Student Housing Business

JAN-FEB 2017

Student Housing Business is the voice of the student housing industry.

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THE SHB INTERVIE W January/February 2017 StudentHousingBusiness.com 32 parking and retail in most cases. The retail component, while not often times large in square foot- age, is certainly an amenity that influences resident's selection. In some of our urban conventional developments, we include wine bars, terraced gardens and com- munity kitchens on upper level outdoor spaces and outdoor fit- ness opportunities on various lev- els of the building. Our unit plans are taking more of an open floor plan. Our kitchen spaces have continually changed to create more usable space and openness to the rest of the unit. The use of efficient systems and attractively designed furniture packages has also led to innovation in design and operations. SHB: I want to get back to the RISE culture that you mentioned earlier. That seems to have you very excited. Blais: You picked up on that in my voice earlier did you… RISE is a Christian company that operates on three values: Love, Serve, Care. These values are at the forefront of everything we do every day. From the people we hire to the proj- ects we develop and operate, our culture is a primary factor when making such decisions. Listen, we are a mid-sized company with just over 350 employees, over 23,000 beds managed and look- ing to grow. These figures provide RISE and our team members an opportunity to impact many lives every day. It is a huge responsibil- ity. A responsibility that we focus on daily at all levels of our com- pany. To that point, we have our property teams offering programs and community service projects with our residents to give back to the communities where they live. We have RISE Ambassadors that travel to our properties train- ing, teaching and reinforcing our cultural values. One thing we are most proud of is our commitment to giving 10 percent of our net annual profits to our foundation with the goal of supporting those in need within the communi- ties we serve. We have a bible program whereby we provide a bible for every bed that we deliv- er annually. I could talk about our culture for days. Simply put, our name RISE serves as an acro- nym to support what our com- pany stands for: R – Reasonable and Reliable; I – Impactful and Inspired; S – Serve and Simplify; E – Experienced and Empowering. These attributes are who we are. We continue to enhance our cul- ture. It's practiced, it's focused on every day and our people have really contributed to the cultur- al growth, which has resulted in the overall growth of RISE. When you think about it, we have 350 employees and everybody is dif- ferent. The one thing that is con- sistent is how we feel about each other and what we do. As long as you have that, you're going to be successful, in our opinion, and right now, it's as strong as ever for us. I think that results in $671 mil- lion, and 2017 could be something extremely special as well. SHB: When you are not working, what do you like to do? Blais: I am a golfer. In my former life I played competitive golf and truthfully, as a weekend warrior now, I enjoy it so much more. I have a family with three kids ages 11 to 2, who keep me busy. They are into all kinds of sports and activities. I take my health seri- ously, so I remain active and try to workout four to five days a week. I enjoy the beach and snowskiing. And I have enjoyed talking with you. SHB RISE continues its on-campus work with a number of universities. At Millersville University in Pennsylvania, the company has been contracted to develop a three-phase student housing project. " From the people we hire to the projects we develop and operate, our culture is a primary factor when making such decisions. — Greg Blais, President of RISE

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