Planned apartments may drive rents in area down

University plans to build student housing along the 3900 block of Walnut Street could have larger implications for living at Penn.

Construction on the housing -- which officials say will have the capacity to accommodate about 400 students as well as 50,000 square feet of retail -- is slated to begin around the end of the summer.

Senior Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik said the competition provided by the University-owned housing will help knock down the high rents that students often pay for off-campus living.

But University City Housing property manager William Lynch said that the new competition from the University will not cause any immediate changes in its housing units or terms of lease.

Creating new housing options for students will ultimately allow the houses between 40th and 43rd streets and Baltimore and Chestnut streets to become single-family homes, according to Penn Real Estate Asset Manager Esaul Sanchez.

"When you have a lot of people in a house who just come together for a year based on a lease, the maintenance of the house is not as good," Sanchez said, adding that the constant flux of students makes it hard to establish a stable neighborhood.

Blaik added that the current transient nature of the area provides little incentive for landlords to keep buildings and their surroundings clean and sound.

"I think it's a positive thing when you can get families in. That brings in good business and a much closer-knit community," Lynch said.

College sophomore Emma Rosen said that she would consider moving to University-owned off-campus housing because "it would be safer and more manageable."

"When you're living off campus you don't know which realtors you can trust as far as pricing and safety concerns," Rosen said. "This would give me a lot more confidence in terms of where I'm living."

The University's plan for construction on the 3900 block of Walnut Street is part of its initiative to create off-campus housing space for about 1,000 students.

Sanchez said that a 2003 study by the University that looked at student interest in off-campus housing found "that there were about 1,000 students around here that needed housing."

The current construction of apartment buildings at 40th and Chestnut streets and 34th and Chestnut streets will also increase the amount of housing available near campus.

"We are currently working on somewhere between 600 and 700 units," Blaik said. "Hopefully we'll be able to get to the [1,000] we said we would."

The apartments at the 3900 block of Walnut Street will be available for lease by the fall of 2008, Blaik added.

The new housing units will replace several retailers on the block, including eateries College Pizza and Philly Diner and pharmacy CVS, which is set to relocate to the Food Court at 34th and Walnut streets.

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