Real Estate Students Put Development Experience Into Practice

Business students in faculty member Leland Rocchio’s Principles of Real Estate Development Course, not only learned the theory of real estate development, but they put their newfound knowledge into practice by formulating their own real estate development project.

Students were tasked with developing a comprehensive real estate development plan.
They teamed with mentors from the San Antonio South Texas Chapter of Certified Commercial Investment Members (CCIM). Mentors included Ernest Brown, Grubb & Ellis; Trove Gilbert, Koontz McCombs; Steve Monroe, CB Richard Ellis; Maggie Nigro, Grubb & Ellis; Nick Prater, 4M Realty Company; Tom Rohde, Rohde Ottmers Siegel; Jason Schnittger, Stream Realty; and Cynthia Stevens, Koontz McCombs.

Their final assignment consisted of presenting their projects to a panel of real estate leaders and competing for the CCIM/UTSA John Vogel Award Competition. The winning team was Billy Deiri, Nicholas de la Garza, Robert Garza, Eric Neumann, Javier Paredes and Chris Taubert. Their project was a retail center to be developed near Loop 1604 and Reed Road. The total project size was 116,200 square feet with an approximate cost of $14 million.

“We had a dynamic team that worked well together,” said Paredes.  “Without the help of our mentor, Steve Monroe, this wouldn’t have been possible.  We met with him weekly and sought advice from city planners, engineers, architects and developers to come up with our final product.”

Wendy Frost—

Please send your comments to: wendy.frost@utsa.edu