Ungar Answers

About seventy locals turned out tonight for a forum hosted by the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference featuring Eli Ungar and Peter Cassel of Mac Properties/Antheus Capital.  Peter gave a short presentation and Eli answered questions for over an hour.   The tone was respectful, with HPKCC President George Rumsey commenting that he thought the audience had been too easy on Eli.

Eli divulged that he was presently in talks to acquire another building, although he feels it's extremely unlikely that Mac will buy buildings anywhere close to the pace of the last year or so.  When I suggested that last year's purchases had led to some bumps in the road concerning management of Mac's properties, he countered that it was worse than that, that Mac had bungled the job.  However, he and Peter asserted that they're down to about 3 days worth of work orders now and that some 130 people work for Mac in Hyde Park.

Concerns were voiced about rent increases at buildings Mac has rehabbed, the unusual exterior of the Solstice on the Park project and renovations at other buildings.  I'm personally concerned about the change from security deposits to charging a non-refundable move-in fee.  While I understand that security deposits present quite a few problems for landlords, I don't like that this hits students harder since they tend to occupy a unit for only a year or so and therefore can't spread this expense over a decent period of time.  And it seems a little unfair to pay this up-front fee and then be hit with significant rent increases twelve months later.

Eli's one of the best public speakers I've ever seen anywhere, especially in the Hyde Park context.  He has an amazing ability to boil complicated issues down to some core concepts, ticking off multiple-part answers to long & difficult questions.  He did, however, commit one horrendous gaffe tonight, claiming that such & such was a "mixed sword" when he meant "mixed blessing" & "double-edged sword".  He'd done such a good job of charming the audience with his facts & logic that not even one Hyde Parker bothered to correct him.  Not until now, at least.

Comments

[Eric]

Aha! Move-in fees! That's why the gave us back our security deposits en masse a few months ago. Did they explain *why* they want to make this change?

I will give them credit for improvement. I had horrendous problem with them from September through December, but it's been smooth sailing since. Routine maintenance is being done, I haven't been victimized by any new office bloopers on their end. It does seem that they've improved. After a very active beginning, there's been almost no activity on the Facebook group "Why Yes, I Too Have Threatened MAC With Legal Action!" since late 2007, which suggests that others are having less trouble as well.

The question now is, are they ready to next round of upheaval starting in a month or so? (And, of course, what are their long-term plans, really?)

[george]

I've gotten a commitment from Eli to hold another public meeting, but this time somewhere on the UC campus. We're going to try to work out details with a couple of UC student groups (like the Solidarity Network), to see if we can't get a meeting where students' concerns and problems are addressed.

[jmd]

"Mixed sword," huh? I might start using that one.