MRED Students Travel to ULI San Francisco

This year's ULI Fall Meeting took place in San Francisco from October 5-8. The Colvin Institute supported three students to attend: Travis Wierengo, Laura Burns, and Jingjing Liu, with on the ground support from MRED Assistant Director, Tanya Bansal. Colvin Advisor, Bill Bonstra of Bonstra/Haresign Architects hosted the group for drinks and dinner one evening, and ULI provided many networking opportunities as well as an outstanding series of educational sessions documented by the students. UMD was represented in the main hall by a "huge" banner of the Hines 2015 winning team from UMD. Congrats again to Sebastian Dern andDan Moreno-Holt, the two MRED and MRED/MARCH members of that team.

The conference kicked off with a day full of tours that brought the students and staff up close and personal with some of the cutting edge projects under way in the San Francisco Bay Area. In between attending informative sessions and even a key note address from former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the MRED students ran an informational booth for the Colvin Institute. Many of the sessions focused on how tech and innovation from Silicon Valley is, and will be, affecting real estate moving forward. The head of Google real estate discussed the kinds of amenities Google is looking for to support a very large workforce in the Bay area and the need for more affordable housing.