ULI South Carolina’s Inaugural REDI Cohort celebrated their graduation from the 12-week intensive on March 28.

The three teams presented their plans for a Unity Park adjacent site to a “Dolphin Tank” of judges including Katy Davenport of CommunityWorks, Rob Howell of Avison Young, KJ Jacobs of McMillan Pazdan Smith and Tiffany Santagati of Greenville Housing Fund.

Each team worked with 3 mentors who shared their expertise in financing, development, and architecture/design. In addition, teams presented preliminary plans to lead mentors, Steve Navarro of The Furman Company and Lisa Lanni of McMillan Pazdan Smith in advance of their final presentations.

The ULI South Carolina Real Estate Diversity Initiative (REDI) helps emerging developers expand their skills and knowledge needed to create a successful real estate development.

Participants learn what it takes to put together a successful development through a combination of a curriculum including sessions covering each step of the development process and case study work. Throughout the course, the teams met both in and out of the classroom to produce a development plan, pro-forma, and marketing plan for the subject site. Upon graduation of the 12-week program, the 19-member cohort received complimentary memberships to ULI South Carolina.

The ULI South Carolina REDI program is very much a collaborative effort and would not have been possible without the support of Lead Sponsors, Greenville Housing Fund, CommunityWorks, as well as scholarship support from The Jolley Foundation, McMillan Pazdan Smith who hosted the first six sessions, and resource donation by Permar Inc. The program also relies on the generosity of ULI members and friends who donated their time as either a mentor or guest speaker during the 12 week program. See a full list of volunteer mentors and speakers here.

Applications for the 2024 REDI Greenville program will open later this summer and will be available on our website.