Michael A Karp

Karp, wiry, often clad in rumpled, somewhat baggy suits, with unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, is better known for his rental real estate in West Philadelphia, held by his University City Housing Co. He has been a longtime contributor to both Democrats and Republicans. He has used that leverage to push his reform-minded views in public education and social services. He sponsored and subsidizes the Mantua Family Center charter school, for some 200 children, working closely with a local public school. Karp was a student at Penn in the mid-1960s when he began buying properties near the campus. Much of the neighborhood around Penn was poor, with rapidly deteriorating 19th-century properties, before demolition and gentrification created the University City community. Karp continued buying dozens of properties around the region, until in 1988 his holdings were valued at a reported $150 million. His commercial tenants' needs for phone service led him to create ATX in 1985, to compete with AT&T, Bell Atlantic and other new phone companies, he said.