To celebrate its 10 year anniversary, the Real Estate Center honored nationally renowned real estate executive and philanthropist Douglas Crocker, who has been instrumental in the Center's growth, development and prestige.

Crocker was honored at a May 1 dinner attended by more than 360 friends, family and colleagues he's worked with throughout his lengthy career in the real estate industry. Peter Linneman, CEO, American Land Fund and KL Realty and longtime friend of Crocker, gave a keynote address on the current economic climate in real estate and talked about Crocker's impact on the industry.

"Doug is an extraordinary individual," Linneman said, "who has enriched the real estate industry as well as the lives of his friends. He is a leader, a teacher and a person of integrity and creativity. Doug is one of literally a handful of people who are responsible for the modern REIT."

Crocker, chairman of Pearlmark Multifamily Partners LLC, has more than 40 years of real estate experience. Crocker is a former trustee of DePaul University and founding member of the Driehaus College of Business' Real Estate Center, which he and his wife, Cynthia, endowed with the directorship in 2005.

Fr. Holtschneider, President of DePaul University, noted, "Doug Crocker has done much to ensure a future of promise for DePaul. Of all the exceptional contributions Doug has made to the University, this gift of scholarship support shows the great respect he and Cindy have for education and their desire to provide opportunity to students with need." 

The May 1 event kicked off fundraising efforts for the Douglas Crocker Endowed Scholarship Fund, which will be awarded to academically outstanding graduate real
estate students at DePaul.  The initial fundraising campaign brought in $554,600.

View and download photos from the event here.

   

Susanne Cannon, Chairman of the Department of Real Estate, served on the committee for the ULI Infrastructure Initiative that aims to promote more sustainable infrastructure investment choices and to foster an improved understanding of the
links between infrastructure and land use.  Cannon's participation involved a project that explored tolling and congestion pricing will interact with land use.  The project resulted in a report titled: When the Road Price is Right: Land Use, Tolls, and Congestion Pricing. 

Report Summary:
Tolling is being increasingly used in the United States to pay for new and revitalized transportation infrastructure and to provide road users with a reliable, congestion-free trip. When the Road Price is Right: Land Use, Tolls, and Congestion Pricing presents the results of workshops and interviews conducted with more than 35 land use and transportation experts who were asked how tolling and congestion pricing will interact with land use. This report also features five brief case studies from Florida, California, Colorado, Maryland, and Texas that illustrate the policy options for managing travel reliability, traffic volume, travel speeds, and revenue targets and for integrating tolling and transit service. They also explore how these new tolled facilities are being coordinated with land use and development.

The report concludes that the potential for these new types of tolling to influence land use is real. These new types of tolling, moreover, have the potential to interact with land use in ways that support growing market preferences for development in compact, mixed-use, walkable nodes. Achieving this objective, however, will require careful coordination with land use policies and other transportation services, include transit service. By paying attention now-through framing the issues for policy discussions, future research, and the development of best practices-Americans can more fully realize the opportunities to tie these new transportation choices to desired land use outcomes. 

Aries Capital, Inc. 

Associated Bank