Articles/Publications of Note
These are just the texts of a few things that I couldn't link to on my blog
|
 |
Catonsville-based Erickson Retirement Communities, which runs three independent-living facilities in the Baltimore area, is out to make the choice a little easier.
On April 1, the company is launching its new real estate wing,
Erickson Realty and Moving Service, which will provide consulting services for older people considering moving into one of their facilities.
“The way to maximize our revenue is to increase occupancy, and the way to do that’s to get people to move in in a timely manner,” said Tom Neubauer, director of Erickson’s new initiative. “The majority of people who move in with us, they’re literally paralyzed about how to get started.”
Erickson, which operates 22 retirement communities in 11 states, started its real estate consulting business in Michigan in 2005, when it was called Moving Home. It has since spread to Erickson’s properties in Boston, New Jersey, Chicago, Texas, Philadelphia and Kansas.
“The result for us is not only do we have a whole lot of people who are happier with the process, but they’re moving more quickly, and fewer people are getting cold feet and deciding they’re not going to do it,” Neubauer said.
Last April, Jim Smith, a 70-year-old retired businessman from a quiet Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, decided he wanted to sell his 5,000-square-foot home and move into Erickson’s Fox Run retirement community in nearby Novi, Mich.
He was having trouble mowing the lawn, shoveling snow and climbing a ladder to change high-hanging light bulbs.
“Physically, I just couldn’t take care of a house that big any longer, and neither could my wife,” he said.
But selling the house that he and his wife had built and lived in for 33 years proved challenging.
“There was a lot of us in that home,” Smith said. “You can imagine how much stuff you accumulate in 5,000 feet, especially with two pack rats.”
To make things worse, in March 2007, the average price of a home in Farmington Hills was $245,000, down 9 percent from its peak of $268,000 a year before, and last year, the Detroit metro area led the nation in foreclosures.
Smith got in touch with Erickson, and they sent a consultant who helped him find antique dealers to buy his furniture, settled on an appropriate sale price, found dealerships to purchase the Smith’s two cars and several pre-approved brokers for his home. The consultant also helped them market the house, rearranging furniture and getting rid of the clutter so that it would be more saleable.
After just 10 weeks on the market, the house sold for more than $300,000, a price that Smith said he wasn’t completely satisfied with, but that he considers “fair,” given that the Southeast Michigan housing market has only gotten worse since then.
“Many houses in the neighborhood were still on the market six months later, and ours was priced higher,” he said. “If they hadn’t helped us, I don’t think we would have moved. I think we would still probably be in that house.”
Kenneth Wenhold, director of the Washington Metro region of Metrostudy, a national housing research firm, said retirement communities and assisted living facilities have long had programs to make moving easier for the elderly, especially in Sun Belt states like Florida and Arizona, but that they have stepped up their efforts in reaction to the mortgage crisis fallout.
“The slow housing market has basically created a lot more supply,
and in the past, the assisted living [company] has had to step in and say, ‘We’re going to find you an agent and set you up,’” he said. “Now they’re being a bit more proactive in that they’re actually staging homes, going in to see what furniture needs to be removed to make it more appealing to the buyer. It’s really just the next step.”
Wenhold said because real estate sales at facilities and communities for the elderly are need-driven, not market-driven, and because many retirees use their own home equity to pay for their continuing care, it is in both the client’s and the service provider’s interest to expedite the moving process.
“When you have an assisted living facility that does not have a lot of occupancy, you’re laying off staff and cutting back on services,” he said. “It’s all about getting rid of that sticky wicket.”
|
|
||
|
|
Sun Publisher Tim Ryan wrote in a memo to Sun employees that a drop in Baltimore-area home sales and the announcement that Macy’s department stores will cut 2,500 jobs are “clear signs that our retail advertisers are … feeling the pinch.”
“Every day, media-watching websites report another newspaper or magazine that has had to reduce its staff,” Ryan wrote. “The economy may not yet be in a recession, but it’s clearly on the way, and in the news business, we are feeling it now.”
Buyout offer packets will go out as soon as Friday, and eligible Sun employees will have two weeks to decide whether or not to apply. March 31 will be the last day of work for any Sun employee who accepts a buyout.
Linda Yurche, a Sun spokeswoman, said that it was unclear which departments the cuts would come from, but that the newsroom and the advertising department both have a large number of long-time employees.
“For somebody who may be thinking that they might be retiring in a year, they can leave now and take 40 weeks of pay with them,” she said.
Yurche said she could “neither confirm nor deny” reports that the Sun is hiring reporters for a new five-day-a-week print product.
“We are going to continue to look at the way business is shifting, and to develop new products and services,” she said. “Just because of the buyouts, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to grow in certain areas. Anything is possible.”
The last round of buyouts, in June 2007, offered packages to 58 employees, and cut 17 reporters and editors from The Sun’s newsroom.
The current buyout package offers participants the equivalent of one week’s pay for each six months the employee has worked at The Sun, plus continued medical and pension benefits.
