Ali Nazar: [00:00:00] You’re listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 fm, University of California and listener supported radio. And this is Berkeley Brainwaves coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at KALX, exploring all the great stories coming out of the UC Berkeley campus. And today with me, I have two, well, one student, one former student, Omeed Ansari and Harrison Haigood.
What’s up guys? How you doing?
Omeed Ansari: Thanks for having us, Ali. Appreciate it.
Ali Nazar: So, Omeed and Harrison were part of a competition. That was this year, right?
Omeed Ansari: Yeah.
Ali Nazar: Okay. We’re here in August of 2025 that helped Cal win an innovative housing competition for affordable housing. I dunno if I said that right.
Omeed Ansari: Close.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. Um, and so we’re here today to talk about the competition and what you guys came up with. Um, so my first question for you guys is just, my understanding is that this was an interdisciplinary team of students at Cal. [00:01:00] So what, how did you guys all get involved in or just excited about affordable housing innovation?
Harrison Haigood: For sure. I, I could start off. So I have worked in affordable housing in New York City for close to four years now. I started out at a community nonprofit, focused on housing and health. And then from there, um, I interacted with a lot of affordable housing companies and landlords and got really excited about learning how it gets built at scale.
Um, so for the past three years I’ve been working for an organization that does, more kind of formal traditional LIHTC affordable housing development. And, being originally from the Bay Area, um, I wanted to, kind of. Level up my education and get oriented with a school that I thought had great resources in real estate.
And, and Berkeley does have that. And during my first year, this is one of kind of the premier [00:02:00] opportunities in affordable housing at UC Berkeley, so, applied for the team and was lucky to, to get a spot.
Ali Nazar: Okay. And you mentioned LIHTC, what is that?
Harrison Haigood: Low income housing tax credits.
Ali Nazar: Okay.
Harrison Haigood: Um, it’s a federally funded program
Ali Nazar: And it’s one of the, the kind of greatest success stories of affordable housing in America for the last, you know, what, four decades or something, right?
Harrison Haigood: Yeah.
Ali Nazar: Okay, cool. And Omeed, how’d you get involved?
Omeed Ansari: So, I, my background’s more in the housing policy space. I was based in DC prior to coming out to Berkeley. I’m originally from the East Coast. Um, but, I was in DC doing housing policy work and decided I wanted to be more on, see the buildings get built rather than just advocate for more affordable housing.
So I said, decided to come to Berkeley to the Masters of Real Estate Development Design program here. I didn’t know anything about development, but I learned a lot and I knew I wanted to focus on affordable housing, so I took a ton of classes. Like that housing policy class taught by Ben Metcalf, Affordable Housing Finance by Anne Silverberg and Alice Talcott was able to get a deep dive [00:03:00] into, low income housing tax credits amongst other things.
And I applied for this team ’cause this is one of the competitions is a great way to learn. And it was originally, ran by HUD, which we can get to more in detail, but changed. Lot, a lot happened in the year we did this. Yeah. Um, but I applied for this and was able to work with, we didn’t get to pick our teams. We were just assigned teams. We all applied. And, I got to work with Harrison, who is at Haas. Um, my classmate Yameen, who was also on our team, she, she was in then my program, she comes from an architect background, so she brought in those skills. Bala, who was in the massive city planning program, brought his architect and city planning experience to us. And then Chelsea, who’s also, a Master’s of Public Policy student, she was able to bring the policy and, side of it all, and the team came together. And I keep saying this in all of our engagements that this is the best team I worked with throughout my year at Berkeley. We were friends. We were talking about having a dinner party in a couple weeks, so I’m very, and it was cool to [00:04:00] just get everyone together and learn about everyone’s background and just, and ended up being successful. So.
Ali Nazar: Cool. Okay. So from what I’m understanding, the competition was kind of marketed through multiple channels on campus.
Omeed Ansari: Mm-hmm.
Ali Nazar: You guys all individually applied and then they put you together?
Omeed Ansari: Correct. And there were,
Ali Nazar: Was it the Terner Center that runs it or
Omeed Ansari: A mix of Terner Center. And then at the BREC, which is a Berkeley Real Estate Club on campus, they run it together and you just apply online for survey.
And there’s a lot of engagement this year. So there are two teams. Yeah, Team Blue, which was our team, and then Team Gold, which actually came in second place in this competition. So Berkeley sweep. Go Bears!
Ali Nazar: Nice.
