Los Angeles - Beverly Hills real estate developer Alan I. Casden has given $10.6 million to the University of Southern California. The gift will be used to endow the Alan Casden Dean's Chair at the USC Leventhal School of Accounting, create a major real estate forecast study within the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and endow the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and its directorship. Casden, whose company is one of the nation's largest developers of residential property, is a member of the USC board of trustees. His endowment of the dean's chair in accounting acknowledges the roots of his business career, which began when he graduated cum laude from the USC Leventhal School in 1968. The gift to support the Lusk Center will be used primarily to establish an annual real estate economics forecast that will measure the health of Southern California real estate and predict the market's directions. The Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast will include economic indicators, statistics and other market factors for residential and nonresidential real estate. The Lusk Center, whose students and faculty conduct real estate research, is operated jointly by the Marshall School of Business and the School of Policy, Planning and Development. A major portion of the gift will be used to support USC's 3-year-old Institute for the Study of Jews in American Life, which has fostered scholarship on the important position of Jews in American society, particularly in the West. Renamed, the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life will serve as a focal point for enhancing respect and mutual understanding among Jews and others of all faiths and creeds throughout the world. Casden is a member of the Beverly Hills Construction Project advisory committee and advisory boards of the National Multi-Family Housing Conference, Urban Land Institute and the California Senate Advisory Commission on Cost Control in State Government. His company, Casden Properties Inc., is located in Beverly Hills. A Southern California native, Casden is on the board of visitors of the Marshall School and has served on the board of advisors of the School of Accounting, which honored him in 1988 with its Distinguished Alumnus Award. ********** © 2000 Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved
