$4 Million Gift Will Enhance Kenan-Flagler Real Estate Center

Posted on Sept. 22, 2007

Leonard W. Wood ’72 (MBA) has committed $4 million to the Center for Real Estate Development (CRED) at the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Wood, formerly a principal of Trammell Crow Residential, is a founding member of Wood Partners LLC, an Atlanta company that develops, constructs and acquires multifamily rental communities.

Wood’s gift will allow for enhancement of the school’s MBA real estate program and expansion of CRED, which is part of the school’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Launched in 2001, CRED focuses on education, research and outreach in real estate development to help business leaders create and manage property in ways that ensure positive impact and sustainable results.

The $4 million gift, which includes a matching $1 million from Wood’s business partners, will establish The Leonard W. Wood Foundation for Excellence in Real Estate. The gift will support the recruitment of faculty and enable the hiring of a new executive director for the center. Kenan-Flagler will rename CRED the Leonard W. Wood Center for Real Estate Development.

Kenan-Flagler Dean Steve Jones ’74 said the gift will be transformative. “What Leonard and his partners are doing will enable the real estate program to rise to its full potential. It will transform a great program into a national leader. Its contribution to our school and students will be immense.”

In 2001, Wood, along with Steven D. Bell ’67, endowed a real estate professorship with a $2 million gift.

Wood’s gift is a capstone to the business school’s achievement of its $180 million goal within the University’s $2 billion Carolina First fundraising campaign, which began with a three-year “silent” phase in July 1999 before it was kicked off officially in 2002. It concludes on Dec. 31, 2007.

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 Related coverage is available online:

• Carolina First Reaches $2 Billion on Landmark Public Health GiftNews report from February 2007
• Carolina First Fundraising Goal Raised to $2 Billion News report from October 2005
• UNC Breaks Fundraising Record
  News report from July 2004

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