One of the distinctive aspects of DePaul University’s real estate program is that students go beyond textbooks to learn first-hand lessons about complex housing development issues in Chicago. Through unique coursework supported by the Real Estate Center of DePaul, students meet prominent local real estate executives and community leaders, and venture into urban neighborhoods to explore sites that have the potential for development.

DePaul real estate students recently served as mock development consultants for a class project that focused their attention on land in need of development in the Bronzeville, North Lawndale and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago. Under a scenario created for a 10-week winter course, the students joined architecture students from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and graphic design students from Kent State University to form six teams that produced competing affordable housing proposals for the three neighborhoods. The scenario required that the mock proposals target some units to student teachers working in Chicago schools.

"Our program uses reality-based classroom exercises that allow students to get a genuine feel for what it’s like to work in real estate development,” said Susanne Cannon, the Douglas and Cynthia Crocker Endowed Director of the Real Estate Center. “In this scenario, students learned about the complexities of creating affordable housing that fits the needs of three actual communities in Chicago. They not only pored over marketing data for the areas, but they toured the sites, interviewed community leaders and sought advice from real estate professionals in these neighborhoods to create fact-based proposals.”

The neighborhoods chosen for the exercise represented unique challenges and opportunities that educated students about affordable housing in Chicago. Rich in history, Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side is undergoing a transformation with the construction of the 36-acre mixed-income Park Boulevard development on the site of the demolished Chicago Housing Authority’s Stateway Gardens public housing project. The largely Mexican-American Little Village community on Chicago’s Southwest Side has a proliferation of single family homes; in this community, students focused their projects on a 44-acre vacant lot at 26th Street and Kostner Avenue, which the City of Chicago would like to see developed. On the West Side, the impoverished North Lawndale community is experiencing a rebirth with the opening of the Homan Square Community Center, a Dominick’s grocery store and several housing facilities, and community leaders are seeking further development.

With this background, teams of students created sophisticated affordable housing proposals for each of the three neighborhoods. The proposals included marketing analyses and plans, architectural drawings, funding details and financial projections for the suggested developments. The plans were presented in February to a panel of real estate industry professionals who served as judges.

The winning student team, called North Point LLC, proposed building a facility called “New Point Lofts,” a mixed-income development. Their plan for North Lawndale combined affordable rental units for student teachers, rental units at market rates and condo units for sale. The team consisted of: DePaul MBA students Ernest Amponsah, Heidi Anderson, Sylvia Homenda and Shravan Thakkar; IIT students Reuben McCrory and Andrew Clark; and Kent State student Tony Lindemann.

Cannon taught the course with guest lecturers, who interacted with students via class visits or distance learning teleconference technology. They included Norma Baskin, sales manager for Park Boulevard in Bronzeville; Scott Maesel, partner, Sussex & Reilly Commercial Properties; John Oharenko and Mark Rossi, who represent a partnership that owns property in the Homan Square area of North Lawndale; Robert Koerner, principal, the Davis Group; Robert Bronstein, president of the Scion Group, a student housing firm; and Joel Bookman, director of the New Communities Program of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, an organization that supports comprehensive community development in 16 Chicago neighborhoods. Peter Levavi, senior vice president of Brinshore Development, and Tony Smith, senior project manager of S.B. Friedman and Co., also were guest speakers.

Judges for the competition included Troy Hoggard, senior associate, OWP/P Architects; Robert Miller, senior vice president of Applied Real Estate Analysis, who also guest lectured; Gabrielle Shubart, designer, The Grillo Group; and Vuk Vujovic, director of Sustainable Design, Legat Architects, Inc.

Next fall, DePaul’s real estate program will expand its reality-based exercises by challenging 400 undergraduate and graduate students to create mock urban development plans based on realistic scenarios created by the Urban Land Institute and DePaul’s Real Estate Center.

The Real Estate Center at DePaul oversees education, research and professional development programs tailored to the needs of students entering, and professionals in, the real estate industry and affiliated fields. The center is supported with funding and guidance from 40 founding sponsors that include prominent Chicago real estate executives and institutions.