Matt Witte: Advisory Board Feature

As an undergraduate, Witte was eager to learn about the whole process of building a building and essentially crafted his own interdisciplinary curriculum after realizing that architecture is but one component of the development process.

The west coast-based investor and Cornell Program in Real Estate Advisory Board member has now come full circle by sponsoring the annual Case Studies in Urban Development (CSUD) series. CSUD, inaugurated in 2006, brings together students, faculty and professionals from real estate-related disciplines in a focus on a specific urban development experience for a weekend each spring.

“In my experience as a developer, I have found that large-scale urban development is, by its very nature, a multi-disciplinary endeavor involving the collaboration of numerous disparate professions and organizations,” explained Witte. “Unfortunately, universities tend to become a series of ‘silos’ where the study of these disciplines (planning, architecture, finance, government, landscape architecture, construction, etc.) at the undergraduate and graduate levels is often pursued in a vacuum.”

Cornell, with the commencement of the graduate Program in Real Estate in 1996, has made great strides in linking core real estate disciplines. “The Program in Real Estate owes its existence to the value of understanding the process in its entirety,” said Witte, “and the result is that people coming out of the Program are very valuable to the profession.” Matt was a founding member of the program’s Advisory Board and had direct input into its content and approach.

Pursuant to the opportunities he experienced as an undergraduate student in blending Cornell’s extensive real estate-related disciplines into a meaningful degree experience, Witte decided to give back to Cornell in a way that was both relevant to his experiences and would create real value within the Cornell community. CSUD focused on Seattle in 2006 and most recently brought government and development leaders, students, faculty and others together from around the world to focus on and learn from London’s Thames Gateway and Olympics Initiatives.

“My hope is that each year, we will be able to bring a group of industry and public officials to Ithaca to ‘showcase’ one or more projects from that city’s recent redevelopment experience, with the objective of exposing Cornell students, faculty and industry representatives to real-world projects and the issues, opportunities and players involved in addressing them,” explained Witte.

While Matt Witte clearly has a love affair with development, the realities of the early 90s real estate cycle prompted him to look for other opportunities and in 1994 he formed a Private Equity firm - Marwit Capital- that focuses on providing structured equity for buyouts and growth transactions of predominantly Western US-based businesses. Over the past 13 years, his firm has made over 30 investments and is currently investing from a $175 million fund - Marwit Capital Partners II, L.P. Witte foresees continuing to focus on private equity for the next several years but development remains his “first love.”

Witte was elected a Cornell University Council member in 2006 for a term of 4 years.

To learn more about this year’s recent Case Studies in Urban Development event featuring the Thames Gateway Initiative visit the website at http://crp.cornell.edu/outreach/tgi/