Each team of students must first identify a vacant or significantly under-utilized commercial property. Properties that are currently for sale or those that have been for sale in the past year will be particularly useful as targets for the case because offering memorandums will be available for these sites.
Alternatively, students may identify an appropriate property and determine if ownership would be willing to assist in providing building specific information to assist in the preparation of the case study. Once a site has been chosen each team must propose a use or uses for the site that includes at least one component that is socially impactful or environmentally impactful.
Four schools were invited to the final judging, held in Miami Florida in April 2018
more about the 2018 competitionThe University of Miami team presented “NoBe: A Sustainable and Resilient Plan for North Beach,” a $280 million five-block pedestrian-friendly town center with four residential towers, office and retail space, and a central plaza with a 50,000-square-foot community center. Of the 476 apartment units, 96 would be leased at below-market rates for lower-income North Beach residents
NoBe: A Sustainable and Resilient Plan for North Beach
The Cornell University MBA team – Miguel Klipstein, UM BBA ’11, Alejandor Garza and Mark Hughes proposed a creative retail-entertainment development for the eastern end of a former concrete roadway on the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne. Under their $19.8 million “Sunset Pier” plan, shipping containers would be refurbished and transported to the 50,000-square-foot vacant fishing pier where they would be turned into restaurants, bars and retail shops.
Graduate students Brian Theodore, Christian Ramos, Louis Marchetta and Owen Christensen at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, proposed “New Jersey City University – West Campus Redevelopment,” transforming a vacant parking lot into a $62 million mixed-use project. Under their proposal, the 22-acre site on the neglected western side of Jersey City would have a three-story commercial building with office, retail and educational space including a neighborhood pharmacy and job-training center, along with 750 new housing units.
New Jersey City University – West Campus Redevelopment
The New York University team of Stephanie Noyes, Sid Prabhakar, Jeffrey Slavin and Ronald Ying proposed “Broad Street Commons,” repositioning a landmark office building in downtown Newark as a $145.9 million mixed-use center. The 21-story building would have 341 apartments, including 68 with affordable rents, a job training center, health and fitness facilities and other office and retail, while retaining a Verizon data center on the fifth floor.
