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Project Workshop

Overview
The Real Estate Project Workshop is the “capstone course” in Cornell’s Program in Real Estate.  There is no other class like it in all of graduate real estate education.  It is an opportunity for an interdisciplinary and collaborative learning experience that is similar to how real estate development and design teams work in the real world.

The Real Estate Project Workshop Experience
The Real Estate Project Workshop is a semester-long applied project.  Students work together in teams to prepare the case for a specific real estate development project.  Using a real site, each team researches and prepares a detailed report that includes market research, site analysis, site and architectural design, branding and marketing strategies, financial analysis, financing and equity investment considerations, and projected investment returns.  The project culminates with each team preparing a comprehensive written and design report, and giving an oral presentation, through which each team has an opportunity to present its development recommendations to an actual owner/client.  In recent years, the Real Estate Project Workshop has done work for such notable companies as Macerich, Boston Properties, Akridge, William C. Smith + Co., Urban American, and BF Saul.     

Spring Term, 2011 Project: A New Downtown for Wheaton, Maryland 
Characterized as a diverse and eclectic inner ring suburb of Washington, DC, Wheaton, Maryland aspires to achieve a re-development of its downtown core into a walkable, livable center, with a mix of uses, and dense, transit oriented development.  In doing so, county and community stakeholders want to achieve some of the successes that are seen in nearby places, while preserving the unique character of Wheaton. 
Working in conjunction with the BF Saul Company, Cornell real estate and design teams worked on downtown redevelopment ideas for a 7 acre site located on top of a Metrorail station.  Cornell teams had a great opportunity to work with an excellent client, and to consider strategies about how to best create or incorporate a “live/work/play” environment within an existing suburban context, and our work garnered publicity in the local media.

Philip Eisenberg, with sons Joshua and James Eisenberg, have participated in the Project Workshop course.

“ Urban American (recently provided) the site for the project workshop. We were privileged to work with several teams of students who produced highly professional development schemes, market analyses, and financial models for a mixed-use redevelopment of an urban transit site. The final presentation of each team’s plan was eye-opening. Our staff, as well as representatives of the local government with whom we were dealing and other professionals who attended, all felt tht they were dealing with the presenters as well-respected colleagues who had developed a deep understanding of their project, rather than as students.”

Philip Eisenberg
President and CEO
Urban American

Bob Wulff, Senior Vice President, B.F. Saul Company

“We gained a lot by participating as the client for the 2011 Capstone project. The Cornell student teams were very impressive. Students developed an excellent grasp of the business and design issues that our company is facing in the proposed development of a very complicated site and market, and they came up with some good solutions and ideas for us to consider. We thoroughly enjoyed coming to Ithaca to hear the presentations on their work product, and in fact, we have shown their final work to the public agencies with whom we are working in a public/private partnership to develop this site.”

Bob Wulff
Senior Vice President
B.F. Saul Company