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June 2004
Wharton News
We Have Moved
The Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center and the Wharton Real Estate Department recently moved to new quarters on the Penn campus:
1400 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6302. All phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses remain the same. Please ensure that you make the relevant changes to your records.
Seevak Competition Winners
The 17th Annual Seevak Student Research Competition, sponsored by the Seevak Family Foundation was held on Friday, April 16, 2004. The topic, "Growth Controls and Development Restrictions: Impacts on Property Markets, Communities, or the Building Industry" was judged by: David Lebor, Esq., Blank Rome LLP; Jeffrey Rhodes, The Rhodes Company; and Joseph Riggs, K. Hovnanian Companies Inc. The first place winning presentation was Urban Growth Boundaries and Their Effects on Pricing and Communities: The Portland & Napa City Experiences by David Beznos, Robert Doherty, Eric Frankel, and Robert Jawl. Congratulations to these outstanding undergraduate winners.
End-of-Year Barbeque
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Enjoying the End-of-Year Barbeque
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The annual Real Estate Department and Real Estate Center barbeque was held once again at the Merion home of Associate Center Director, Asuka Nakahara, on May 1, 2004. Students -- past and present, faculty, staff and their families enjoyed a delightful afternoon of delicious food and excellent conversation.
Nakahara Quoted in The New York Times
Asuka Nakahara, Associate Director Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center and Adjunct Lecturer in real estate was quoted in a The New York Times article about derelict warehouses being renovated into residential lofts in Binghamton, New York by a recent Wharton graduate, Ari Meisel '03. Nakahara's assessed that his former real estate development student has "intuitive" business sense making him well suited for his current project. ("A Son of Lower Manhattan Sees SoHo in Binghamton," 5/10/04)
Praise for Sagalyn's Book on Times Square
Professor of City and Regional Planning Lynne B. Sagalyn's book Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon (MIT press, 2001), was praised as "masterly" in an article in the New Yorker (A Critic at Large: Times Regained, 3/22/04). Prof. Sagalyn was also quoted in an article about Times Square in Newsday (New York) entitled "Bathed in the 'bowl of light" (4/8/04): "It [Times Square] is a metaphor for the excitement of the city -- watching the human scene. You can't do that dispersed in suburban or agricultural areas. The need to come back to the city, to engage in public spaces, is a human need. I don't think it's very complicated." Prof. Sagalyn recently participated in several panels: "Planning for the New Frontier" on proposals for developing the far west side of Manhattan at the Municipal Art Society in February 2004; an interdisciplinary discussion of A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in America (Knopf 2003) by Lizabeth Cohen sponsored by the U Penn's History Department, Urban Studies Program and the School of Arts and Sciences.
Poindexter Widely Quoted on KOIZs
Georgette Chapman Poindexter, Chair of the Wharton Real Estate Department and Professor of Law, was quoted in several prominent periodicals regarding Keystone Opportunity Improvement Zones (KOIZ). Poindexter questioned the need for public subsidies for a proposed new 60-story building at 18th Street and JFK Boulevard in center city Philadelphia in articles regarding the public controversy in The New York Times (2/18/04), The Philadelphia Inquirer (2/18/04), and the Philadelphia Business Journal (2/9/04). The 1998 program that established KOIZs was originally intended to improve blighted neighborhoods by exempting tenants from all state and local taxes.
Why Firms Ignore Philadelphia
A Philadelphia Inquirer article entitled "Why Firms Ignore Philadelphia" quoted Joseph Gyourko, Martin Bucksbaum Professor of Real Estate & Finance and Director of the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center, on why the region does not attract and retain companies. Gyourko stated"for Philadelphia, the cost structure is the problem, the costs of government, the cost of labor…. The fundamental problem isn't what you pay the politicians, it's what you pay the government." (5/10/04)
Governments Role in Housing Finance
Drs. Marja Hoek-Smit presented a keynote lecture on "The Role of Government in Housing Finance" at a seminar on Housing Mortgage Credit organized by Gosstroi (Ministry of housing) of Russia, The US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the World Bank held in Dubna, Russia in February 2004. She also gave an address on "When and How to Subsidize Housing Finance" for the International Housing Conference in Hong Kong on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Hong Kong Housing Authority. In April, Drs. Hoek-Smit gave an invited talk at the UNIAPRAVI/ World Bank organized Housing Finance Roundtable for the Andean Region in Lima, Peru, on "Positive and Negative Government Interventions in Housing Finance Systems".
The Most Beautiful House in the World - Translated
Professor Witold Rybczynski was invited by the Institute of Classical Architecture to give the third annual McKim Lecture at the University Club in New York City. Two of his books have recently appeared in translation, One Good Turn in Japanese, and The Most Beautiful House in the World in Polish. He was recently named a Senior Fellow by the Design Futures Institute. Prof. Rybczynski was a panelist at a symposium on "Globalization: Cities, Jobs and the National Economy" hosted by the Penn Urban research Institute on April 14, 2004
Wachter Interviewed for CNBC
CNBC featured Susan Wachter, the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and Professor of Real Estate and Finance, as an expert on home refinance and adjustable rate mortgages on "Street Signs" on April 16, 2004. Professor Wachter moderated a panel on Land Use Controls at HUD's Research Conference on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing held on April 22, 2004. She also served on a panel at the Chicago Federal Reserve Board's Annual Bank Structure and Competition Conference on the Future of Government Sponsored Enterprises - Fannie and Freddie, along with Franklin Raines (CEO of Fannie Mae) and William Poole (CEO of the St. Louis Fed) on May 7, 2004.
Dissecting the Jobless Recovery
Peter Linneman, Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate; Professor of Finance and Business and Public Policy, was a discussant in "Dissecting the Jobless Recovery" moderated by editors of GlobeSt.com, an on-line commercial real estate news and property resource (GlobeSt.com, Issues in Focus, May 2004). "As history has told us, show me a protectionist country, and I'll show you a bad economy," stated Linneman in a featured quote.
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