From left: The board of the new Profeta Real Estate Center at New Jersey Institute of Technology includes Jose Cruz of JLL, John Saraceno Jr. of Onyx Equities, Chris J. Murphy of Murphy Schiller & Wilkes LLP, Paul Profeta of Paul V. Profeta & Associates LLC (standing), Jeff Milanaik of Kurv Industrial, Francis J. Giantomasi of Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC and Michael Netta of the Profeta Real Estate Center. Not pictured: Gus Milano of Hartz Mountain Industries and Christopher Paladino of New Brunswick Development Corp. — Photos by Gellman Images for Real Estate NJ
(Editor’s note: Paul V. Profeta, the founding donor of The Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center, is the publisher of Real Estate NJ)
By Joshua Burd
The newest addition to New Jersey Institute of Technology’s campus was under construction just a few hundred yards away — and it was the type of project that would highlight both the need for and vast potential of the school’s new Profeta Real Estate Center.
John A. Pelesko, the university’s provost, said as much Tuesday during the center’s official launch event in Newark. He noted that the 16-story, 453-bed residence hall relies on 30-year bonds as part of its capital stack. It’s also being built with a new, lower-carbon form of concrete that was developed in an NJIT laboratory. And, from a design standpoint, the Summit Street project was “drawn and redrawn until it belonged to this campus and belonged to this city,” he said, adding that it will be built to a higher environmental standard than the law requires.
“That’s the work that this campus already does,” said Pelesko, who will take over in August as NJIT’s interim president, following the retirement of Teik C. Lim. “We have, of course, been developing real estate in Newark for years. We just didn’t always call it that.
“The Profeta Real Estate Center exists because the next generation should learn to do this work, too, and to do it together in the way that the world actually needs.”
It was a call to action for what is officially known as the Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center, a program that will combine finance, engineering, architecture and environmental skills in one graduate degree to provide training in all aspects of development and management. That’s meant to produce what NJIT officials feel will be the industry’s most well-rounded graduates, preparing them for a commercial real estate sector that has grown dramatically more complex and competitive in recent years.
Importantly, the Profeta Real Estate Center will leverage courses that are already offered at the university, many of them through its highly regarded architecture, engineering and computing schools.
“Real estate developers today need to be multitalented and need to have this complex set of skills — not to be an expert in any one of them, but to be conversant, to be a renaissance person, to know all of these things so that it gets done properly,” said Paul Profeta, the center’s founding donor and owner of Roseland-based Paul V. Profeta & Associates LLC.
“I started by saying that I hope this becomes the best real estate center in the country,” he added. “It’s not so far-fetched … This is the MIT of New Jersey — and many people don’t realize it. This is one of the finest institutions I’ve ever been involved with. The faculty is unbelievable, the research is over the top and the students are incredibly intelligent and hardworking.
“This is really a gem, and the school has these courses now. So when we start the real estate center, you can cross-matriculate and cross-register into these schools and take these courses.”
Profeta, who is also the publisher of Real Estate NJ, spoke to a crowd of top industry professionals on Tuesday before introducing a powerhouse board whose experience and know-how will shape the program in the months and years ahead. They include:
- Gus Milano, president and chief operating officer, Hartz Mountain Industries
- Christopher Paladino, president, New Brunswick Development Corp. (Devco)
- Jose Cruz, senior managing director, JLL
- John Saraceno Jr., co-founder and managing principal, Onyx Equities
- Chris J. Murphy, partner, Murphy Schiller & Wilkes LLP
- Jeff Milanaik, partner, Northeast region, Kurv Industrial
- Francis J. Giantomasi, member, co-chair, executive committee, Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC
- Michael Netta, executive director, NJIT Profeta Real Estate Center
The group will draw on decades of experience, having collectively built, invested in or advised on tens of billions of dollars in transactions and development activity. Equally important, though, is their understanding of the changing nature of real estate and the role that each service provider, consultant and subject matter expert plays in making a deal work today.
“It’s about working with the various disciplines, and that’s where the entrepreneurial spirit comes from,” said Milanaik, a 1980 graduate of NJIT’s engineering program. “And when Paul laid this program out, I said, ‘This is the first time I can actually wrap my hands around what we can do for people that are interested in real estate, understanding how to pull in different resources at the right time.”
Profeta, who also helped launch real estate centers at Columbia and Rutgers universities, seeded the NJIT program in 2021 when he made the single-largest donation the school’s history, a gift that also established a new center for minority entrepreneurs. With classes slated to begin in the spring 2027 semester, university officials are now looking to usher in the future of real estate education.
“Oak Hall opens in 2027,” Pelesko said, referring to the new residence hall rising on Summit Street. “When it does, a few hundred of our students will live in it, and most of them will never think about the 30-year bonds, the concrete, the drawings or the standards that we held it to. To them, it will just be home.
“But some of them — the ones that come through the center — will look up at a building like that one and see all of it at once: the finance and the engineering, the design and the care for the place it stands in, and they will know how to build the next one. That is the work that we begin here today.”
Profeta highlights parents’ legacy of education, as NJIT unveils new real estate center
