Luxury student housing seen as rare growth market

The cinder-block dormitories and cramped, scruffy, off-campus apartments familiar to generations of college students are under attack.
As the rest of the housing market plods along, developers like Gilbane Inc. of Providence see luxury student living as a rare growth market for new construction and are charging ahead with posh college-apartment plans on or near campuses across the country.
“This isn’t Animal House anymore,” said Robert V. Gilbane, chairman and CEO of Gilbane Development Co. about the student-housing market. “It is the hottest real estate product in the country. These projects are huge hits and our goal is to develop several thousand units and hundreds of millions of dollars worth across the country.”
That includes its hometown, where the fifth-generation Rhode Island company wants to build a 102-unit, luxury student-apartment building on Thayer Street in the heart of Brown University and College Hill.
The project, known as 257 Thayer Street, will take up most of the city block between Thayer, Meeting Street, Brook Street and Euclid Avenue, replacing nine existing buildings that broadly resemble the old-school, off-campus student-housing mold that’s fallen out of favor.
In their place, across the street from the Avon Cinema, would rise a four-story building of furnished “suites,” complete with underground parking, Internet and flat-screen televisions.
If the project goes forward, Gilbane would own and manage the building and rent directly to Brown students, of which the company estimates that 1,600 undergraduates and 2,600 graduate students are now living off campus.
“The neighborhoods where we have built these love them because they pull students out of the residential neighborhoods,” Gilbane said. “257 Thayer would cluster 275 students in a four-story building around shops and restaurants.”
With the promise of construction jobs, a boost in property taxes and the elimination of eight parking-space-killing curb cuts, 257 Thayer appears to be on the fast track for city approval. It has already received the endorsement of the City Plan Commission and is now on its way to the City Council, where an ordinance subcommittee public hearing on the project was scheduled for June 26.
But Gilbane’s vision has not gone unquestioned.
The original rendering of the proposed building was described as monolithic by neighbors concerned about further institutionalization of what had been a lower-density area. Since the current zoning and comprehensive-plan designation for the property does not allow a large, mixed-use building, Gilbane has proposed changing both in an area that includes not just the 257 Thayer site, but surrounding blocks.
That’s drawn concern about whether the project will serve as a precedent for even more development on Thayer Street and for Brown’s “institutional creep” to envelop more property.
With so many irons in the fire here and elsewhere, Gilbane has set an early fall deadline to determine whether the project will go forward while the College Hill Neighborhood Association and Providence Preservation Society have called for the permitting to be slowed down to address some of the issues.
“What they are asking for is such a big change, everyone needs to get their heads around it,” said Providence Preservation Society Executive Director James Hall. “There are some positive aspects for me personally. My board is split and the neighborhood is split.”
Gilbane has already made some changes in response to concerns that have been raised.
The company hired Providence architecture-firm Union Studio to redesign the building in a way that would break it up visually, make it appear less imposing and institutional and more in sync with the rest of the neighborhood.
In addition to the design changes, the zoning change has been scaled back to include two blocks north of the 257 site instead of a larger swath of blocks both north and south.
Ultimately, questions about 257 Thayer revolve around how cities can take advantage of institutional growth, at a time when “meds and eds” may be the only growth, without being consumed by it.
Although Brown has not discussed it publicly, many believe the school intends to build a new dorm north of the 257 Thayer site on university-owned land at Bowen and Cushing Streets.
In Providence, Gilbane developed a taste for student housing at 15 Westminster St., the Hospital Trust building the company converted into an upscale dorm for Rhode Island School of Design.
“Most of the housing at a place like Brown was built in the 1950s and 1960s with two or three students in a room, no living room, no private bedroom, and no private bathroom,” Gilbane said. “They’re remodeling them, but there is only so much they can do. Students today go to college as much for the experience as the education.” •

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