Something I forgot to add: I wrote, before, something that suggested the Real Estate people at Penn might not know what they're doing. An interesting proof of this came up in connection with "The Radian" being built as student housing in the 3900 block of Walnut Street. When this project was being planned, in Feb '06 (Ray Rorke can probably grab the citation), the DP quoted the great (now "resigned") Omar Blaik, then VP for R-E development, as saying that one of the purposes was to force the local housing providers to lower their outrageous rents. About a month ago, the DP ran an article about the fact that while a few students they interviewed were willing to pay what Penn projects will be the rents at the Radian, most said they couldn't afford it and would continue to live in privately operated UC housing because it was a much better value.
One might think that if there was any professionalism (how about an iota of common sense) in the Penn Real Estate ranks, they'd know what they'd have to charge in a building they were planning, and how it would compare with what else the market had to offer. If anything, as you might guess, the high prices at The Radian (and also the Hub and the Domus) will encourage private housing providers to ask more than they now do for their apartments. My colleagues from other parts of our great city often ask me how I can compete in a market that has some very big (relatively, they're small compared with Trump, Tishman, etc) players like Campus Apartments (who manage a big share of the portfolio owned by the University). My answer is that I couldn't ask for competition I'd rather have. Al Krigman Left of Ivan Grozny ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
