On February 20th 2009, a UNC Kenan-Flagler team won the 2009 UNC Kenan-Flagler Real Estate Development Challenge, beating out 15 other teams from other national elite business schools.

Team members representing Kenan-Flagler in the Challenge were Joe Cannon (MBA ’09), Jon Harkey (MBA ’09), Dan Lienert (MBA ’09) and Alexandra Moravec (MBA & MCRP ‘09). UCLA’s Anderson School of Management won second place while Columbia Business School and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth tied for third place.

In the final round, the competing teams presented four very original ideas for an affordable housing development project in Spain. Some presentations even included sophisticated computer-generated flyovers of the development. At the end of the presentations, it was clear first place would be between UNC and UCLA. In a very close vote, UNC’s proposal prevailed, bringing home a first place finish for the second time since the competition’s inaugural year in 2005. Since 2005, the competition has grown in size (from 8 teams in 2005 to 16 this past year) and the teams have become much more competitive.

The 2009 Challenge included teams from the following schools:

• Columbia Business School
• Dartmouth College - Tuck
• Duke University - Fuqua
• Northwestern University - Kellogg
• NYU - Stern
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• UC Berkeley - Haas
• UCLA - Anderson
• UNC - Kenan-Flaglers
• University of Chicago - Booth
• University of Michigan - Ross
• University of Pennsylvania - Wharton
• University of Southern California - Marshall
• University of Texas - McCombs
• University of Virginia - Darden
• Vanderbilt University - Owen