Making History
in Milwaukee
ACRE Program helps minorities
break into the world of commercial real estate.
By Harvey Meyer
Milwaukeean
James Phelps occasionally pinches himslef. He's getting paid
to learn about and work in an industry he absolutely loves
— commercial real estate. Friends tease Phelps, who owns a
couple of small residential and retail properties, about
becoming the next real estate tycoon, but it's not out of
the realm of possibility. Phelps' career got a big boost
after he secured a spot in an innovative Marquette program
that offers opportunities for minorities in commercial real
estate. Through the Milwaukee Associates in Commercial Real
Estate program (ACRE), Phelps, an African-American, earned
a paid internship with a local firm, KBS Construction, and
soon wowed the company. It hired Phelps as an assistant project
manager months before the internship expired. “I'm planning
on staying with this firm long term and learning all I can
about project management,” says Phelps, who attends college
part time. “It's an opportunity of a lifetime.”
That's the kind of tribute Mark Eppli has
been hearing a lot lately. Eppli, Robert B. Bell, Sr., Chair
in
Real Estate
in
the College
of Business Administration, is the passionate and dynamic
professor who spearheaded ACRE's launch in September 2004.
As a former real estate investment analyst, Eppli is dispirited
by the paucity of minorities working in the $1.5 trillion
industry, which is where about half of America's wealth is
parked. One
widely quoted estimate is that less than 1 percent of commercial
real estate professionals nationally are African-American.
A packed commercial real estate breakfast two years ago at
Marquette illuminated the issue. An estimated 365 people
attended, but no minorities were reportedly present. That's
a glaring
shortcoming for Milwaukee, one of the America's most segregated
cities with steep wealth disparities between whites and minorities.
"It's a moral, business and community
imperative that we have more minorities in commercial real
estate,” Eppli says. “It's
a moral imperative because it's wrong to have so few real
estate transactions without minority participation. And it's
a business and community imperative because minority populations
are growing at rates that are several-fold faster than the
Caucasian population, and you need people to address their
real estate
needs in a culturally accommodating manner.”
Local businesses
and organizations have embraced ACRE's plan to jump-start
participation of African-Americans, Latinos, American-Indians,
Asian-Americans and others in the industry. The locally based
Helen Bader Foundation was interested enough to furnish a three-year
$90,000 grant to inaugurate the program.
"Milwaukee's Achilles' Heel is the central city and the lack
of opportunities for minority businesses and entrepreneurs,” says
Barry Mandel, president of the Mandel Group, a Milwaukee
developer and past ACRE industry partner. “So to participate
in a program that helps potential minority real estate developers
to, hopefully, rebuild the central city, that's important
to me and extraordinarily important for Milwaukee.”
Although
the 26-week program running from September through April
has been offered just twice, there are already clear
signs ACRE is filling a void. Eppli says he is stunned by
the number of applicants for each program and delighted with
industry
and community partners' passion for ACRE.
Says Ralph Hollman,
president and CEO of the Milwaukee Urban League, a community
partner: “I have to give Marquette
and especially Mark (Eppli) tremendous credit for taking
the leadership role to develop and support the program. It
has already demonstrated its success because it's giving
a large number of minorities opportunities in commercial
real estate they otherwise wouldn't have.”
As an attorney
practicing in commercial real estate, Andre' Wright has
more than a passing familiarity with the industry. But when
the New York City native who now lives in Whitefish Bay, a
suburb of Milwaukee, enrolled in ACRE, he garnered fresh industry
perspectives. He hopes to apply those insights to future
real estate investments.
Wright, who works for Whyte
Hirschboeck Dudek SC in downtown Milwaukee, especially relished
the visits to office and apartment
buildings, construction sites and retail properties. “We
got to see and experience what commercial real estate professionals
experience, as opposed to just reading something theoretical,” Wright
says. “Those out-of-classroom experiences were a tremendous
asset.”
Real-world applications are underscored in
ACRE through a rigorous curriculum that covers commercial property
management, development
and renovation, budgeting and investment analysis. That's
the successful formula Eppli devised when he and others
launched the nation's first commercial real estate program
for minority students, in Washington, D.C. Eppli won both local
and national awards for that groundbreaking program.
ACRE student applicants
are typically 25 to 35 years old and mostly African-Americans.
About two-thirds of the approximately
30 students are college graduates and several have graduate
degrees and business experience.
“The students are active and educated,” Eppli says. Many live or
have resided in blighted urban areas and are especially motivated to develop
central city neighborhoods. “They love this city and want to be part of
changing the urban terrarium.”
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