Promise Of Performance

Photo: Andrea Porter and her son, Kreg, enjoy the day outside at McQueen Village in Prattville, Alabama.

Summit's resident-customers like the company's empowering approach. Andria Porter and her family live in McQueen Village, a 136-unit, multifamily community that Summit built new in Prattville, Alabama, in the mid-1990s.

Porter's husband works across the street at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. "These apartments could not be more convenient to his work," she said as she watched sons Christopher, 12, and Kreg, 7; and daughter Shannon, 10; play on thick, green sod in the McQueen Village picnic area adjacent to the community swimming pool.

Another Summit resident likes changes the company made when it purchased her older community. In 1984, Clara Jones of Mobile, Alabama, moved into Village Green apartments. Almost two decades later, Summit bought the deteriorating property, renovated it and renamed the 208-community complex Azalea Pointe.

“I love my home. I hope I don't have to leave here until I go to heaven,” Mrs. Jones cheerfully exclaims. “With the new windows and everything else they are doing, our living conditions are better than ever. I come to all the tenant meetings so they always know what's on my mind. I ask my questions and I get answers. I like what they are doing, and it makes sense to me,” Jones said.