honest competition that uli hinds case competition was definitely one of the single most challenging and holistic learning experiences from graduate school and not only experiential learning but more important more importantly from a collaboration perspective so submitting the case in and of itself is something to be extremely proud of and this case will give you a lot of actionable experience to talk through your interview processes so a quick background on myself i was an urban studies major and economics i've asked for college i wrote my thesis on the 421a affordable housing policy in new york and since graduating from columbia i've joined silverstein properties in new york and i'm on the deal team responsible for structuring and underwriting real estate equity investments with self-esteem portfolio which is anchored by the world trade center so we focus on the development of complex mixed-use projects as well as the acquisition and capitalization of trophy properties across the country we recently closed on the 430 million dollar acquisition of u.s bank tower in downtown l.a um as well as a development site for 400 luxury units in seattle adjacent to amazon's headquarters my role on our case team was i was responsible for the pro forma writing the narratives and overviews of the project um and then also a lot of research to substantiate the various programs and underwriting that we had for our project in terms of tips i think the biggest thing to focus on is to figure out what you're building as quickly as possible during that first week dedicate the majority of the second week to presentation you shouldn't be making big decisions in the second week adding new buildings or plazas or changing your program remember the important thing to remember is that what you're trying to accomplish in 14 days takes professional firms months of diligence and research and you could have the best ideas in the country but if you can't clearly present and communicate those ideas through your submission then it doesn't matter um successful development is a compromise between perfecting creativity but also acknowledging the feasibility constraints around the project i think the second big piece of advice that i want to harp on is to actively communicate so you're increasing affordability or adding a new programming concept make sure that everyone on the team is comfortable speaking to why it's included one of the biggest reasons i believe we were successful is because we were able to substantiate our ideas with research on tax credits market trends where the capital markets were for example you're proposing a million square feet of life science in the market you should understand where the existing supply is and be able to reference rents absorption rates and potential major tenants and investment institutions good luck and congratulations again for taking on this case hello everybody i'm attack lucik i am a recent graduate of the columbia university ms real estate development program and before that i graduated from pratt institute with a bachelor's in architecture since graduating um from columbia i joined korea llc in the role of acquisitions associate we are an affordable housing investor we do deals all over the country uh so this competition was truly a highlight of my graduate school experience it's an intense two weeks but well worth it um it definitely is proudest moment of my graduate school experience since graduating i've also stayed involved in uli i am on the wli communications committee in new york um in terms of tips for the competition the key to being successful is to really understand your local community and to really understand what the urban fabric adjacent to is made up of what are the local jobs who lives there and what are their wants and needs so you want to be sensitive to what types of jobs would be a per [Music] appropriate you want to create a development that looks like it belongs there and that was in fact one of the greatest compliments we received uh during our presentation is that our development element looks like it belongs in miami the second piece of advice i would offer is to really understand the logistics of how you're going to work through the competition sequencing of tasks to make sure that everyone is working in the correct order so no one is sitting around waiting for other people to deliver information it will help save you time in the long run hi my name is matthew mitchell um i got my undergraduate degree from new york school of interior design in the upper east side of new york city and then i went to my get my masters of architecture from pratt institute in brooklyn i'm currently an architectural designer at edg architecture and engineering i'm working on various projects there from town up ground up design work to [Music] advance fabrication processes with 3d printers and other things along those lines as far as the role i served on the team i was kind of i was one architect we had a city planner and three real estate developers with various backgrounds two of which have just spoken um i think you know one of our biggest strengths as the team has alluded to was kind of our our diverse backgrounds but and how we can came together as a team um i think it's really important to kind of embrace embrace your role within within the group and uh know that there's so much work to be done in the two weeks you really need to focus on on uh finishing what you're set out to do um and nick in that case i just mentioned that you know there's a lot of 3d modeling work um it wasn't taken on by just one of us we had multiple three people in the group who were able who had skills to be able to do that so i would encourage you know getting on that work early and often and uh breaking it up in addition you know expect to have leave enough time just to discuss the design and have enough back and forth for your team so that you know you can really dive into all the issues and be on the same page when it comes to modeling as john mentioned changes in the second week can be really um you can really negatively affect your schedule and and that output so try to get those things ironed out and leave enough time to discuss those matters in the first week um and yeah good luck to all the teams and with that i'll hand over to gretchen to wrap things up thank you hi everyone my name is gretchen sweeney and i manage the competition here for the urban land institute and i also run a number of other global national awards programs for the urban land institute and um i just want to give you some quick stats and some logistics on the competition and also we can have a quick q a i think most of everything that you'll need uh will be in the challenge brief which we are going to release by 12 30 pm today eastern 4 30 pm eastern but i'll go