October 14, 2005

On October 14, 2005, Mathews Elementary School and Austin Partners in Education honored Crescent Real Estate, one of the largest publicly held Real Estate Investment Trusts in the nation, at Mathews Elementary, 906 West Lynn. Mathews was chosen in 2004 to join the national FACES of Change program, founded by Crescent in 1997. FACES of Change has established more than 67 successful business-to-school partnerships, impacting the lives of over 30,000 children across the nation by donating volunteer hours, money, in-kind donations, and connections to other community resources, to individually adopted schools.

The Austin Region has been an active participant in the program since 1997 with all six Crescent properties participating with local schools. Sims, Blanton, Becker, Blackshear, Zilker and Mathews Elementary Schools are all currently participating in three-year FACES partnerships with Crescent and have benefited from teacher appreciation days, book fairs, donations of clothing and food to needy families of students, mentoring, art shows, landscaping, donations of office equipment, science fairs, Dr. Seuss Days, and Easter egg hunts. Perhaps Crescent’s most significant contribution has been the Dino Pit project. At a cost of $40,000, Crescent created the Dino Pit at their 301 Congress property. One of the largest fossil discoveries in North America was unearthed on the property when ground broke in 1985. Through their commitment to education, Crescent underwrote the cost of six traveling “Dino Kits”, available to any school in the Austin area to teach Austin students about the Congress property discovery. Crescent also sponsored an educational video, Mastodon Phenomenon, to be a permanent tool of AISD science curriculum. Since 1999, Crescent Real Estate’s financial contributions to Austin schools have totaled over $150,000; 1,177 employee volunteers have worked on school projects for a total of 2,475 volunteer hours.

In addition to their overwhelming assistance to area schools, Crescent has donated prime office space in their downtown property to house Austin Partners in Education. A not-for-profit association, Austin Partners in Education (APIE) collaborates with the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and Austin Independent School District to create and foster community-school relationships that benefit Austin students with volunteers and resources. At a value of almost $50,000 annually, this donation from Crescent allows APIE to focus precious resources on programs, rather than on higher overhead costs.

The event to honor Crescent Real Estate for their generous support of Austin education was held on October 14, at 7:30am during the morning assembly program at Mathews Elementary. Following the assembly, there was a ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open the new Parent/Teacher Lounge, recently renovated by Crescent as part of their partnership with Mathews.