Four graduate-level student teams, including two from Harvard University, one from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and one from the University of Miami, will present their final proposals for the 14th annual Urban Land Institute Hines Student Competition next Thursday at a public forum at The Woodruff Arts Center’s Rich Theatre. The 2016 competition challenged student teams to design and submit a master-plan proposal that included presentation boards with drawings, site plans, tables, and market-feasible financial data for an area in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood.

A $50,000 prize will be presented to the winning team, and each of the remaining three finalist teams will receive $10,000.

The ideas competition, open to graduate students who are pursuing real estate-related studies at universities in North America, provides both full- and part-time students the opportunity to devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for an actual, large-scale site in an urban area. While based on a fictional scenario, the 2016 Hines Student Competition reflects many real-life concerns of Atlanta. In recent years, the city has supported increased market demand for urban real estate products with strategies to attract investment in its urban core and along key commercial corridors. In this competition scenario, teams are tasked with transforming this transitional area and completing the vision for Midtown Atlanta as a thriving, sustainable, mixed-use, walkable, and transit-accessible neighborhood; the exercise includes taking advantage of the site’s proximity to downtown and Technology Square, its adjacency to Peachtree Street and public transportation, and its strong regional access.