Sherman Dreiseszun Scholarship Fund Doubles

The Sherman Dreiseszun Scholarship Fund just doubled in size today as the Dreiseszun Family Foundation added another $15,000 to the original amount donated by the Copaken White and Blitt families a few years ago.  These funds will stay in an endowment for perpertuity in honor of one of Kansas City's legends of real estate, Sherman Dreiseszun.  The earnings of this fund will be used to subsidize students who intend to pursue a long term career in real estate but need some financial assistance to do so.  Our city is so fortunate to have such generous and caring people who choose to make our city a better place.  Thank you to the CWB people and to the Dreiseszun Family Foundation.   Your support will sew seeds of success in our community. 

President's Club

Our Third Annual Presidents Club was great fun and very informative.  Brio's food was delicious as well.  Frank Lenk from the Mid America Regional Council performed his usual stellar rendition of "How to make your community grow healthy, wealthy and wise through sustainable infrasctucture".  His ideas and research stimulated a great deal of enthusiastic discussion and it was truly insightful.   This was a great opportunity to gather together those leaders who volunteer their time to be President of their local commercial real estate organizations.  These are the people who are being "significant" as well as being successful.  Our community is fortunate to have these dynamic and successful leaders.  Several of the advisory council members attended as well and added to the lively conversation.   A picture of the austere group and names to follow.  Stay tuned. 

Legal Contexts of Real Estate Decisions

Two of Lane 4 Property Group's top producers are engaged in a case study in the Legal Context of Real Estate Decisions, they are joined by fellow student with an architectural background. This is in the new Technical Room of the Law Building on UMKC's campus. The class is being taught by Professor Tony Lupino from the UMKC Law School and from Peter DiGiovanni the lead attorney from the prominent real estate firm of Lewis Rice and Fingersh. The role play involves a land owner of 10o acres who want to develop it and the class is charged with interviewing the owner and making recommendations about how to move it forward including all the legal issues relating to contracts, partnerships, agency relationships, ground leases, term sheets and negotiations. This is the first day of a three day course supplemented by several on line sessions culminating next month.

Breaking Ground for New Building

From right to left is: yours truly, Professor Walt Clements, Director of the White Real Estate Center: Mr. Henry Bloch, (the star of the show): Joan Gallos, PhD and Director of the EMBA program: Dean Teng Kee Tan, Dean of the Bloch School of Management: Roger Pick, PhD Director of the MBA program: and Fred Hays, PhD, Chair of the Finance Department. We had the privilege of taking part in the ground breaking of the new 68,000 SF building into which we will be moving August of 2013. The Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, (IEI)of which the Lewis White Real Estate Center is an integral part, is clearly putting the Bloch School of Management at UMKC on the global map of education. We are ranked number 21 out of 2,320 colleges and universities in the country in our graduate program and number 10 in the undergraduate program. We have the number 1 and number 4 ranked researchers on Entrepreneurship in the entire world (out of over 1,700 researchers). Kansas City is truly a hot bed of the leading edge entrepreurial thinking applied to real estate in the world. How exciting it is to be a part.

Update

The Lewis White Real Estate Center has grown to the point that we need to have a full time PhD dedicated to our real estate curriculum to continue our progress. We have started the paperwork necessary to advertise for this position and hope to have found the perfect person in time to start our Fall 2012 courses in both the traditional and executive delivery formats.

Dr. Jim DeLisle from the University of Washington just concluded five solid days of "Market Analysis and Feasibility Studies" that included the lastest technology and methods known to the real estate profession. The students completed demographic and psychographic searches and further developed financial modeling skills.
The executive sessions starting this month will be "Construction Means and Methods" and "Legal Context of Real Estate Decisions".

In our traditional delivery of Market Analysis and Feasibility Studies, we just heard from the head of JC Penny's Research Department who flew in from Dallas to spend three hours with our class about their processes and a live case study they are dealing with currently in the site locations decision process. Next week we will hear from a site location specialist from Walgreen's who personally located over 900 Walgreen sites.

Corporate Real Estate Education at it's finest

Dr. Margaret Latshaw heard four presentations today from our students in regard to specific recommendations to local companies to help them solve a particular real estate dilemma with which they were faced. The local firms of Goodwill Industries, Century Tel, Interstate Bakeries and UMKC took time to meet with their assigned student group and share their coporate situations as it related to real estate decisions. The students took that information and combined it with what they learned in class and made specific recommendation to them in a formal presentation this morning. The student's preparation was outstanding and the representatives of those companies each provided invaluable insight in review and comment about each presentation.
All of this was preceded by yesterdays' session of a corporate relocation expert who flew in from Atlanta to provide her methodology on helping companies with their real estate decisions as an outsourced consultant. She was very insightful.
In addition, Rudy Beese, Attorney from SNR Denton shared a large amount of date in written format with oral explanations about the multitude of tax incentives and view about the "border wars".
Joy Hays and Curt Petersen from the Polsinelli Law firm shared with us some valuable insights about green leases and the clauses to look out for with practical experience woven in.

Truly two of the most intense days of information about Corporate Real Estate practices ever presented in just two days.

Next month is Dr. Jim DeLisle from the University of Washington who will share 5 days of insights from his "work in progress" textbook on the lastest techniques and tools related to Market Analysis and Feasibility Studies in Real Estate.

The REIT Industry

This is our 5th month of our Executive delivery of the Masters in Entrepreneurial Real Estate. Today, Dr. Randy Anderson enlightened the class on what REITS are, how they are structured, their history of returns and most importantly where they are headed in the near future. Opportunities abound in this area of real estate.