January 1, 2016

As we launch the New Year, we extend our thanks for your support, membership and participation in ULI Colorado in 2015, and wish you a happy, healthy holiday and a prosperous New Year. We literally could not do our work without you.

Here are just a few highlights from this past year-in-review. We started the year with another successful Emerging Trends program, which drew 400 to the City Center Marriott to learn that Metro Denver’s ranking rose to number 4 among North American cities for real estate investment. That put everyone in a good New Year’s mood, which was tempered by the reality of the construction defects issue, which we addressed in a sold-out program at Denver Art Museum in February.

Our influence and programming continues to grow beyond metro Denver. We are up to 1,200 members (up 50% in three years) and hosted programs in Fort Collins (a sold-out Explorer series), Steamboat Springs and Winter Park, with advisory Building Healthy Places Workshops in Loveland and Pueblo. We are grateful for the support and partnership of the Colorado Health Foundation for these workshops. Another grant came from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support a ULI study of Federal Boulevard as a potential “Healthy Corridor.”

ULI Colorado now hosts four mentoring/leadership programs. The biggest is Partnership Forum for Young Leaders, which accepted 68 YLGs to work in small groups with mentors Kenneth Ho, Kirk Monroe, Chuck Perry and Julie Underdahl. In partnership with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and the Office of Economic Development, our Real Estate Diversity Initiative entered its seventh year with 42 protégés studying Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. We couldn’t have done it without mentors like Doug Elenowitiz, Mark Goldberg, Ismael Guerrero, and Arthur McDermott, with special contributions from area architects and past REDI grads. Our Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI) group hosted a successful View from the Top Event with the Denver Chamber’s Kelly Brough and others. Thanks to sponsor Bruce Etkin, we completed our first Student Scholars program with 25 participants from CU, CSU and DU.

Held in April, our second Impact Awards attracted 400 attendees to a banquet at the Seawell. In August we co-presented another sold-out program at Denver Art Museum; this time with AIA Colorado addressing ways to improve design quality in our current building boom. We finished out the year with a huge holiday program at the new Westin DIA.

Our TAPs advisory panels took us to Wheat Ridge, Denver’s Globeville neighborhood, and Northglenn. Coming up: Panels in Aurora, Beaver Creek, Cherry Creek, and Eagle.

Looking to 2016, our big event for 2016 will be the third TOD Marketplace, a kind of real estate trade show celebrating the opening of five FasTracks lines in 2016.

Again we truly appreciate your commitment in all its forms and look forward to working with you in 2016.

Sincerely,

Michael Leccese
Executive director
ULI Colorado