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Building Industry Forum Looks at Survival in 1990s

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More than 40 experts in real estate, investment, planning and finance will focus on the challenges of the 1990s in “How to Survive in a Changing Environment.”

This year’s Winning Real Estate Strategies Conference is co-sponsored by the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, the Center for Finance and Real Estate of UCLA’s John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management and the USC Law and Property Forum. The Los Angeles Times is a corporate sponsor.

The Los Angeles session will be held May 23 at the Los Angeles Westin Bonaventure, 404 S. Figueroa St., and in Orange County it will be held May 25 at the Anaheim Marriott, 700 Convention Way.

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“Buying land, targeting hot markets and designing competitive products must be relearned in a challenging era,” according to conference chairwoman Kathleen M. Connell, president of Connell & Associates.

“Given increasing competition for real estate transactions, it is essential for developers to understand the newest forms of joint ventures, interest rate protection strategies and public-sector financing,” she added. Connell is also chairwoman and managing director of UCLA’s Center for Finance and Real Estate.

Winston Elton of Goodkin Consulting/Peat Marwick will discuss strategies for dealing with growth in “the hot markets” on the peripheries of the Southland, where land is still available and relatively affordable.

In a panel on land acquisition options, Paul Griffin Jr. of Griffin Homes, Calabasas, will describe how the first-time home buyer has become an endangered species in Ventura County. Another land-acquisition panelist, William Blair Armstrong of O’Donnell Armstrong & Partners, Irvine, will demonstrate how skyrocketing increases in land values have made development a much more difficult business than it has been in the past.

Product design panelist Barry Berkus of Berkus Group Architects will advise real estate professionals to focus on “problem solving with architecture.”

James Drake of the Claremont Institute will discuss the impact of air quality plans on residential and commercial construction. Another environmental mandates panelist, Lindell Marsh of Siemon, Larsen & Marsh, believes that the air quality plan adopted in March by the Air Quality Management District “is potentially the most significant issue facing the development industry” in the 1990s.

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The fee is $195 for the 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. seminar and continuing education credit is offered for the Department of Real Estate, Certified Public Accountants (CPA) and Certified Financial Planners (CFP). Registration information: Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, (213) 250-8965.

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