Student Housing Business • November/December 2023 • 36

THE SHB INTERVIEW many others are working with the College Stu-dent Mental Wellness Advocacy Coalition and the ‘Hi, How Are You Project?’ to shine a light on the needs of our student residents. We can renovate a building and have great pools and amenities, but we also need to ensure that our resident experience is healthy and that they are able to ﬂ ourish. SHB : Is that resident experience emphasis also partly a byproduct of your hospitality experience? Palleschi : Yes, it’s deﬁ nitely something I spend more time thinking about and focus on coming from lodging. I’ve been so extraordinarily proud of our teams and properties. Every community I’ve gone to see offers amazing service. Our team members know the product, they know and are proud of their properties, and the properties are clean and well maintained. When I was in the ho-tel space, I would have killed to have the care and concern our team members have for our commu-nities. I’m constantly on the road, which is a bit of a challenge. But I think it’s better to be out on the road, visiting our locations and meeting our team members, spending time with them in their of-ﬁ ces and learning about our competitors. I think it’s more important to do that in some respects than to be hunkered down in an ofﬁ ce. SHB : You’ve talked about customer service ini-tiatives. What are some other initiatives that the company is working on? Palleschi : We launched a technology roadmap exercise to really look at all of our technology and how we are interacting with it. We’re questioning how each piece is beneﬁ cial to the business and what do we need to improve it? We’re focused on a single platform similar to the hotel space, where you have a fully integrated platform with every-thing from a distribution model, rates and inven-tories that goes straight through to a property management system to ﬁ nancial reporting. You have that single source of truth on one platform that’s easy to use for team members onsite as well as the corporate ofﬁ ce. We’ve also launched a brand health review of the ACC brand and how we are interacting with our customers. From a design and construction standpoint, we launched another review of all of our standards. Are they in tune with future needs? Are we building for the future? These initiatives are going to take us a bit of time, but we’ll do it right. I’m pretty big on measuring twice, cutting once. Hopefully by this time next year, we’ll have the fruits of our labor and some exciting things to share with others. SHB : Are you pursuing a brand strategy within the portfolio, with three or four or ﬁ ve different brands at different price points? Palleschi : Not necessarily. We’re reviewing ev-erything and we’re evaluating what is needed in our space. Where are we today? And where are we going tomorrow? And what tools do we 36 November/December 2023 Following renovations, Henle Village at Georgetown University will offer an additional 278 beds, bringing the property’s bed count to 740. need to get there from a brand perspective? It’s all pretty exciting. We’re a 30-year-old company and we have withstood the test of time. Now it’s exciting to plan for what’s next. SHB : There have been a good number of depar-tures from the former ACC C-suite. Is that some-thing that is pretty normal and happens after an acquisition like this? Palleschi : I’m a bit disappointed, but I’m not sur-prised. In most cases, you see some departures of amazing talent. I expect we’ll see some of them in the industry again, which would be great because I think the industry beneﬁ ts from having strong, capable leaders. That said, we have people like Jamie Wilhelm, who’s been leading our P3 effort and who has now stepped up to take full control of all of the development-related and growth-related activities at the company. Kim Voss, right at the time of acquisition, was promoted to chief ﬁ nancial ofﬁ cer and chief accounting ofﬁ cer. We launched a search for a COO earlier this year. There’s nothing new to announce yet, but we’re winding that down. SHB : As someone who’s been in real estate for a long time, you’ve seen a bunch of cycles. What’s your take on this cycle? What do you think it’s going to take for investment and development activity to resume in a more normal fashion? Palleschi : From my vantage point, we need a little bit of calm out there; a little sense of clarity with regard to the expectations from an interest rate standpoint. That helps us to effectively price assets, whether we’re buying or selling. It’s easy to fall prey to the negative, but we all need to focus on the positive and opportunity. I mean, we were all buying homes at 8 percent and 10 percent interest not that long ago. It’s a little bit choppy out there, but I don’t want to be distracted with the noise. There’s huge upside potential in our sector and we’re seeing enrollment growth. Some of the best universities in the world are here in the U.S. There’s an opportunity to grow and continue to grow, and I think we play an integral part. I like to think things are starting to level off, and for us, we’re still seeing positive activity. Deals are still getting done. We broke ground on our Ari-zona State University (ASU) West Campus proj-ect downtown and Herberger Institute for Design and Art, on the main campus. We’ve been able to negotiate an amazing deal with the University of Utah. We opened a new property in Irvine, California, and we have more projects on the way. There’s a lot of exciting activity that’s out there, so we need to lean in and sharpen those pencils a bit. SHB : It seems like ACC is doing a lot of business on-campus. Can you talk about your on-campus focus now versus the off-campus business? StudentHousingBusiness.com