Bill Salganik, a Sun business reporter and president of the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild, the union that represents most Sun reporters, said he has been told that fewer newsroom cuts will be made this time around.
“We certainly don’t feel overstaffed,” he said.
Salganik also said he has heard rumors of a new publication to be launched this year, but did not know the details.
“I don’t see anything wrong with starting a new publication, but cutting journalists and customer service people … even Sam Zell is saying that isn’t a good business plan,” he said, referring to the chairman and CEO of the Tribune Co., the Sun’s parent company.
“The best way [to address the Sun’s losses] is to get new revenue streams, a different Web product, or a different ad product on the Web,” Salganik said. “It’s even possible that producing a great newspaper will attract more readers and better advertisers.”
Zell sent a related memo Wednesday, announcing an unspecified number of cuts within the Tribune’s corporate and publishing arms.
“Unfortunately, I can’t turn this ship from its course of the past 10 years within just a few months,” he wrote. “Further, while I will do everything in my power to drive, pull and drag this company forward, I can’t promise we won’t see additional position eliminations in the future, if we continue at our current rate of cash flow decline.”
The Zell-led $8.2 billion purchase of Tribune Co., which took the company private, was completed in December.
Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review, said that these buyouts are part of a trend that is not likely to abate any time soon.
“The publishing companies got very used to high profits, and when revenue went down their response is to cut back and retrench, and the result is that you’re in a very competitive market with a weaker product,” he said. “What’s interesting in the new private companies, like the Philadelphia Inquirer, or Sam Zell at the Tribune, is that after brave words when taking over, they’re taking the same approach.”
Rieder also said that introducing new products, like The Sun is planning to do, is smart.
“Trying new things makes sense,” he said. “Standing pat and doing nothing about it doesn’t make sense.”
The second research facility at the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s
BioPark opened its doors Monday to a diverse group of tenants, ranging
from large biotech firms to community-oriented job training programs.
Mayor Sheila Dixon, Gov. Martin O’Malley, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep.
Elijah Cummings, and UMB President David J. Ramsay were at the
ceremony, which included a symbolic groundbreaking for Building Three,
now under construction on a Baltimore Street lot facing the parking
garage.
The first BioPark building opened in 2005 on the
800 block of West Baltimore Street, along with a 638-space parking
garage. Less than a year after its ribbon-cutting, Building One was
fully leased to several large biotechnology and pharmaceutical
companies, including SNBL Clinical Pharmacology Center Inc., Alba
Therapeutics Corp., FASgen Inc., and the University of Maryland Center
for Vascular and Inflammatory Diseases. It now has about 200 employees.
BioPark Building Two, at six stories and 238,000 square
feet, is twice as spacious as the first facility, and hosts a diverse
array of tenants that ranges from Gliknik, Inc., a cancer treatment
developer, and health research firm Westat Inc., to Baltimore City
Community College’s Bioscience Institute, and a job training center run
by Goodwill Industries.
The structure was built much more quickly than university officials expected.
“At the beginning, we did a feasibility study that said that it would
be three or four years for every building, and here we are with three
buildings up in that time,” said James L. Hughes, vice president of
research and development at UMB.
Funds for the second
BioPark building were raised almost entirely from private sources by
Wexford Science and Technology, the project’s developer. Wexford
received $15 million in federal new market tax credits for the BioPark,
and the city donated 10 acres of unused land to the developer, but
Wexford has raised $128 million in capital investment so far.
“It has enabled us to go much quicker because we’re not waiting to assemble large public moneys,” Hughes said.
UMB received about $2 million from the Department of Transportation for
traffic improvements along Baltimore Street, as well as $600,000 more
in federal money, which was donated Monday to the Baltimore City
Community College’s educational initiatives.
Caroline
Williams, president of BCCC, said that the college will move its entire
biosciences program to one 38,000-square-foot floor of Building Two,
and that the students and faculty in that program “can’t wait” to work
and study alongside University of Maryland and private sector
scientists.
“The beauty of the BioPark is that you’ll have
students there who can interact with the bioscience companies that are
headquartered there,” she said. “They’ll have the opportunities to
intern with the companies there and learn about the various aspects of
bioscience, and at the same time, our faculty will be able to have
scientist-to-scientist conversations that will, in turn, influence our
curriculum. It will be students, faculty and business people all
interacting in the same place.”
Williams also said that
BCCC will work with students from the nearby Vivien T. Thomas Medical
Arts Academy and other city high schools as part of the community
college’s mission to be a pipeline connecting low-income Baltimoreans
to good jobs in the life sciences.
“The community college
is sort of a hub that connects the work force with the population in
general,” she said. “We see people who are in dead end job and want
better jobs, or people who are unemployed and want to be gainfully
employed. … This type of exposure and this type of opportunity really
play well with the community and it really exposes the general public
to the biosciences.”
Marco Chacon, an alumnus of UMB and
president and CEO of Paragon Bioservices Inc., which does cell
culture-based research into vaccines and protein expression, said he
decided in 2006 to move his company from the Johns Hopkins Bayview
campus to the UMB BioPark.
