Framing My Product Relative to the Competition

My meeting with an attorney at the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation was extremely useful in that it has helped me clarify exactly what my ambitions for my venture should be and to find what I believe will be the right business model and market positioning scheme to succeed.

Before now, I had a real problem and I was starting to doubt the potential of my venture idea for two main reasons: market potential and positioning. With regard to market potential, I was actually pretty taken back by Dr. Myers' comments last week. Granted, she admitted to having something of a personal background of fighting the kind of work I want to do. But I began to think to myself, here is a city resident who has lived here a long time, much longer than I have, and she probably speaks for a lot of people who are wary of the idea of historic preservation, green construction, or both. I realized that it might be hard to convince a critical mass of people that my building would be better to live in than their own homes. But I realized after my conversation with Anne at the PHLF that, if I just framed my development project a little differently, I may be able to secure a market share.

Granted, there are people who would be willing to pay higher rent to live in green buildings, but it's a small market and it's not exactly the kind of social value that I'm most interested in building. Coming into the semester I had talked about making green buildings available to lower income neighborhoods, and my goal is to avoid the critique that my venture is basically serving rich people who can afford my product. One thing Anne helped me understand is, the potential financial benefit of historic preservation tax credits and easements is huge, enough to offset a large portion of construction costs and historic preservation costs, if they can be kept in check (cost overruns in the historic preservation of a building can often be drastic and sink a project, because there are strict federal guidelines that must be adhered to). She pointed to the example of the Heinz Lofts in the North Side as an example of this where the developer garnered millions of dollars worth of tax credits and easements. It occured to us that, rather than spreading this money around to other interests, it could best be used to help reduce what my venture would charge for rent, making my buildings more affordable. This would help me accomplish my central goal, as I outlined it at the beginning of the semester, of providing better community access to green buildings.

I think, if I frame my venture this way, there is room for a lot less incredulity like that expressed by Dr. Myers. What I would be providing is high quality housing at an affordable price, or at least this is the way it can be framed for the average consumer. But I would still be providing a product for that specific smaller market that wants historic preservation, green living or both. It's a win/win from a positioning standpoint.