2021 ULI Fall Meeting Recap | What Our Kahan Fellows Have to Say

Each year, ULI Chicago’s Jeffrey Kahan Fellowship recipients attend the ULI Fall and Spring Meetings, gaining valuable insights from the senior CRE players who convene semi-annually to attend their US Product Council meetings. Our 2021-22 Kahan Fellows, Oliver Turner, Vice President, Acquisitions, WHI Real Estate Partners, and Smitha Vasan, Architect, Civic Projects attended the 2021 ULI Fall Meeting in Chicago and participated in the Industrial and Office Park Development Council (IOPC) meetings.

We’ll be featuring Smith and Oli’s experiences here over the next two weeks. Here’s what Smitha has to share:

Smitha Vasan

The Fall 2021 ULI Meeting was an incredible experience.  I was invited the first day to participate in the Women’s Development Collaborative at Omni Ecosystems near my home in Bronzeville. Afterward, I attended the ULI Lifetime Achievement Award Dinner at the Harris Theater Rooftop.  These two events were a great kick-off to the conference experience.  They gave me a chance to catch up with some individuals I already knew or had met recently, as well as to be introduced to new people.  This helped the conference overall feel less overwhelming.

The second day of the conference, I attended 3 sessions.  The first was a mini session about the basics of ADUs.  The session answered a lot of questions that I have about my own investments, as well as gave me some great contacts and resources to use moving forward.  The second session I attended was about the Obama Presidential Center.  This was an incredible way to get caught up on the progress of the project.  I really appreciated that they also gave an overview of the whole project in the context of the community.  The presenters discussed the creation of systems to generate economic pipelines for new suppliers and employees, rather than continuing to pull the same resources from the same suppliers.

The third session I attended was about Equitable Transit-Oriented Development.  They talked in depth about the 43 Green development, also in Bronzeville, and placed heavy emphasis on the community engagement process.  It was great to hear about the development of this project  with perspectives from the developer, financial team, as well as the city.

Day three was Product Council Day.  We were invited, as Kahan Fellows, to join the IOPC Blue Product Council.  This gave an extremely interesting view into the way deals are made with these larger Industrial and Office investments.  We heard about general market trends in Chicago, as well as details about specific office building transactions, such as Willis Tower and 150 N. Riverside. We also heard about some industrial products in places like Brooklyn, Virginia, and Chicago, just beyond O’Hare.

On the last day of the conference, I was able to attend three great talks.  One was around real estate strategies toward the Social Equity Imperative.  Developers and people adjacent to developers convened to discuss the different ways they had successfully developed with a larger goal in mind beyond profit.  They also talked about the launching of ULI’s Social Equity Resource Hub.

At lunchtime, I attended the Full Member lunch, which included an energizing presentation by Shola Richards.  Shola discussed the importance of self-care and resilience.  He gave many good tips around maintaining oneself in the face of tough times.  He also made himself quite vulnerable in sharing some of his most intimate life moments.  It was refreshing to hear him give tips about how we can all better care for ourselves and eliminate the negative energy in our lives.

The final talk I attended was called NIMBY to YIMBY.  Here they gave tips, with a case study as background, about how to engage a community and get everyone on board when a new use or product typology is introduced.

Overall, it was an incredible experience.  I met many new people and learned about many different facets of real estate technology.  I look forward to the Spring Meeting, where I hope to reconnect with people, make new connections, and continue to build on this knowledge I have gained.

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The Kahn Fellowship honors Jeffrey Kahan, a principal and director of the Investment Services group of Colliers International in Chicago, who passed away in June 2012.  As an active member of ULI and a member of the IOPC – Blue Flight, Kahan deeply believed in the value of the relationships formed and information shared through ULI.  He was a passionate Chicagoan and wanted his life’s work to make a positive impact on the City.