The University of San Diego announced Friday that a team of six real estate students won the ninth annual NAIOP University Challenge, beating teams from UC San Diego and San Diego State University.
Teams analyze the best possible use of a proposed development site in San Diego County. Past developments on which the competition has focused include the county courthouse in downtown San Diego and Seaport Village.
For this year’s challenge, the three teams were tasked with proposing the best use of a development site at the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. Each team received resources like a loan broker, construction estimators and a land use attorney to develop a proposal for the site’s use.
While the competition is ultimately designed to help students gain real-world real estate experience, students’ proposals may help the Navy’s SPAWAR development in the future, according to Stath Karras, one of USD’s team advisers and the executive director of USD’s Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate.
“Through their interaction with industry professionals, perspective tenants and government and military leaders, each team conceived a viable project,” Karras said. “We are hopeful that the input from the three universities will help guide SPAWAR and the Navy in its ultimate development.”
Each team gave a written and oral presentation of their proposal and answered questions volleyed by the competition’s nine-judge panel of real estate industry professionals. USD’s win is their second in three years in the competition, which has historically been dominated by San Diego State.
SDSU has won five of the nine competitions, to date.
“This was a remarkable learning experience for each of us on the team,” said USD student Mitch DiLorenzo. “The breadth of collaboration and teamwork within our team and with the industry resources we got to work with made this first-place recognition incredibly special.”
— City News Service
