A few months later, Banner got his chance, when he heard about a new program at USC to help rebuild South Los Angeles. He jumped at the opportunity, even though it meant passing up a job offer at a bank.
Banner enrolled in the inaugural Summer Program in Real Estate at USC, a kind of graduate-level executive education course in community rebuilding spearheaded by USC professor Dr. David Dale-Johnson, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and other urban community groups.
In its early form, the program aimed to take people living in the inner city and teach them how to help their struggling neighborhoods.
"These were pretty much urban wastelands and we felt it very important to go out to those folks and give them the tools to help rebuild their communities," said program co-director Robert Bridges.
From Banner's first class in 1993, the Ross Minority Program in Real Estate has gone on to train more than 300 public agency professionals, industry developers and entrepreneurs, many of whom have flourished with their own mixed-use, housing and commercial developments. The graduates have built schools, created parks and started development companies.
Organizers call it the only program of its kind in the nation.
"It really is a training ground," said Don Spivack, deputy administrator for the CRA and a member of the program's advisory board. "Having a mentor really helps."
Even after a dozen years, the intense two-week course - part of USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate and the Marshall School of Business - is still attracting young professionals who want to help their communities. About 30 students participate in the two-week summer and eight-day winter courses.
"We are looking for people who have ambition, who have drive and who have a community commitment but who are otherwise excluded from our other degree programs," Bridges said. "The focus of the program is not educating minorities as much as focusing on development issues in the excluded areas."
It's not a course for novices. Tuition is $3,200, and candidates are recruited mostly by word of mouth. The result is an eclectic group of students: developers, bankers, appraisers, affordable housing sponsors, lawyers, doctors and engineers all have participated. "We had a railroad conductor. We had a football player," said Stan Ross, a USC senior fellow and former vice chairman of real estate industry services for Ernst & Young, who endowed the program. Participants in the recently completed summer session came from as far away as Rome and Tel Aviv.
Pico Case Study
The course is broken into two parts. The first half focuses on the nuts and bolts of urban renewal. That means lectures on urban economics and finance, design, architecture, market analysis, real estate law and investment modeling.
Participants are then divided into five or six teams, where they work together to decide the best use for a selected plot of land. It's a kind of case study in concrete, as they usually work with an actual property owner.
While the program initially focused on South Los Angeles, it has expanded to include other parts of the city, including Downtown. A recent seminar, for example, dealt with a batch of Arts District warehouses. In that case, Bridges said participants had to look at real-world issues such as working with community members.
The recently concluded case study focused on land in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter, a mostly residential area west of Downtown.
The selected site on Pico Boulevard between Normandie and Vermont avenues is peppered with a mix of businesses, manufacturing buildings and commercial sites.
Each team came up with a slightly different idea for the parcel, although most revolved around creating a mixture of retail and subsidized and market-rate housing. Ultimately they took the best ideas from the individual groups and created a single proposal for a large mixed-use development. They took that to the property owner.
Bridges said the landowner, who did not wish to be identified, had similar plans for the parcel. "So they came pretty close to what will probably be the actual solution," Bridges said.
The real-world situations create a pressure-packed environment for the students. "Even as I speak I'm thinking of cap rates and rate of return," said Steve Lamar during a June 28 dinner for the program's summer course, which ran June 20 to July 1. Even with the stress, Lamar, an assistant project manager for Swinerton Builders, said it's worth the experience. "I have nothing but good things to say."
The program now has a long track record. Banner went on to become president and CEO of Los Angeles LDC, a Downtown-based nonprofit community finance company that helps fund projects in recovering urban areas. Earlier this month, he started his first term as chair of Downtown-based [ULI] Los Angeles, a district council of the Urban Land Institute.
At the reception, Banner credited the Ross seminar with his success.
"I met a great number of people in '93," Banner said, adding that those early connections provided the framework for his career in community redevelopment. "It has allowed me to chase a dream