UA News

The UA-based center will promote social and environmental progress in real estate investing.

The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a grant to the University of Arizona's Responsible Property Investment Center, or RPIC, to help expand socially and environmentally responsible property investing in the United States. The $200,000 grant will help plan the expansion of the center at the UA.

The RPIC will use the grant to plan its strategy and growth for the next five to 10 years, convene the fourth national Responsible Property Investing Conference, update the RPIC communications strategy and Web site and develop a prototype Responsible Property Investment Index.

The RPIC will make its home in the UA College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

"Responsible Property Investing encompasses a variety of efforts to address global warming, smart growth, land conservation and community development in the course of profitable real estate investing," said UA Professor Gary Pivo, who will direct the center.

The center fills a major void in the investment landscape by bringing together leading property investors, managers and developers to share best practices, conduct crucial research and facilitate business relationships in the field of responsible property investing.

The RPIC was first established in 2006 as a joint project by the UA and the Boston College Institute for Responsible Investing, emerging from a series of meetings between real estate executives and socially responsible investors.

"We believe Responsible Property Investing will be a key leverage point in mobilizing resources to create more sustainable communities and move livable cities. This work will have close synergy with our initiatives in promoting sustainable and equitable transportation, in helping communities to build climate change resilience and in developing the impact investment sector," said Benjamin de la Pena, associate director for urban development at the Rockefeller Foundation.

"The RPIC helped define and articulate the strategy for our Corporate Social Real Estate Investment Program, so I'm very pleased to see this initiative will expand the center's capabilities," said Cherie Santos-Wuest, director of global social and community investments at TIAA-CREF and vice chair for the Responsible Property Investing Council at the Urban Land Institute.

"This is excellent news for the Responsible Property Investment Center, for the real estate industry in general and ultimately for all of us," said Paul McNamara, head of research at the real estate investment management firm PRUPIM and steering committee member for the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. "Dealing with carbon emissions in the built environment is essential to bringing climate change under control, and this very generous grant from such a far-sighted benefactor to such an expert and energetic institution will help enormously in promoting consciousness of the issues and what can be achieved in the sector."