... Turner's Southern California business unit, which covers Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, held its first program right after the 1992 riots as part of the Rebuild L.A. efforts. Turner shares this impetus with the USC Ross Minority Program in Real Estate at the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate. The first version of the program was offered in 1993, according to spokesman Matthew Faulkner.
"It was born out of the civil unrest in Los Angeles in 1992," Faulkner said. He said the program, which is named for Lusk Center Chairman of the Board Stan Ross, is geared for "nontraditional populations" in real estate, working in underserved markets or communities. "The idea was to train emerging talent in the urban core and teach them the development skills that they could reinvest back in the community," Faulkner said. The first version of the program was a two-week, in-residence summer session. It was joined by a commuter version held over a series of weekends in the winter. Most recently, the Lusk Center introduced a version of the minority program up in the Bay Area.
About 600 people have gone through the program, many of whom have gone on to build projects in the urban core, Faulkner said. Participants have included professionals directly involved in real estate, as well as related disciplines such as architecture, city planning, finance, law or brokerage...