Omeed Ansari: Um, so, but yeah, so we’ve just applied and I think they wanted to assess, like, I think both teams are rel relatively, even in the, where people’s backgrounds were and the, like, what they wanted to focus on.
So I think successful teams overall.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. And really modeling the, the real world where you need an interdisciplinary approach to such a massive project. Mm-hmm. Um, so really wanted to learn a little bit more about. [00:05:00] So this competition, like what are the rules of the competition and what, how, what’s it called and how did, you said the HUD thing, so like, maybe tell our listeners a little bit about the history of this competition.
Omeed Ansari: Yeah. So for about the past, I’m gonna say 15, 12, 15 years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development based, federal, federal agency, ran the competition and it’s called the Innovation and Affordable Housing Competition, Affordable Housing Planning and Design Competition.
And each year, a housing authority is selected where they provide a complex they have, they want to see redeveloped. Um, and this year HUD partnered with the Palm Beach County Housing Authority for Dyson Circle Apartments, which is in unincorporated, West Palm Beach . And then in this proposal put like an RFP, sort of say a request for proposal, they task students to come up with a redevelopment of the public housing complex.
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Omeed Ansari: And usually it’s run by HUD and it was run by HUD up until [00:06:00] mid-February. Um,
Ali Nazar: What happened in February? What changed?
Omeed Ansari: I don’t know, maybe new President (laughter) but, so we had, it’s funny, we, so we can get more into details of the competition, but we submitted our proposal for round one at the end of July, end of end of January, and then in mid-February we were told the competition got canceled.
Ali Nazar: Hmm.
Omeed Ansari: And we were all very, very upset ’cause we had spent so much time and energy on it. Yeah. And then for about,
Ali Nazar: It’s been going on for like 10 years or something?
Omeed Ansari: 10, yeah. 10 plus years. And then in mid, so it was as dead in the water for a couple months. And I think people like, some of our professors and other people in this space wanted to see it get revived again. And in mid-April, early May, we got word that the Council of Large Public Housing Agencies, amongst other partners, were gonna revive the competition, provide – there’s a cash prize, for the winners – were able to bring that back and allow the top four teams because teams were already, like the housing authority already were close to selecting the top four teams, and then
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Omeed Ansari: When HUD used to run it, you [00:07:00] would go to DC, you would go to the site, see the site, talk to the housing authority staff, talk to residents, and then you would fly up to DC a month later to present.
But they were able to just present online and then we, it was at the top of our teams presented online over Zoom, and then our team, as we were the winners, got the fly to Atlanta where CLPHA was having their latest, meeting and we presented there. So, but it was a whirlwind of a, of a story to get to where we ended up, but we’re very grateful for all the partners and professors who helped bring the competition back.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. And, um. So in, in the competition, they basically, so this is a, you mentioned the housing authority. Just so for our listeners who don’t know, every county basically has a housing authority. Some cities have housing authorities. But this is where a lot of affordable housing is administrated in the United States. Um, and then you said this is a LIHTC development, which generally means the rents are restricted to a certain demographic. Right? What’s the demographic for this project?
Harrison Haigood: [00:08:00] Yeah. So. This is a complicated project in the sense that, we have existing residents, who occupy a little over a hundred, um, apartments. And as it’s a three phase, project. So that first phase, we would focus on, making sure that we are matching the rents and the restrictions, that those residents who lived in previously public housing authority property, um, will, will then, see the, those rents in the new redevelopment. And then there will be an additional, um, about 200 units, 200 apartments,
Ali Nazar: New units, new units that be constructed,
Harrison Haigood: That will be constructed
Ali Nazar: Today. How many are there at Dyson Circle?
Harrison Haigood: 134 units.
Ali Nazar: Okay. So you guys at the end of your project proposal would be 300 something.
Harrison Haigood: Yeah. So, so to answer the question [00:09:00] directly, um, those housing, um, a authority apartments, that were previously existing, those folks are low income and extremely low income, which we see as 50% and below, average median income of that, um, Palm Beach area.
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Harrison Haigood: And then the new construction units, which will be, more mixed income. So we’ll provide a range from 100% AMI, down to that 50%.
Ali Nazar: Okay.
Harrison Haigood: Um, and as part of the project, we had to put together three phase underwriting and financing that kind of outlined to the, to the exact apartment what it would look like.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. That’s what I wanted to ask. Next, I wanted to just, let everybody know we’re talking to Omeed Ansari and Harrison Haigood. They are members of Team Blue. It’s a, um, team that was formed here at UC Berkeley to, um, compete in this HUD, well was HUD sponsored affordable housing innovation [00:10:00] competition this year, 2025. Took home the first prize for Cal. Um, you’re listening to Berkeley Brainwaves here on KALX Berkeley, 90.7 fm. I’m your host, Ali Nazar.
