Studer apartments named ‘Southtowne’ [video]

Press Release: After much anticipation, the new Studer apartments in Downtown Pensacola have a name.

“We are excited to have a name for the apartments,” says Andrew Rothfeder, President of Studer Properties. “We are grateful for the help of our community and we are thankful for such great support.”

Studer Properties hosted a month long naming contest to get to this point. For two weeks, members of the public submitted name ideas for the project. That effort yielded 682 entries, with many focused on Pensacola’s history, the site of the apartments as a former newspaper building, and the surrounding streets and neighborhoods.

The Studer Properties team filtered through all 682 suggested names and narrowed them down to a short-list of 12, which were then part of a mid-September “primary election” voted on by the 336 people who have reserved an apartment to date. From the primary election, a list of six candidates moved forward to a “general election,” where the final name was chosen, “Southtowne.”

Of the six finalists in the naming contest, several of them referred to the area’s history. Three names, Block 25, City Tract 25, and Durnford Square, referred to early city plans. Elias Durnford was one of the first city planners to plat out the downtown area. The intersection where the apartments will be located was referred to as Block 25 or City Tract 25 in early city maps. Another name, First City Center, alluded to Pensacola’s history as the first European settlement in America.

Finally, two other names, The Q and Southtowne, referred to Quint and Rishy Studer, and the apartments being a neighborhood in the south of Pensacola’s downtown area, respectively.

“We’ve said for months that we aren’t just building an apartment building, but that we’re building an entire downtown live-work-play area,” says Rothfeder. “So as we saw the Southtowne name rise to the top, we felt like it really resonated as the anchor for this downtown neighborhood and our future tenants agreed.”

Once the decision was made, the last piece of the puzzle was to deliver the promised “prize” for the winning name – a $250 gift certificate to any Studer-owned business. But even that task proved to be a challenge. The person who submitted “Southtowne” as a name worked at one of the Studers’ other businesses, so she was ineligible for the prize. The fallback? A random drawing for one lucky name submission. That winner? Lauryn Adams.

But the winning isn’t over. Rothfeder said that the Studer Properties team liked so many of the names suggested that they are looking to incorporate those into various elements of the apartment building itself.

“We’ve had a lot of fun with this naming contest, and it has certainly kept us on our toes,” says Rothfeder. “As you can see, progress is coming along on the apartment site, and we look forward to having people start to move into these apartments next summer.”

Studer Properties Name Video from WFBD/Blab TV on Vimeo.