In 2005 and 2006, Paragon’s
sales increased by 40 percent, he said. Its move to a
21,000-square-foot facility on the fourth floor of Building Two will
double the size of Paragon’s old operation.
“The timing of
the BioPark is right in line with our growth,” Chacon said. “In
fairness to Bayview — it was a lower cost and very nurturing — but now
we have to explore new horizons and expand to state-of-the-art
facilities.”
Chacon said he will continue to foster a
relationship with JHU, but that he is excited about several initiatives
that are particular to the University of Maryland, especially its
nearby Vaccine Development Center.
In her remarks, Dixon
quoted black civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, saying, “Now is the
accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. Today is
the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the
harvest.”
The University of Maryland, Baltimore, she said, “has pulled off an extraordinary feat of harvesting, while still seeding.”
At the ceremony for the opening and groundbreaking for the University
of Maryland, Baltimore’s two new BioPark buildings, U.S. Rep. Elijah
Cummings recalled serving on the association board of the nearby
Poppleton neighborhood, in 1979.
“Back then, the biggest fear was that the University of Maryland would
come across Martin Luther King [Boulevard],” Cummings, a Democrat, said
Monday. “But then there came some visionaries. …There are visionaries
on both sides of MLK.”
Ever since local developer Wexford
Science and Technology broke ground on the BioPark in 2004, public
officials, community activists and real estate agents have been asking
questions about what the new development means for the blighted West
Baltimore neighborhoods that surround it: Poppleton, Hollins Market,
Union Square and Washington Village.
What will happen to
real estate in the area? What kinds of new people and businesses will
move there? Who, if anyone, will be displaced?
University
officials expect the BioPark, when its 10 buildings are completed in 10
to 12 years, to create 2,000 jobs and generate about $500 million in
capital investment, and much of it is expected to trickle down into the
community.
Already, the university has signed deals with
Baltimore City Community College and Goodwill Industries to provide
educational and work force development services to benefit nearby
low-income populations.
But for others, the BioPark means
that wealthy, well-educated scientists, engineers and businesspeople
will be moving to the area, and it may be a good time to buy and rehab
a house or open a business.
Despite the soft residential
market, local real estate professionals have seen a marked increase in
home prices in Union Square and Hollins Market, including dozens of
stately, Civil War-era brick row homes.
“I think that the
housing was taking off regardless of the BioPark, and we first noticed
that change around six years ago,” said Sam Bassi, a Hollins Market
resident and property manager with Pantanel Properties, which
specializes in real estate in the neighborhood. “But the BioPark
accelerated that process. The fact that there’s going to be a consumer
base of 2,000 employees is really going to accelerate the commercial
activity in the area.”
Bassi noted that two restaurants —
Zella’s Pizzeria and Baltimore Pho — have opened in the last year
there, and that this month, UMB will begin running a shuttle service
directly from the BioPark to Hollins Market.
Debbie Kuper,
an agent with Prudential-Carruthers’ Federal Hill office, said that in
2001, she sold three adjacent rowhouses facing Union Square park, each
in the $150,000 price range. Now, she said, the same houses average
about $100,000 more.
“Housing is going to be an issue once
biotech really gets moving,” she said. “People are feeling better about
the neighborhood, thinking that there will be better people over there.
… Everyone’s still a little nervous with the market, but the word
‘biotech’ is helping turn things around. A lot of people who come to me
say they’re looking for a 10-year investment, and that’s smart.”
The value of homes sold in Union Square, Hollins Market and Washington
Village has increased by an average of 53 percent since 2004, according
to Live Baltimore, a nonprofit urban marketing group.
But
Poppleton provides the most stunning example of a housing market
jump-started by redevelopment. Park Square, a city-subsidized mixed use
development of more than 500 properties, is scheduled to break ground
in 2009, and the Poppleton Co-Op, a 90-unit Section 8 housing complex
adjacent to the BioPark’s north side, is undergoing a
multimillion-dollar private renovation by the Hampstead Group, which
will convert some of its units into market-rate homes.
Last
year, four houses in a row on the 1000 block of West Fayette Street,
less than two blocks from the BioPark, sold for an average of $371,000
apiece, helping to account for a 588 percent rise in the median home
sale price in the neighborhood. In 2004, the median price of a home
sold in Poppleton was $59,500.
Audrey Robinson, president
of the Poppleton Co-Op, which is subsidized by the U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development, said local residents are already reaping
the benefits of UMB’s investment in the neighborhood.
“We’re feeling so far so good, as long as we don’t become displaced,” she said.
But Robinson said that she and her neighbors have been treated “very well.”
“We are friends with the University of Maryland,” she said. “We have
talked with them, and since the builders have been up there, we’ve had
a lot of protection from the University of Maryland police department.
They’ve treated us very well. That’s been a plus. … It’s cleaner, we
have nicer people coming through here, there’s less crime.”