Currently, CU has no policy for managing non-academic realestate, which is defined as any property that is not directly tiedto education and research. The CU Foundation and the UniversityImprovement Corp. are among groups that manage non-core real estateholdings. That can lead to redundancies, the ULI indicates. It alsois a slow process when disposing of real estate since it takes atleast three years to move forward on selling or developing land.The ULI says economic windows of opportunity can close before CUmoves on the property.

The ULI is proposing the creation of a new entity, theUniversity of Colorado Real Property Asset Management Group. Itwould coordinate all non-academic real property activity. Amongother things, it would be responsible for the analysis of all realestate gifts to the CU Foundation.

Byron Koste, director of the CU Real Estate Center and a memberof the group that hired ULI to do the study, supports the proposal.Koste says the ULI had conducted a similar study for the Universityof Virginia. Since then, the Virginia university has real estateentity that has built a golf course, hotels and a business schoolthat in turn has been deeded to the university, Koste says.