Are you in the early stages of your career in affordable housing? This is the perfect place for you to get to know people in your same circles who will be your industry colleagues for years to come and to talk about topics and ask questions in a comfortable, learning environment. All housing professionals 40 and under who are members of Housing Colorado are welcome to attend. This is a free event, but you must register to attend. See our list of organizations to find out if your company is a member. Email emily@housingcolorado.org with questions about membership or if you need your member login. 

This month's topic...  The Developer Chronicles: Lessons Learned
In this Young Professionals Coffee Connections, affordable housing developers recount their toughest projects and the hard lessons learned. Some projects seem to have all the rough luck. It requires a great level of expertise and leadership to turn a dire situation in a success. Affordable housing can be risky and feel like a gamble. These developers will share their insight for how they turned a bad hand into a full house.

Agenda
8:30 am Registration and Networking (and coffee of course)
8:45 am Panel
9:40 am Q & A
10:00 am Event ends

Speakers
Lauren Schevets, Director of Development for Gorman & Company-Colorado 
She is responsible for planning and implementation of the development program and strategies, including new construction projects as well as acquisition of land and existing housing. She joined Gorman in 2017 with a diversity of public sector experience in land use planning and real estate from Boulder Housing Partners (“BHP”), the City of Westminster, and Denver Water. Among her achievements at BHP were the development of the award-winning High Mar senior housing project, and the development of the Palo Park family housing project, a unique partnership project between BHP and Flatirons Habitat for Humanity. Lauren holds a Master of Urban Planning from the University of Colorado at Denver. 

Chris Spelke, Senior Developer for Denver Housing Authority 
Chris is involved in all aspects of the development process from site acquisition, due-diligence, financial modeling to overseeing community engagement, design and construction and managing financial closing through project delivery. Recently, Chris orchestrated the complex financial closing of DHA’s Vida at Sloan’s Lake Project (a 176-unit affordable senior/disabled building with 30,000sf of ground floor commercial space along W. Colfax Ave.) that included TIF financing, 9% and 4% LIHTC, and NMTC’s under a unique condo structure. Chris also supports the Real Estate Department’s active construction projects and assists in planning, underwriting, and design development for various pipeline projects, including DHA’s next large-scale redevelopment of Sun Valley. Prior to his current role at DHA, Chris gained valuable experience working on two large scale master-planned redevelopments, Aria Denver (while at Perry Rose) and South Lincoln Homes HOPE VI (when first at DHA). Chris is a graduate of the University of Colorado LEEDS School of Business with degrees in Finance and Political Science. He is a Colorado native and served as the Executive Co-Chair for ULI Colorado’s Young Leaders and CHFA’s Tax Credit Advisory Committee.