over a few things that are different this year because of the virtual environment we're working in so a few quick stats first the in the years since this began the competition has reached over 1900 teams so that's more than 9 700 students at over 100 different universities in the us and canada and we've had 360 students who've made it to the final round including the three you've just heard from we also have had thousands of real estate and design professionals advise teams we're always very thankful to that many of them are uli members so we hope you've lined up some great advisors for this competition um this year we have 110 teams registered so that's 550 students from across the united states and canada and for the first time we have a full team from singapore participating while this competition does draw primarily students from the us and canada it is open to students around the world last year uli in europe launched a version of the competition specifically for students in europe and the middle east north africa region and they're going to be holding that version again this year so you may see the uli hinds student competition europe that's referring to the version that is being hosted in europe so as i mentioned we're going to get the challenge brief out to you today after the conclusion of this webinar we will try to share it we will send it to all team members and then we will try to share it with your faculty and professional advisors as well i know a few of you are still adding advisors you're welcome to do that through the end of the competition period just email us their contact information so we have have a list so there might be some advisors who don't get this as a as a team please make sure your advisors get the challenge brief if um they don't have it and then we are also going to put it on the website you'll see a link to it later today and that's that website is uli.org forward slash heinz where you got all the information about how to apply we will also send a recording of this webinar uh once it's made available to us that will probably be later in the day and if we can we'll send a transcript i know we are using closed captioning it's not always a 100 accurate so if you need that or need a transcript just let us know if you could uh please put questions into the q a i see a few people are doing that already and i see we have a few questions also in the chat but i preferred if you could put them in the q a please um so one thing i'm noting again is that you'll get when you get the brief you'll probably have most of your questions answered so i'll probably answer questions selectively today just to keep this under 45 minutes but um there will be a microsoft sharepoint folder that we will link to from the brief you are going to find most of the information you need the brief itself a pro forma template um information about the specific parcels various reports that we can't just link to online you'll find all of that in the sharepoint folder and so if you have any trouble accessing the folder please do email us at the regular email heinzcompetition and we'll get that sorted out for you it's a shared folder and so of course don't edit the folder i think you do have limited editing permissions but we have everything backed up and also we didn't have trouble with it last year but just a reminder that this is a shared folder and please be fair to your competitors um another reminder too you'll see that see this in the brief but you should not contact anyone at uli about the competition unless you already have an established relationship with your district council for some reason but you really shouldn't be contacting anyone at uli about the competition or asking them any questions about the competition the information the only place you should ask questions is heinz competition at uli.org and we will do our best to respond in a timely manner anytime we answer a question that is relevant to all the competitors we will post the question and our response to it in a word document in the sharepoint folder so if you ask us a question you aren't getting like special secret information for your team we respond to everybody um via that sharepoint folder and you should not contact any of the government agencies or any of the organizations involved in planning for the site or the region um there's more information about that in the brief but we're very serious about that and you can get disqualified if we hear that you've done that so for those of you who are faculty or returning participants we always have some returning participants from last year you will note a few changes this year the first big thing is that our jury is not able to meet in person to review your big printed presentation sheets usually we have you mail those to us so we've adapted the deliverables to this new totally virtual jury review so we are not requiring hard submit hard copy submissions this year you don't have to print anything please don't email please don't mail anything to uli there's nothing to be printed or mailed to us we are still requiring that you create a large format presentation board but you only have to send us digital copies of it and we have a few different versions print quality and web quality etc and we've actually given you some flexibility in the size presentation sheet that you can create this year so it's been a standard size for a long time but we're offering a few different sizes that means you know you could probably fit you could choose a larger size but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have more information it just depends on how densely you provide that content so to make review easier for our jury we are asking that you create a digital slide deck as well and you'll see all of the requirements for that slide deck what it should include and how it should be formatted in the challenge brief the final change is that we are asking you to input some data from the summary sheet of your pro forma directly into the award platform in the submission form so you will need to both upload your pro forma documents and also input some data from the pro forma into individual fields this may be a little tedious but it's going to help our jury do a little more comparisons across performance than they were able to do in the past so the submission form will be available tomorrow at uli.org forward slash heinz 2021 that's the same link where you submitted all your application data um we urge you to log in as soon as possible tomorrow to make sure that you can see the form and that you understand what we're asking you to do it's the first time we're trying it so please if you see any if you have questions about how to use it or you see any technical error errors it's good to just test that early on please don't log in at the very