Apartment Choice

SAN FRANCISCO--( BUSINESS WIRE )-- Calvera Partners , a California- based private real estate investment firm , today sold pksl (pronounced “pixel”), a 37-unit apartment building located at 1090 Sunnyvale Saratoga Rd. in Sunnyvale, CA, for $15.7 million ($424,000 per unit), an 89% increase over the building’s acquisition price of $8.325 million in January 2014. Home base to the original tech darlings Atari , AMD and Yahoo, the pksl project was the transformation of a 1960s- era apartment complex , formerly known as Crestview Terrace. With a mission to reposition underperforming properties with creative and authentic brands, high value tenant amenities , and modern design, pksl underwent a major transformation. “This community underwent the most significant physical change of any property we’ve owned,” said David Saxe, managing principal at Calvera Partners. “It was in disrepair when we took ownership and needed a major renovation and image upgrade. We spent more than $2.5 million ...

When visitors approach one of the two new affinity houses opening on the Bucknell University campus this semester, they'll cross an irregularly shaped section of pavement. Instead of proceeding straight from the front door to the road, the pathway forks at a 60-degree angle and meets the sidewalk to inscribe an equilateral triangle — or the Greek letter delta — in the concrete. It's a small detail that didn't cost extra to install, but will go a long way to making the building feel like home to its eventual occupants. The house at 125 Strohecker Farm Lane is planned to host the Delta Upsilon fraternity , which is recolonizing, and contains other architectural nods to the chapter's former house next to Bertrand Library. The two-story portico above the entryway replicates that found on the former DU house, as does the cherry wood trim on the building's first floor. Now known as Hildreth-Mirza Hall, the former DU house was acquired by the University in 2005 and ...

IN THE 1960s and ’70s, long before helicoptering emerged as a parenting style, adults had far less interest in looming over their children, frequently urging them to go play outside or downstairs. The netherworld to which these parents pointed was usually a recreation room or finished basement, clad insipidly in wood-veneer paneling and linoleum. Furnishings typically included a saggy sofa, a scratched ping-pong table and a built-in bar never used for mixing drinks; instead, the kids commandeered it as a make-believe store or a stage for puppet shows. Not even Dad’s novelty naked- lady martini stirrers lured him down once the children moved in. And the closest Mom got was to stand at the top of stairs and yell, “Supper’s ready! Wash your hands!” Perhaps these ratty rec rooms weren ’t worthy of House Beautiful, but the stints of physical distance they offered parents and offspring arguably benefited both in ways today’s airy cathedral-ceiling’d great rooms can’t. These days, peopl...