April 26, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  John Gordon, Jr.  Communications Director

202.274.5998 (o) or 202.701.8805 (c) or john.gordon@udc.edu

UDC is Finalist in Top Award from the Urban Land Institute Washington Real Estate

Trends Awards for its Innovative Student Center

Washington, DC —The University of the District of Columbia’s Student Center was selected by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) as a finalist for the annual Real Estate Trends Conference Awards Program. This week’s Conference highlights innovative development under way in the Metropolitan Washington Region.

ULI Washington nominated the Student Center project for its annual Real Estate Trends Conference Awards Program, a conference component that highlights innovative development under way in the Metropolitan Washington Region.  The award categories recognize innovative projects, policies, and initiatives that contribute to the enhancement of vibrant neighborhoods, exemplify creative problem solving, and celebrate visionary thinking.  Although the Student Center design did not receive the top honor at the April 25 awards program, University officials are extremely pleased with the nomination.

“It is a great honor and privilege for UDC to be in great company as a finalist for our state-of-the-art Student Center,” said UDC President Ronald Mason. “Our goal was to create the best for our students while having an environmentally sensitive footprint in the Van Ness neighborhood.”

The Real Estate Trends Conference, ULI Washington’s signature event features local and national speakers and provides a crash course on where the real estate industry is now and where it is headed. The theme for the 2017 conference is “Dynamic Decades: Past and Future.”

“These projects reflect the best of the Washington real estate community’s creativity and dedication to making livable, sustainable places,” said Bob Peck, Jury Foreman for the Trends Conference Awards.  “The new category of Adaptive Reuse attracted a good number of applications, demonstrating how much this kind of project is contributing to increasingly diversified development in our region. The jurors were impressed by the number, quality and variety of public-private partnerships that were represented among the projects. The jury did not find it easy to narrow the field but we feel that the 14 finalists are the best in their categories, providing models for vibrant housing, commercial and mixed-use development in our region’s communities.”

“To have the University’s new Student Center be identified as a finalist for this year’s reward is a tremendous honor,” said Erik L. Thompson, UDC’s Vice President, Real Estate & Facilities Management.  “The Urban Land Institute is known for identifying local projects that have a finger on the pulse of national trends in design, innovation, and creativity.  I would put the prestige of even being considered for this award right up there with the top recognitions we have received.”