Admin seeks student input for retail around campus

Penn’s Division of Facilities and Real Estate Services is creating a new master retail plan for the first time in over 10 years, and they are calling on the Penn community for assistance.

Through a series of online surveys and focus groups that will be open to Penn students, faculty, staff and neighbors, FRES hopes to gather information about the community that will help inform the future retail landscape of Penn’s campus.

FRES last put out a master retail plan in 2001.

“This initiative is basically a refresh,” Executive Director of Real Estate at FRES Ed Datz said. “It’s updating the 2001 master plan.”

Penn will be working with their brokerage firm, the Michael Salove Company, as well as the real estate firm Streetsense in order to extract as much information as possible from the Penn community.

“[These companies] have started fact-gathering, looking at the market place and surrounding area, [as well as] trends and offerings,” Datz said.

This data will then be used in conjunction with the information that FRES collects from different constituencies on campus.

While FRES has conducted focus groups to gather information in the past, the online survey is a method they have not used before.

“We will reach out pretty far to get feedback,” Datz said. “We are using the online survey to [reach] everybody affiliated with Penn.”

FRES will be advertising the survey and the focus groups through various means, such as newsletters of the different schools on campus.

Both the online survey and the focus groups will ask students combinations of questions associated with their buying patterns. Representatives from FRES, the Michael Salove Company and Streetsense will lead the focus groups. Their goal is to find out information about who frequents what types of operations and where and how often people spend their money.

The information will then be used to formulate a long-term retail strategy.

“We will look at this entire exercise to inform the direction of the next 10-15 years,” Datz said.

He hopes that the Penn community will be responsive to the survey and will participate in the focus groups.

“I definitely think it’s good that [FRES] is including students so we can give feedback on what we want to see,” said Wharton junior Olivia Olt. “I’d love to see more fashion retail so you don’t have to go to Rittenhouse if you want to shop.”

Wharton sophomore Nathalie Herman added, “I think that we need better food options … more chain restaurants that encompass different types of food all in one.”

While students may have strong opinions about what they want to see on campus, they will ultimately have to participate in the surveys and focus groups to get their voices heard.

“Our hope is that we can get a good turnout,” Datz said. “We love to hear what students have to say.”

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