U.Va. creates new center for real estate

The University of Virginia has established a new Center for Real Estate and the Built Environment at the McIntire School of Commerce with a $10 million alumni gift, the university announced Tuesday.

The center, which will serve as a hub to bring together U.Va.’s commercial real estate curriculum with university research, is being launched with the donation from 1987 alumnus Robert M. White Jr., founder and former CEO of New York-based commercial real estate data firm Real Capital Analytics Inc.

White has made previous significant donations to Mr. Jefferson’s University. In December 2019, he gave $3 million to establish U.Va.’s Bicentennial Professorship in Real Estate Finance, which established the position held by Drew Sanderford, the real estate center’s new director. White’s $3 million gift was matched by another $2 million from the university’s Bicentennial Professors Fund, which provided faculty support for initiatives in real estate finance.

“We are enormously grateful for Bob’s partnership in helping us coalesce the university’s widespread academic pursuits in real estate under one umbrella,” McIntire School Dean Nicole Thorne Jenkins said in a statement. “The center will function as a pan-university real estate hub through which we will bring students and faculty from a variety of disciplines together with alumni and industry to support our academic programs, expand and strengthen our U.Va. and industry networks and support the production and dissemination of faculty and industry research.”

In September 2021, the McIntire School of Commerce added a real estate minor, which was offered for the first time this spring.