By Summer Dahlquist-Tookey
FivePoint donated $1 million to the Price School of Public Policy last week. Emile Haddad, the chairman and CEO of FivePoint, made the donation to encourage more conversation regarding sustainability.
Price Dean Jack Knott and Lusk Center Director Richard Green said the donation will help support faculty hires in the real estate program, which has grown in recent years. Price hopes to hire another senior faculty member in the program and will use the funds to help pay for this person’s research and other expenses.
“We now have a large undergraduate major in real estate and a master’s degree in real estate, so we’re hiring additional real estate faculty,” Knott said.
Green said the donation will fund student scholarships and a series of talks on sustainable communities.
“[This scholarship] will make it easier for a few students to afford to come to USC and study real estate,” Green said. “If we could get even one or two students that we otherwise couldn’t get because of cost, that’s a win.”
A portion of the gift will fund “disruptive dialogues,” which Knott said will focus on innovation within sustainable development.
“Students are going to be involved in this,” Knott said. “We’re going to hold a series of events that [Haddad] likes to call dialogues, with key stakeholders to change behavior and change policy.”
According to Knott, Haddad hopes the discussions will help start a larger conversation regarding climate change, sustainability and the environment between USC and surrounding communities to create change.
“[Haddad] wants to initiate a set of dialogues between the University and the development community and the government on what these communities would look like, what kind of regulations and zoning we would need to make this happen [and] what kind of mindset and goals private developers should have in order to achieve these kinds of sustainable communities,” Knott said.
Andy Kim, a sophomore studying real estate, expressed the importance of sustainability in real estate for himself and for Price.
“One of the public areas of public policy I feel that should be publicized more is actually sustainability,” Kim said. “I’m very happy to hear that [Haddad] is able to give such a generous donation for Price to really talk about sustainability more.”
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