A private showing: partnerships between private developers and IHEs have reached a new level of sophistication.WHEN UPS NEEDED EMployees at its Louisville hub, the University of Louisville's (Ky.) students presented the perfect candidate pool. UPS sweetened sweet·en v. sweet·ened, sweet·en·ing, sweet·ens v.tr. 1. To make sweet or sweeter by adding sugar, honey, saccharin, or another sweet substance. 2. To make more pleasant or agreeable. the pot with full scholarships, a 401(k) plan, housing and book allowances, health care services, and union wages. But to be able to work odd hours through the night, students needed a place to crash where their comings and goings didn't disturb normal dorm activities. The state of Kentucky and the university saw one clear answer: bring in a private developer to create, finance, and operate a 1,200-bed housing unit. It's yet another case of private developers charging to IHEs' rescue. Face it: most universities are land rich but lack equity and practical real estate experience. "Institutions don't want to be developers--they just want to be ranked number 1 in Newsweek," says Juan Reyes, a partner with Hartman and Craven law firm in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . And when you also face budget struggles on a daily basis and wrestle with tough mandates from state appropriations officials, alternative ways to keep schools growing are music to administrators' ears. Think of it as a way to get around being boxed in Adj. 1. boxed in - enclosed in or as if in a box; "boxed cigars"; "a confining boxed-in space"; "felt boxed in by the traffic" boxed-in, boxed enclosed - closed in or surrounded or included within; "an enclosed porch"; "an enclosed yard"; "the enclosed check , says Charles Perry This article is about the American writer. For other persons named Charles Perry, see Charles Perry (disambiguation). Charles Perry (1924-1969) was an African American author whose only published novel was Portrait of a Young Man Drowning. , president of Ambling This article is about the four-beat intermediate gaits of horses. For more information on how horses move, see Horse gait. The term Amble or Ambling is used to describe a number of four-beat intermediate gaits of horses. University Development Group in Valdosta, Ga. Ambling's equity has translated to more than 25,000 beds in private housing across the country, and this company is just one player in this space. No one jumped into this niche to be altruistic. Campuses offer stability, with a higher quality of neighborhoods surrounding them, says Glenn Weaver, director of development at Raleigh, N.C.-based Academic Privatization privatization: see nationalization. privatization Transfer of government services or assets to the private sector. State-owned assets may be sold to private owners, or statutory restrictions on competition between privately and publicly owned LLC (Logical Link Control) See "LANs" under data link protocol. LLC - Logical Link Control . "Education is a government responsibility. Even if it's a private college, government is likely to provide future incentives to maintain the quality of the area," he says. Not to mention IHEs attract young professionals, who attract upscale retailers. That livability increases property value and makes the area more attractive to office developers, too. "Your cycle is spiraling upward rather than downward," Weaver adds. Financially speaking, Perry sees the IHE IHE Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise IHE Institutions of Higher Education IHE International Institute for Infrastructural, Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering (historical acronym only, replaced by: IHE Delft, the Foundation) market as a developer's sweet spot no matter what happens with loan interest rates. "The way these campus project bonds are sold and paid back through the rent, we don't see this niche being especially impacted by those forces," he says. Finally, developers also receive a shelter from the storm of regulations in these deals. Thanks to an IHE's community facility standing, it represents a chance to break into residential areas typically deemed off-limits to ordinary commercial proposals, Reyes points out. LEAVING HOME Housing makes up the bulk of deals between developers and campuses, but that is changing. These partnerships also build: * Research labs * Office buildings * Nursing homes near medical facilities * Parking decks * Auditoriums * Retail strip centers THE BREAK UP It was The Three Musketeers, 21st century style: a housing developer, a local retail developer and Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University, mainly at Baltimore, Md. Johns Hopkins in 1867 had a group of his associates incorporated as the trustees of a university and a hospital, endowing each with $3.5 million. Daniel C. (Md.) agreed to build Charles Village, a complex of student housing and retailers that included Barnes & Noble and a credit union. The university would contribute the site and student consumers. The local developer would finance the building envelope A building envelope is the separation between the interior and the exterior environments of a building. It serves as the outer shell to protect the indoor environment as well as to facilitate its climate control. ; the housing specialist would put up the dough for the lodging and lease it back to JHU JHU Johns Hopkins University students for 40 years. But as the pieces fell into place, the partnership fell apart. JHU needed a building that reflected a certain quality and design standard--after all, it was