Gift establishes Grant Center
In business: Benefactors Tony and Carrie Grant (center and second from right, respectively) with Mark Roach, CCU vice president for philanthropy; Wall College dean Barbara Ritter; and Stovall Witte, CEO of the Coastal Educational Foundation
A new center in the Wall College of Business, launched in January 2016 through a major gift from Tony and Carrie Grant of Murrells Inlet, serves as an information hub for real estate and economic data.
The Grant Center for Real Estate and Economic Development provides an industry-focused, collaborative environment where students, faculty members and the real estate industry can gain and share knowledge, information and international real estate business experiences. In addition to conducting and publishing research on real estate and economic trends, the center will host a variety of related events, serving as a bridge between CCU and the community.
Tony Grant has spent a lifetime in the real estate profession. He grew up in the United Kingdom and founded Grant & Partners in London in 1965. In 1987, he moved to New York after being named president and CEO of London & Leeds Development Corp., the U.S. property subsidiary of Ladbroke Group PLC (later Hilton PLC). He had direct responsibility for a 4.7 million-square-foot office development program in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. He later returned to London to serve as board chairman and joint chief executive of Olives Property PLC.
Carrie Grant, an artist and designer, earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in applied art and graphic design at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. She has operated her own graphic design and advertising firm since the early 1970s.
Robert F. Salvino, CCU’s research economist and associate professor of economics, was named the Grant Center’s first associate director in February. Trevor Tarleton ’15 is the center’s research assistant.