So these kinds of projects are really massive and there’s a lot of different aspects to it. Um, you know, there’s the redesigning of the buildings and the, you know, um, proposal for construction. There’s, um, all the, and I, I would guess that includes all the landscaping and all the grounds. Then there’s community engagement and, resident services, which I, when reading about your project was a big part of the proposal, but then there’s maybe the hardest part is the financing of all this. So, um, would love to learn a little bit more about how you guys, in such a huge project like this, how did you attack making a proposal of this scope?
Omeed Ansari: Yeah, um, it was not easy and you had, like, Harrison and I led the financing side of the project and [00:11:00] we, we understood, we, like, we, what we did from the beginning was always engage with the local community. So on the community engagement side, we talk to like a local anthropologist, , local GC, general contractors, local developers, just to understand what is the market in Florida, especially in West Palm Beach. Here in California, everything’s more expensive, takes a bit more time. So we, we, every time we would do a pro, build out a pro forma, which is a way to build out the finances for this, for this type of development, Harrison and I were like, oh my God, this is so cheap compared to what we deal with in California.
And so, um, in our financing here, we decided to do, I think it had to start in the design phase where we were like, okay. Our finance thing was more towards the tail end because we’re like, how are we gonna redevelop this prop, this site? And we came up with one building being phase one, and that would be more where all the current residents would be able to relocate.
It’s on the higher, it’s a higher, the most stories, six stories I would say, and allowed everyone to relocate there. Um, and then we would split the other two phases would have about, , both two buildings each, around every, every [00:12:00] phase around a hundred units. And then from there we looked at the financing and we decided, um, we thought 4%…
So, in low income housing tax credit, it’s a 4% deal and 9% deal and 4% deals -we can go to the granular later, but 4% deals provide more money for bigger projects, provide money for bigger projects. And so we decided to use federal funding, , when low income housing tax credits, some county funding as well because Palm Beach County recently put out of affordable housing bond measure to help finance local, affordable housing.
We would use traditional debt and then some other, state funding, like the state of Florida’s affordable housing funding mechanism. And then we’d plug and play with some other financing mechanisms throughout, like both on the federal, , level, the state level, as well as also like other community engagements, like a community development financial institution, CDFIs, as well as other, we like when it, because it was a very focus on, disaster resilience. That was the theme for [00:13:00] this year is we were leaning into FEMA funds. Um, but in between us submitting for phase one and submitting for phase two, a lot of those financing mechanisms have gone away.
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Omeed Ansari: With the new administration’s policy. So when we presented for phase two, we came up with a lot of alternative strategies, mitigation strategies to come up with certain other funding sources that could help fill the gap.
I think a lot of affordable housing is gap financing. It’s like we, you gonna, there’s always financing missing when it comes to affordable housing. So we went through Harrison and I, and like over a week went through an extensive due diligence search on like, all right, could new market tax credit fill in for like the community center?
Or could we use, some other HUD mechanism there and we’d made sure that other, like, other services needed to be covered, but we went, it was an extensive search when it came to the financing side. Harrison’ll have more to add.
Harrison Haigood: Yeah, no, I, I, I’d love to give our teammates some credit too, especially Chelsea, who, you know, first and foremost we wanted to talk to folks in the local community, and [00:14:00] understand what stakeholders wanted and build it out from there.
Um, and, we, we heard a couple different things and we did a couple different things. One of those was around community gardens. So we wanted to build out more, accessible and usable green space for local residents. There’s a, a very large number of young people and children, with families, with children among the current residents.
And finding ways to get them engaged within their local community, within walking distance was really important to them and important to us. So we not only created a community garden, but also created kind of a jobs training program that would be linked to that garden. And in addition, we’ve thought a lot about the community space. So we built two buildings, two large community centers, that we took into account lots of resident feedback, um, when putting those architectural plans together. And then lastly, I’d [00:15:00] say there is a home ownership component to this project. So we connected with the local chapter of Habitat, um, and that, allowed us to, think about what does, um, what is life like, what does life look like past renting for these residents?
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, um, as part of that, process, I think just to give our listeners a, a sense of the scope of a project like this, you talked about Omeed gap financing, um, and it might be shocking to hear like how complicated the financing stacks are for such projects. Well, how, how, how much of a budget was needed for this?