in this for a much longer haul than 40 years, says Larry Kilduff, executive director for facilities management The management of a user's computer installation by an outside organization. All operations including systems, programming and the datacenter can be performed by the facilities management organization on the user's premises. at the university. Unfortunately, its vision and the housing developer's pocketbook weren't compatible. The firm couldn't build to those standards and charge enough in housing rates to cover the expenses. But no sweat, the officials reasoned. JHU could just kick in the extra bucks and everyone would walk away happy. "But that got into the ownership issue, so we decided to finance the piece in its entirety," Kilduff reports. The university could have extended the lease term beyond 40 years to allow the developer more time to recoup its costs, but such a long-term agreement made administrators squirm. So JHU picked up the tab and retained the developer on a fee basis rather than on ownership terms. "We're still better off because we dealt with the city and community uniformly in presenting this project," Kilduff adds. "I don't have any misgivings about either one of the development entities except to say that the decisions were driven by financial considerations more than anything else." In fact, he's open to discussing a private development answer to two other housing pickles Pickles may refer to
THE REAL MCCOY Real McCoy, the probably originally McKay, a Scotch whisky; the term now alludes to the “first or best of its kind” or “the actual one.” [Pop. Culture: Payton, 409] See : Genuineness It's easy for a developer to dazzle his audience with a slick presentation. References rarely share horror stories. So when it comes to selecting the best private developer, IHEs need to employ a few investigative tricks. For starters, phrases like "If you will get out of my way, I'll get it done," or "We don't need everyone's approval," should be red flags, says Glenn Weaver with Academic Privatization. It signals they don't understand the difference between public and private operations, and that can't bode well for an IHE. Note whether the developer offers to do a market study. Many try to brush this step off, but it's a requirement to get tax-exempt financing, Weaver adds. And don't be impressed if they want to bring their own architects and contractors, touting the teamwork benefit. A good developer can partner with a variety of personalities, and it's in a college's best interest to have local engineers and designers with ties to the school on site. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CASE STUDY FROSTBURG STATE UNIVERSITY Background Frostburg State University, located on a 260 acre (1.1 km²) campus in Frostburg, Maryland, is part of the University System of Maryland. History The school was founded in 1898 under the name State Normal School #2 BUILDING: Edgewood Commons Student Apartments SCHOOL: Frostburg State University, Frostburg, Md. MOTIVATIONS: FSU FSU Florida State University FSU Former Soviet Union FSU Ferris State University FSU Fayetteville State University (North Carolina) FSU Frostburg State University FSU Finance Sector Union had no student apartments and the small town of Frostburg had very few traditional apartments. Students were renting off-campus in older houses from absentee landlords with minimum management services. DESCRIPTION: 406 beds in mostly four-bedroom, two-bath apartments in a four-story building. Amenities include a hotel style lounge, business center, game and video rooms, exercise room, sand volleyball court, and lounging porches. TIMELINE: August 2003 PROJECT COST: $17,220,000 Financed with $600,000 of developer-purchased subordinated bonds Subordinated bonds Securities that fall after others in priority of claims on the entity in the case of financial distress. and the balance with tax-exempt bonds issued by the Maryland Economic Development Corporation and underwritten by Legg Mason Founded in 1899, Legg Mason, Inc. (NYSE: LM) is a leading Global Asset Management Firm that serves the institutional, mutual fund and wealth management markets. The firm is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, and is located on Lombard and Charles Streets in the Legg Mason . ARCHITECT: Randy Gaskings, Gaudreau, Inc. DEVELOPER: Academic Privatization WHY IT'S CONSIDERED A SUCCESS: The project has established a new standard for housing in the larger community and created competition among other landlords to meet higher standards. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CASE STUDY TROY UNIVERSITY Troy University (formerly Troy State University) is a public university located in Troy, Alabama and founded in 1887, as "Troy Normal School". The main campus enrollment is approximately 6,300 students. The campus itself consists of 36 major buildings on 460 acres (1. BUILDING: Trojan Village SCHOOL: Troy University in Troy, Ala. MOTIVATIONS: First new on-campus housing in more than 30 years. Troy is experiencing tremendous growth in enrollment and wanted to entice students to move back to campus. TIMELINE: Groundbreaking, August 2006; completion, July 2007 PROJECT COST: $21,500,457 SOURCE: Privatized tax-exempt bonds, totaling $23,145,859 ARCHITECT: Niles Bolton Associates DEVELOPER: Ambling University Development Group WHY IT'S CONSIDERED A SUCCESS: The project is 100 percent leased and has a substantial waiting list. Students are relocating from off-campus apartments to the on-campus Trojan Village. |
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