2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land - 43

committed and sustained partnerships that
transcend an individual project. These types
of community/university partnerships are
typically separate entities that coalesce
around a common vision and goals for the
community. Both sides have seats on the
board and hire staff to manage mutually
beneficial programmatic initiatives. This
construct builds trust within the community
and provides a regular forum to discuss key
issues, including new developments.
KIRBY: The most successful innovation
districts are vibrant places to live, with retail,
art, and programming. This is becoming
even more essential coming out of COVID,
because it's hard to get people to come into
the workplace now. Universities can create
an environment where the most talented
people want to be because it's fun and
productive, and that will attract other people,
companies, recruiters, and collaborators.
How can institutions address housing
shortages for students, faculty, and staff?
KIRBY: Third-party providers have built
housing economically and efficiently
in and around college campuses for
some time. But because the college-age
population is decreasing in the United
States, no one wants to overbuild student
housing. Recruiting faculty members-it's a
hypercompetitive market, so, in places like
New York City, universities often have to
provide faculty members with some kind
of housing, a subsidy, or loans, because the
costs are so high.
BULLS: There was an area of Philadelphia
that had become dilapidated over the years.
Judith Rodin, then president of the University
of Pennsylvania, and John Fry, then the
executive vice president at Penn and now
the president of Drexel University, worked
closely to put together a program to address
housing. The university would provide a loan
to faculty and staff who bought homes in
these neighborhoods that needed reworking,
and if they improved the home over a certain
period, the university would forgive the loan.
They also [developed a program] to help
make the mortgages more accessible, as
well.
FLAHERTY: In supply-constrained markets,
we have seen institutions creatively address
immediate housing shortages by master
leasing hotels, adaptively reusing existing
properties close to campus, and establishing
housing cooperatives. Longer-term
approaches require an increase in supply. For
land-rich institutions, this could mean ground
leasing or joint venturing with third-party
developers to build specific housing types
or acquiring existing market-rate residential
properties to dedicate to the university
community. In addition, with the oversupply
of university office space, due to remote
work and a shift towards hoteling, there is an
opportunity to convert floors or full buildings
to apartment units.
CONDRIN: Motivations for academic
institutions to provide housing may vary. It's
not always about affordability. It may just be
about creating community. In either case, the
university needs to assess what its priorities
are and assess the impact of not providing
quality, reasonably priced, accessible housing
to the campus community. Attracting
and retaining not only students but also
quality faculty and staff by providing
attractive housing ... that has a price tag.
Many universities are using land leases to
create new developments, sometimes in
combination with mortgage origination
programs, to help faculty and staff afford
housing in their communities.
LU: At Emory, we're taking a portfolio
approach. We currently are in the process
of developing a two-phase, 1,000-bed
graduate student housing project that we
initially thought would be closer to a more
conventional public/private partnership.
But as we considered the allocation of risk
control and profit and loss, the university
decided to be the investor. We have a
developer partner for the delivery, but it's
ultimately a university-owned project that
will be operated by a third party. We're
also looking at potentially converting some
established assets into graduate student
housing.UL
RON NYREN is a San Francisco-based architecture and urban
design writer.
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2024 Winter Issue of Urban Land

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