Like for your guys’ plan, you put forth like, let’s get a sense of the scale of the project.
Omeed Ansari: I think for total, pulling up our numbers here, a total project cost would’ve been about, um, a 100 and… so phase one was 65 million, which was about 147 units. Phase two, around 49 million for 98 units. And phase three, about 93 for 42 [00:16:00] million.
So I’d say about 150 ish if the math, if I’m not mistaken, around that range. Yeah. And. That the average development cost there, like per unit in the, where was 400,000 range per unit, which is in line maybe in Florida. When we spoke to local developers there, that was in line there and California, it’s a bit higher than that.
Um, but we, we went through that phasing process and we used it, like I said, all these different financing mechanisms, but it was, it’s an ex, it’s gonna be an extensive project and I think the housing authority, when they put out this proposal, they want, they want this to become real. They want this project to actually happen.
And we spoke to the local housing authority. When we met with them in person Atlanta, they were like, when we do redevelop this, we want you guys to come and like present it through local, like potential developers. And I think costs could definitely change ’cause they’re more in touch there. But, I would say this was more in line and when we got feedback from the, from the judges and from the local housing authority, they, they thought the pricing was correct.
Just different mechanisms maybe. But it was, [00:17:00] it’s gonna be an expensive project. Affordable housing, just ’cause of all the regulations that are signed to certain funding sources can end up being more expensive than, traditional market rate. Depends, yeah.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. It’s, it’s such an unfortunate fact Yeah.
That we live with, which is that you’re trying to create housing for people who need it, and it’s more expensive than creating it for people who could kind of live wherever they want. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a big bummer, but that’s the world we live in.
Omeed Ansari: Mm-hmm.
Ali Nazar: And it’s great that you guys are trying to solve this problem.
Um. So we talked a little bit about, um, some of the, the aspects of the proposal. So, and like just a sense, like how big of a proposal is like, like your, your submission to the competition. Was it like a 100 pages or 10 pages or like
Harrison Haigood: Yeah.
Ali Nazar: Sounds like a lot of work.
Harrison Haigood: Yeah. I, I can speak to it. So what we provided was the financing on one hand, which we’ve talked about, and then some architectural renderings, um, in kind of a presentation form, in addition [00:18:00] to a narrative.
So you could think of it as, Omeed and I working on, um, the financing, which it was a three phase project over, you know, close to 10 years. So something like that, um, type of underwriting can take, you know, tens of, you know, it could take hundreds of hours.
Ali Nazar: Yeah.
Harrison Haigood: Um, depending on how detailed you want to get into it.
And the architecturals are the same things. So, you know, our, our, our architects on our team did a really great job at, being efficient with putting together great renderings for our presentation. And then Chelsea, as our public policy masters, was able to craft a really compelling narrative based on all the conversations she had with local stakeholders.
Omeed Ansari: But what’s funny is we don’t have a ton of, like, we can only submit a 4 page 4 page report for the renderings, a 5 page narrative, and then the performa has to be, it’s, it was like 4 tabs that HUD wanted. So we weren’t able to express everything we wanted [00:19:00] in phase one. It was very like, okay, we have to narrow this down. How do we just put the most important pieces out there? So you can’t give all your details. You have to just make sure, highlight what’s important.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. Wow. That’s, that’s hard to distill such a complicated thing into a very succinct presentation. What would you guys say is like, I’ll start with you, Harrison, what was your favorite aspect of the proposal? Like, what did you feel, what like was the wow factor for you when you’re like, okay, this is gonna differentiate us?
Harrison Haigood: Yeah, I mean, I, I really liked the kind of home ownership component. I thought that was really important, to have and to also create, and think about creating a pathway to home ownership for the existing public housing residents.
And while that’s not a easy process, because of kind of vouchers and subsidy and how, um, things are layered onto apartments, which is probably too detailed for this conversation, but it’s, it’s not easy, [00:20:00] um, to, to move residents, um, straight into home ownership. But we started to really contemplate that and think about what that path would look like.
And that wealth building component is something that I was excited about for the existing residents, um, who had gone through a tough time, um, with, I, I’ll speak broadly about public housing in the United States.
Ali Nazar: Yeah.
Harrison Haigood: Which has been defunded, um, historically and has put, those communities and those residents, um, major at a majority in tough living conditions.
Ali Nazar: Yep.
Harrison Haigood: And, tougher infrastructure in terms of apartments. So I’m most excited about providing those new, um, great apartments for those existing residents and then providing potentially town homes for them, to work, to, to own.
