August 2005 Table of Contents

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 restaurant reservations and restricted social club access are just a button away, thanks to a wireless touchpad panel. Read more

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 embark on innovative senior housing projects near or on college campuses. Read more

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 stilts–he too is bouncing up and down. When a waiter offers you a fruity orange concoction, you feel like you have no choice but to accept after watching this surreal, acrobatic scene. Read more

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 hardwood floors, and I could read on my front or back porches. Read more

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. Read more

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 production was limited, too, constrained not just by the relatively slow household growth rate but also by some of the nation's most extreme barriers to new building in terms of land availability and especially development costs. From that perspective, the region certainly appears to be entering a period when the housing market performance is returning to the long-term patterns seen historically. Read more

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. Read more

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 have computer labs, nice clubhouses, state-of-the-art fitness centers, basketball courts, tanning beds, and extremely nice pools that are every bit as nice as our luxury multifamily pools," says Greg Bates, managing director at Stamford, Conn.-based GE Commercial Finance's real estate division, which works with JPI Cos. on their student projects. That's become the standard, as both multifamily firms and universities compete for the country's 16 million students and their college dollars. In this edition of Conference Call, you'll hear how apartment firms are doing just that from three executives: David Adelman, president and CEO of Campus Apartments in Philadelphia; Miles Orth, vice president of operations and business development for College Park Communities in Newtown, Pa., and GE's Greg Bates. Read more

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 wax and wane, but with rising energy costs, his phone has been ringing a lot these days. "People have been screaming for help," he says. Read more

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. Read more

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 large?forever," says Jeffrey G. Ross-Bain, who in April became the associate in charge for high-performance building systems at Smith Dalia Architects in Atlanta. Read more

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. Read more

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, president of Simpson Housing Solutions in Long Beach, Calif., which has developed 22,000 units of affordable housing nationwide. "They were having a hard time allocating them all." Read more

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 rather than an aging telephone network, they'd see dramatic cost reductions. Read more

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 imposing wall with the handholds and footholds on a rotating piece that is 7 or 8 feet high," says Bob Murray, president of Centreville, Va.-based KSI Management Corp. "It adds an area of excitement to the old drum fitness room." Read more

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 young son Elvis moved into 185 Winchester, Apt. 328, a 689-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with a kitchen and living room. Today, guests can stay overnight in the very same unit, which features vintage furniture and bathroom fixtures, reproductions of Presley family photos, and memorabilia. Read more