Derrek Niec-Williams
Derrek Niec-Williams
Executive Director, Campus Planning, Architecture and Development at Howard University
Howard University, one of the country’s most acclaimed historically Black universities, got its start with the help of a real estate deal. The school was established in 1867 on a 3-acre campus and funded its first buildings through the sale of land.
“That was one of the first things the university did, was to carve portions of [the campus] off, and parcel it out and sell it to developers, for the seed capital to build the buildings,” Derrek Niec-Williams said.
The school now encompasses 256 acres in the heart of D.C. and owns a substantial real estate portfolio throughout the region. In the last year, Howard has embarked on several joint projects with developers off campus, including an expansion of its hospital, and announced a $785 million investment for on-campus projects.
In 2021, Howard partnered with private developers to build a 260,000-square-foot lab building adjacent to its campus, to be called the National Research Center for Health Disparities, with the hope of attracting life sciences tenants that will collaborate with the research university. Another adjacent site will become The Oliver, a housing development, and a third, the Bond Bread Factory development, will further connect the university to the U Street corridor once known as “Black Broadway.”
The majority of the $785 million will go toward three new multidisciplinary academic halls, and the first phase will be funded by a $300 million bond issued by the institution.
With all of this activity, Niec-Williams’ team likes to say it has a day job and a night job. “The day job is making the campus better, major capital projects. The night job is all the commercial real estate activity,” he said.
The off-campus deals are facilitated through long-term leases, and require developers to engage with the community by hiring minority contractors and using the projects as a training ground for Howard students.
Niec-Williams, himself a Howard alum and an architect by training, says he would have loved to have had something similar. “When I was a student, that would be a dream job,” he said. “Walk across campus, put a hard hat on, and get to work on practical applications.”