Ali Nazar: Cool. Super cool. Very innovative. What about you Omeed?
Omeed Ansari: And I think for me it was, I think the circular economy we tried to form on site. As Harrison [00:21:00] mentioned, we had the community gardens and then in the those community spaces we also had like test kitchens where the kids could, it was a job. There’s a lot of activities we provided for the young adults on, on the site. About 60% of the site has, are under the age of 70, are under the age of 17.
And so we created the circular economy where kids could learn how to do farming and gardening and that. And then some kids could learn about the cooking and we provide the test kitchen for them. And we’d work with local partners and nonprofits to help engage with that. And then, because a lot of the folks on the site are elderly or disabled, that food they made could be served to them later in. So it creates the circular economy. And we made sure that, , we wanted a sense of community. We were able to, I was able, we were able to reach out to some current residents and who were able to tell us, like what, when I, when we asked them, what do you wanna see on site?
It’s like, I was like, is there a sense of community? And the answer was no. Throughout all their interviews. And we wanted to create a system where it allowed kids to have things to do where the parents are nearby. We create, or some of our design aspect, we created like a veranda for like [00:22:00] patios, like outside the apartments. That allows for a lot of social engagement there. And so I think I’m was most proud about how. We try to create like social resiliency throughout the site. ‘Cause it’s like Harrison just mentioned, public housing is underfunded. So if we can provide systems and places to keep the kids occupied and have places for adults to learn and gather these skills, it’s a great way.
And I think a lot of our, I think Bala and Yameen did a great job on disaster resiliency as well. Like we, it’s Florida dealt two massive hurricanes last fall and there was a theme of the project. So we had made sure that both the design wise and in our buildings, everything was disaster resilient.
And I think we also had two community centers that were also serve as storm shelters and learn from local developers on how to, how to have that dual, dual, purpose. Um, but. I, I think Harrison, I think the financing and the home ownership is a key piece, but I think having this all together, both the social resiliency and disaster resiliency is what I was the most proud of with our, with our project.
Ali Nazar: Cool. Okay. Well, [00:23:00] how about, um, what of this process, what did you learn the most? What was like the biggest kind of like takeaway for you from this process? We’ll start with you Omeed.
Omeed Ansari: Um, how I think how I’m now I work in this space, but you have to, it’s interdisciplinary how inter like only as a developer you only know so much, but you have to rely on the architect.
You have to rely on the urban design or you have to rely on the policy people to just come together. And I think this project is embodies that in one, it’s only a school project at the end of the day. But I realize how dependent you are on other people when it comes to development like this. And I think that’s the beauty of like real estate and housing developments, like all these people care about this one mission, especially in affordable housing, that they will work hard and get there. And I think our team had that passion and it was, it was interesting. We had to engage, like we’re not from Florida, we’re not from West Palm Beach.
Like we have to do a lot of due diligence. And I think that’s the most important thing when it comes to development. You need to learn the community you’re building in. And we made sure that [00:24:00] we, our, our advisor, Lydia Tan, who’s a professor here at, at Berkeley and also is someone who’s in real estate business in Bay Area for a long time.
She, at one point she told us, you guys gotta start coming up with a plan. You guys can’t do all this research. She’s like, start building a plan and
Ali Nazar: Yeah
Omeed Ansari: So, but it, it, we made sure to learn so much about the community, us both Team Blue and Team Gold before we were able to actually start. ‘Cause we didn’t wanna come up with something that didn’t match or didn’t work with the neighborhood.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. So, how about you, Harrison?
Harrison Haigood: Yeah, I think it’s rare that you truly start something from scratch, and in a highly localized business like real estate. So for us to really go through the exercise with some discipline of what would it be like to build in Palm Beach, Florida, which no, none of us had any experience with, um, I thought was, what I kind of learned the most, especially in the financing and underwriting. Um, you know, in, in my experience in the business, usually you have some sort of comparable property out [00:25:00] there, and of course we did our, do our research and find that. Um, but it felt like, a really refreshing experience to, to really build something from scratch, um, with a team and, and kind of come in with a beginner’s mindset.
And I do hope that what we provided, does provide, does, does allow, um, the local community to maybe think differently about how to, um, how to improve the space. Because, we, we weren’t coming in with kind of preconceived notions.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. I mean, they got all this kind of free. Great thinking from how many teams were involved?
Omeed Ansari: I think about 15 to 20.
Ali Nazar: 15. From all over the country.
