Our Runstad Department of Real Estate student team has won the 2024 NAIOP Real Estate Challenge!
The UW team of Mehak Agarwal, Vivek Sharma, Sterling Wagner, Jolin Fang, Alex Wilson and Austin Chang coached by Hal Ferris and Runstad Advisory Board member Tejal Pastakia beat out one other UW team (Connor Johnson, Roushan Kwatra, Jackie Burkett, Henry Dwyer, Vy Le, Udit Kumar, Ciara Laney) and two teams from Portland State University. Unofficially the second team of MSRE students came in second.
The 2024 Pacific Northwest Challenge was to develop an adaptive reuse project in the 1200 5th Ave office building known locally as the IBM or Benihana building. The building was originally designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who went on to design the World Trade Center in NYC and has historical significance.
The winning UW proposal proposed conversion to a multifaceted mixed-use building including retail, a 132 key hotel and 188 apartment market-rate units at a total development cost of $191M while generating A levered IRR of 18%.
We want to sincerely thank Hal Ferris, Tejal Pastakia, Al Levine, Jeff McCann, and the many others that contributed their time and service supporting our students in this competion.