Frederick “Bart” Harvey III
Former CEO and chairman of the board, Enterprise Community Partners
ULI Member Since 2006
ULI Involvement:
Corecipient with Enterprise Community Partners of the 2008 ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development; Nichols Prize juror (2011-13); National Advisory Board member for the Terwilliger Center for Housing (2007-12); jury chairman of the 2013 Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition; Advisory Services panelist (1986)
Frederick “Bart” Harvey III walked away from a lucrative career in corporate finance after a conversation with the man who would become his mentor, real estate developer Jim Rouse. Rouse wanted to provide every poor person in America a chance to have safe and affordable housing, an idea Harvey considered “bold, extraordinary, and crazy.”
Rouse cofounded Enterprise Community Partners in 1982, and Harvey joined the team in 1984 to help realize Rouse’s “crazy” dream. He devoted 24 years to Enterprise, including 14 as CEO and chairman of the board of trustees. When he retired from Enterprise in 2008, Harvey had established his legacy as a tireless champion of the importance of decent, affordable housing and for prioritizing green and sustainable design within the affordable housing industry.
“I realized there can’t be anything better than helping people help themselves,” he said after winning the 2008 Nichols Prize, which recognized Harvey’s and Enterprise’s tremendous impact on the affordable housing market. Under Harvey’s leadership, Enterprise raised and invested over $10 billion to produce with community partners more than 240,000 decent and affordable homes in some of the nation’s most challenging neighborhoods.
Harvey’s introduction to ULI came in 1986, when he was asked to serve on an Advisory Services panel studying redevelopment in North Lawndale, a blighted Chicago neighborhood. The “eye-opening” experience immersed him in the challenges of revitalizing a distressed community and showed him the Institute’s unique ability to assemble a diverse team of real estate experts to solve problems.
“ULI is a wonderful gathering of people,” he says. “It seems like a brotherhood. [Members] are constantly interested in what’s going on, what the next thing is, and what’s going to work.”
Harvey has also served on the Nichols Prize jury. “The highlight is always the other people who are members of the jury,” he says. “It’s intellectually fascinating and fun to meet other jurors who come from different walks of life.”
Narrowing the pool of high-caliber finalists to a single Nichols Prize winner is always an intense experience, but the lively exchange among jurors is what makes the experience worthwhile, Harvey says.
“Finding a way to get real consensus on the winner … that’s very interesting,” he says.