Omeed Ansari: All over the country. Like the other finalists with the two Berkeley teams, Yale and then University of Kansas.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. Okay. Well, go Bears.
Omeed Ansari: Go Bears always.
Ali Nazar: Um, but, um, it’s, it’s interesting that, you know, you’re talking about how big, the process was just to make the proposal, but like, to see [00:26:00] something like this through to the end and actually realizing it is like, it’s like a decade long process. I mean, it’s really, the scope of these projects is so massive.
Omeed Ansari: We framed it for about a eight year project timeline. I, we, that was something actually we got some, feedback on from the judges as well as when we present Atlanta, where they, others could think it go a little sooner.
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Omeed Ansari: But again, we come from California, so we,
Ali Nazar: We don’t have CEQA one anymore. Right. Yeah. Whatever we want.
Omeed Ansari: That is true. But um, but yeah, so
Harrison Haigood: Yeah, and I mean, what I’ll say too is, um, we always think about, um construction and, and building buildings as the construction time, which we’re saying is eight years.
Ali Nazar: Yeah.
Harrison Haigood: But pre-development
Ali Nazar: Yep.
Harrison Haigood: For anyone in the business knows that that can span anywhere from a couple years to five plus years.
Ali Nazar: Yep.
Harrison Haigood: And, um, especially in affordable housing, that’s, that’s where the, the, the time in the work really, um, really matters in a lot of ways. So, I, I just wanna say that, yeah [00:27:00] what we would hope to get this done in eight years once we’re ready, but this will definitely be a decade plus long process.
Ali Nazar: Yeah. Yeah. So how, how, like conceivable is it that your proposal will actually be what happens or will inform what happens like. Yeah. How are you guys feeling about that?
Harrison Haigood: I, I, I think I, we can confidently say that it will inform what will happen, um, if and when the process is, is started by the housing authority. Um, I think that, all of these processes are really led by the, the owner, which is the housing authority in this case. So, we’re so lucky to have had really a, a, a welcomed introduction, to the community and, and, um, by the housing authority. So hopefully, there’ll be some level of of collaboration there.
Omeed Ansari: Yeah. Yeah. We weren’t able to visit the site and they were actually the most [00:28:00] upset about that. They were like, we wanted you guys to come and see it and talk to everybody. And I, we, we, they were like, if you ever do come, do let us know. Like, even if it’s just one of you on vacation, like we’d love to just have you.
But on that side, I think, we, in the time we came up with phase one and phase two, so much a change in the like funding scheme. And so we understand financing most likely, most, most likely may not be the most accurate anymore.
Ali Nazar: Yeah.
Omeed Ansari: And when they do get started on this and say a year, two years, who one knows that might be the most outta date, but I think we created a good structure around it.
I do think the design and the social, like the both the community engagement aspect as well as design is very feasible. I, I think Bala and Yameen came up with a very realistic, approachable design concept where, and the site itself is about a couple acres where we would build higher up closer to where it’s more commercial. And then as we, as it got more west to the site where more single family homes, there’s a lot more, two, three story buildings. So I think the design was very intentional and I think that that for sure could be applied to the actual project. [00:29:00] Um, but I would love to see, I would love to see this project come through and I know so many different circumstances and other things, objectives come into play, but I do think there’s a lot of aspects of Mango Commons.
I think maybe I’m gonna say one of the reasons we might have been the winners is how realistic we were.
Ali Nazar: Mm-hmm.
Omeed Ansari: We saw other design proposals and they were very good and ambitious, but, how feasible they were, was I think where we, we try to make ours a little bit more feasible, more realistic, and I think that’s what allowed us to shine through a bit.
Ali Nazar: Well, congratulations on the win, um, and for representing Cal so well. Um, I’ve been speaking with Omeed Ansari and Harrison Haigood. They are two of the five member team, Team Blue, that won this innovation and affordable housing competition earlier this year. Um, and I guess you guys are now emotionally invested in West Palm Beach.
Omeed Ansari: Yes.
Ali Nazar: You’re gonna have to like track this project and see what happens. And, best of luck in your careers. Hopefully this, it’s been a really informative kind of process for you to figure out what you’re gonna do [00:30:00] next when you leave Cal, or ’cause you already have left Cal Omeed. Yeah. Um, but appreciate you coming on the show. Um, and you have been listening to Berkeley Brainwaves here on KALX Berkeley 90.7 fm, University of California and listener supported radio. I’m your host, Ali Nazar.
Have a great Tuesday everybody.
