Book aims to introduce children to real estate development

It wasn’t until graduate school that Portland developer was exposed to real estate development as a career field. She wants to make sure that doesn’t happen to another generation of kids.

Hallov, founder of the Portland development firm Adre , has written “A Kids Book About Real Estate Development.” The book explores what real estate developers do, and how they can change cities in a positive way.

“Part of the mission of my company is about getting more youth of color, more girls, more people from traditionally underrepresented groups to think about real estate development as a field,” Hallov said.



The book comes from a small Portland publisher, A Kids Co. , which Jelani Memory founded in 2020. The company, which also produces podcasts, was recently acquired by British publisher Dorling Kindersley Ltd., commonly known as DK.

The book series tackles often sensitive topics at a level children can understand. The first book was Memory’s “A Kids Book About Racism.” Other topics range from empathy and equality to school shootings and incarceration. Authors such as LeVar Burton and Billie Jean King have contributed volumes. Andrew Colas, president and CEO of Portland’s Colas Construction , wrote “A Kids Book About Construction.”

Hallov said her motivation for writing the book came in part from real estate development’s historically exclusionary nature.

“For a long time, land ownership was reserved for specific people,” Hallov wrote in the book. “Namely those who were white, male and wealthy.” As a result, she wrote, “people outside of this exclusive group don’t typically know about real estate development. If they do know about it, they don’t feel welcome to participate.”

Hallov said she gained a greater perspective of real estate development at the first Urban Land Institute/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition in 2003.

“That was my first exposure to development in a positive light,” she said. “Prior to that, I had always heard of developers in terms of the bad things that they had done.”

Hallov went on to earn master’s degrees in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and landscape architecture from Harvard University . After a stint with an Atlanta developer, she came to Portland in 2007 as development manager for Gerding Edlen . She then worked as a partner for developer Project^ for 12 years before founding Adre in 2020.

Real estate development has long been a field where relationships matter more than credentials. That’s beginning to change, Hallov said.

“It’s been a kind of father-passing-down-to-the-son profession,” Hallov said. “It’s getting better, but historically there were not clear pathways into the profession. So, you’d have to know about it, and you’d have to know someone to get hired. Now there’s real estate development programs coming up in school. I think it’s getting better in that way, where you can get an education.”

“A Kids Book About Real Estate Development” is suggested for children aged 5 or older. It is available as a hardback at Powell’s Books , Barnes & Noble and Amazon for approximately $25, and as an Amazon Kindle digital book for $12.99.

Hallov may not be done as an author. She said she’s considering a second book that would be part life story, part “Development 101.”

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