MRP is doing it faster than most; at the moment, it is working on 13 glossy projects around Washington, on U Street NW, on H Street NE, in Brookland, NoMa, Potomac Yard, Huntington and Arlington. Originally an office company, half of its portfolio is now residential. Its staff has doubled in two years, and it now controls $2 billion worth of real estate.
As the pipeline of new millennials in Washington has slowed, however, MRP’s team began to look afar. In Philadelphia, they think they’ve found a similar flood of young workers into urban neighborhoods such as Center City, but not nearly the same level of competition to build new apartments and even offices for them.
“The city changed a lot over the last 20 years since I left. It feels a lot more like New York than I remembered Philadelphia,” McGrath said. “There’s a lot of action. All the restaurants are top-notch. It’s a Wednesday night or Thursday night, and every parking lot will be packed. What that really speaks to is the amount of millennials that are part of the population in Center City.”
There is a lot at stake for the company as it looks elsewhere to expand, and there are reasons other companies haven’t strayed far from the nest. No wants to be caught stretched too thin when the economy takes a hit. But for a lot of reasons, MRP is not like other companies.
The ethos of MRP
People sometimes use the word “cowboys” to refer to MRP executives.
“It’s a very disciplined, Wild West philosophy, is how I would describe it,” said Doug Firstenberg, founding principal of MRP competitor, Bethesda-based StonebridgeCarras. “They work hard, they party hard, but they’re really smart.”
Other competitors describe the company as just as strict about underwriting as it is aggressive.
“They’ve managed to see value where other people have been scared,” said P. Brian Connolly, a former Akridge executive who often competed with MRP for deals.
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