last day to figure out what the form is asking you do it early do it as soon as you can see what questions you have send your questions to us one other change is that our jury is going to be slightly bigger this year that just helps them do the initial round review on a few on fewer submissions and we will likely have another webinar to announce both the finalists and the honorable mentions we don't have that date just yet but it'll be the third or fourth week of february and we'll get that email out to all participants and advisors just as soon as we can once we've nailed down the date as we've also noted on our website due to the pandemic we won't be holding the site visit or the finals in person instead we will hold a video call for the finalists to talk to local stakeholders in march and ask their questions about the site and then we will hold a virtual finals event in april i think that's likely to be on april 8th if you want to kind of put a tentative hold on your calendar we will either record it or we may be able to allow all competitors to watch it live this year that's what we're working on but you'll see the dates if you'd like to check back to uli dot word forward slash heinz we will have the dates there okay i'm going to address a few questions now if you have questions again i think the best places in the q a rather than in the chat so let me take a look at those um when submitting is there a format we must submit with yes i'm just going to let you know when it's all in the challenge brief and if there's something that's not in the challenge brief i'll address that here um so the first question is a second question how did the teams manage the discussions in the first week online i'll leave that question maybe for one of our winning team members to answer in just a moment um we have the webinar series link from uli kansas city is linked in um the chat if you'd like that and then we can also put it um in the resources folder for um sharepoint sharepoint um will you be given access to documents such as existing cad drawings for the site we don't provide a 3d model um you'll you'll need to work on that on your own i think that's another one of the questions there will be gis assets um and there and most of the gis assets that we provide you and i think maybe all of them are available publicly this year so if you don't access them from the folder we can indicate where to find them online from the city we do not provide access to anything like costar or rs means or any other data providers we've looked into this repeatedly and we're not able to do it for various licensing and cost reasons so we do apologize but we are not providing access to any of those resources and i think that's all the questions to see uh i don't know if john you're still on you want to answer the question how did the team manage the discussions in the first week online i think this is a change from last year because a lot of teams were in person last year um but maybe you can respond to some of the digital communications once we had to go virtual last year john yeah yeah absolutely um yeah as as jefferson said we we were in person for those two weeks and um you know i think that's definitely really important that to the extent possible you have that kind of open dialogue with your team i think something that we did kind of after we started going virtual a little bit and what i would suggest now is just have an open zoom room um if you can if you're not in person then um just have that open and leave it open during your set time slots call it 9 a.m to 10 p.m on the days that you're agreeing to work and you know that doesn't have to be you know strict boundaries you can do other work while you're doing it but at least that way you know i do that at work right now i'll have open zoom communication with my vp and we'll just be on for two hours and you know something comes up and you just start talking about it um and that's that's obviously i think probably the best way to go um and then obviously if you're following protocols um and you have a way to be in person the extent possible i think that would be much more helpful thank you so much um let's see i've got one more question i think in the chat i understand we cannot contact local stakeholders but we are are we allowed to have short interview discussions with our school professors and classmates who are familiar with the subject um yes certainly i think professors and classmates are exactly who we want you to be communicating with you hopefully have you have your faculty advisor of course um you're welcome to talk to any other um faculty at your university or other universities um the the real goal is to just um not we can't have local professionals or stakeholders fielding calls from hundreds of students so um please do consult with your advisors at just not you know the local folks in kansas city and let's see one more question due to travel restrictions well where will there be photos of the site provided yes we do provide photos of the site when you get the brief and you access the sharepoint folder there will be a link to flickr and there are a number of geo-located images that we had someone take of the site that are a little bit more recent than google street view so there are images of the site available we also did aerial video and photos so you'll be able to access those on flickr as well see i think any other questions i think i've answered all the questions in the chat and on the q a so with that i will just say thank you so much for joining us today and thank you to all our panelists again i just want to note you see here that the deadline i think last year was eastern standard time we've moved it to pacific standard time on the 25th um one thing to note about the deadline and i can't reinforce this enough uh you should start submitting your documents early uli staff is we have a small staff working on this and so you won't have access to us to ask questions after 9 00 pm if you run in 9 00 pm eastern if you run into technical challenges so a week before three days before four days before please log in start considering how you can upload documents and complete your proposal and hit submit as early as you can on the 25th do not wait until the last minute you can submit until the last minute but if you run into challenges we will not be available to assist you after 9 pm eastern so the deadline for eastern is what that's about 3am right okay i think that's all we'll make sure you get the recording of this video uh thank you again to all of our panelists and good luck everybody [Music] you

Channel: Urban Land Institute

Views: 229

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: ULI, land use, real estate, cities

Id: A2hLRTg_vOM

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021