Students Prep for Annual NAIOP Competition

LOS ANGELES—USC gets home team advantage this year at NAIOP SoCal's annual UCLA versus USC Real Estate Challenge. The iconic challenge pits five-member teams from the Lusk Center for Real Estate at USC's Marshall School of Business and Price School of Public Policy and UCLA's Ziman Center for Real Estate at the Anderson School of Business against one another to conceive an original development project for a real-life development site. Win or lose, the student presentations often come into reality at significant developments.

“Every year a new site is chosen by a committee of NAIOP SoCal members and the students are tasked with providing a proposal that serves the needs of the project owner and community,” Angela Azizian, chair of NAIOP SoCal, tells GlobeSt.com. “The success of past student presentations is now evident in many sites such as Playa Vista, L.A. Live, and Grand Avenue that were previous subjects of the competition—and are now thriving, go-to locations. We involve the commercial real estate industry as committee members and as part of our panel of judges. In this way, the students are given real world insight into their proposals.”

This year, the project is a circa 1977 950,000-square-foot former indoor shopping mall in Hawthorne. The shopping center shuttered in 1999 due to economic decline, and has since remained vacant. However, with significant development in the area, the 23-acre site has a lot of potential. “The challenge is a valuable opportunity for the students who participate to gain hands-on, real-world experience in the industry, further educating and engaging the next generation of real estate professionals,” says Azizian. “It allows the students to evaluate an actual real-life project and determine the highest and best use in preparing a comprehensive development proposal for the specific project along with determining the financing options and costs.”

The main event will take place on November 19 at USC's Town and Gown, with host James “Watty” Watson, CEO and president, CT Realty, and special guests Chris Roberts, former voice of the Bruins and honorary UCLA Team Captain, and Pete Arbogast, voice of the Trojans and honorary USC Team Captain. “Beyond the value of the actual student competition, the challenge provides young aspiring CRE professionals with visibility to the elite of the Southern California commercial real estate industry,” says Azizian.