Multifamily Executive Magazine

Well-Connected

Soon, if a resident at Miami's Grovenor House on the Biscayne Bay needs his car, he'll only have to press a single button on a "wireless concierge" device to call up his automobile. The same goes for residents of Paramount's Royal Palm Communities, Paramount Beach, and Bay projects, where...
Back to School

Housing demand for aging baby boomers is thriving, and active adult communities designed around golf or tennis are popping up everywhere. But not everyone wants to spend his or her golden years exclusively on the greens. Many retirees want to keep their minds engaged, too, prompting developers to...

Condo Circus

As you walk through the archway and on the white carpet to the entrance of this condo sales party, you feel like you're entering the circus. Men in referee shirts are jumping on a trampoline, which gives them the power and lift to bounce off a wall at a 90-degree angle. Another man walks with...

Quiet Riot

I both loved and hated my apartment in Allentown, Pa. Surrounded by World War I-era homes and leafy streets, the location was a charming and gracious one in a city that often struggles with the realities of urban economics. My front windows featured leaded glass, an inlaid design outlined my glossy...

Market Place

Merging a supermarket with residential is one of the most challenging development combinations, but developers can't get enough of the latest mixed-use trend: anchoring communities with massive grocery stores.

San Francisco: City Moves

After the wild ride of recent years, it may be hard to remember exactly what "normal" is in the San Francisco Bay area housing market. Let's take a refresher course. Before the dot-com bubble, the mature Bay area economy typically produced additional jobs at a fairly modest pace. Total housing...

Second Career

Most executives would be in desperate need of a break after transforming a mom-and-pop business into a multibillion-dollar REIT. But not John McCann, who retired from United Dominion Realty Trust four years after appearing on the March 1997 cover of Multifamily Executive.
School's In

So much for the indignities of dorm life. While alums remember how they had to scramble for showers in the hall bathroom, fight for possession of their floor's two public telephones, and struggle to stay cool in 90-degree heat with no air conditioning, today's students enjoy privacy and perks. "We...

House Call

Andy Padian is a busy man. Padian, one of the country's most experienced multifamily energy auditors, runs the multifamily program for Steven Winter Associates, a nationally known architecture and engineering consulting firm. During 25 years in the business, Padian has seen interest in his services...

Family Pride

Daunting. That was the word John Seymour, director of acquisitions and forward planning for nonprofit developer Southern California Housing Development Corp. (SoCal Housing), used to describe the Shadow Hill apartment complex in Santee, Calif., when he first saw it in 1998.

Dream Big

For some, work is a calling. "I believe energy-efficient, healthy, durable, easy-to-maintain, low-operating-cost, people-friendly, and sustainable buildings that are designed, built, and marketed in such a manner can be a win-win situation for everybody involved in the project and the community at...

Campus Crusade

How do you make four acres of land provide affordable housing for 2,200 students and faculty in not-too-tall buildings on an existing college campus? That was San Jose State University's request of Niles Bolton Associates, an Atlanta-based architecture firm.

Getting Credit

When Congress created the low-income housing tax credit program in 1986, initial response from developers was less than overwhelming. "If you were a multifamily player from 1987 to about 1993, a lot of states would be calling you to see if you could utilize the credits," says Michael Costa...

'Net Speak

When voice-over-Internet protocol debuted more than a decade ago, the buzz over its potential to transform business–especially real estate–was deafening. The appeal of the technology, also known as VoIP, was obvious: If real estate companies and tenants sent their telephone calls over the Internet...

Great Indoors

On many apartment tours, prospects hastily glance into the fitness center to assess the offerings. But at KSI's Metropolitan Fairfax in Virginia, prospects stop short at the site of the gym's coolest gear: a rock-climbing wall. "Imagine walking into the standard fitness room, and there's this large...

Lauderdale Courts

Lauderdale Courts is the only place that offers you the chance to live like a king. Not just any royal–but The King. Lauderdale Courts, located in downtown Memphis, was the home of Elvis Presley from 1949 to 1953–The King's impressionable teenage years. Vernon Presley, his wife Gladys, and their...

Table of Contents August 2005