Brown University receives $87.2M in state bonds for new Brook Street dorm, other facilities

PROVIDENCE – Brown University said it’s completing three construction projects, including a new 125,000-square-foot dormitory on Brook Street, with the help of $87.2 million in state bonds recently provided by the Rhode Island Health and Educational Building Corp.

A total of $100.7 million is being generated for Brown University construction and renovation projects after the bonds were sold to investors at a premium of $13.5 million, said Kim Mooers, executive director of the building corporation, which is a quasi-public agency established by the General Assembly in 1966 to provide low-cost financing for the construction of private and public health/educational facilities.

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Brown University said it plans to use part of the financing for the construction of its new Brook Street Residence Hall, located at 250 and 259 Brook St., which ‎is ‎expected to include about 353 beds for third- and fourth-year students. The Brook Street Residence Hall would be the first new Brown University dorm built in about 30 years.

The five-story, two-building residence hall, which university officials said would help alleviate off-campus housing demands, remains under construction near the southern end of the College Hill campus, with a topping-off ceremony held recently at the site between Charlesfield and Power streets. The project is currently scheduled for completion in fall 2023, after a groundbreaking was first held in February 2020.

The university announced last year that it was downsizing the project, revising original plans after receiving input from residents of the neighborhood. That meant reducing the amount of beds by about 50 students, eliminating a planned retail space in the western building, diminishing the footprint of one building by 16,000 square feet, increasing a setback distance and adding publicly accessible green spaces. A total price tag for the Brook Street project, designed by architect Deborah Berke Partners, was not immediately available.

The state financing is also going toward the expansion of the Churchill House, with a new 24,000-square-foot addition built onto the 155 Angell St. property, which was first acquired by Brown in 1970 and is the longtime home of the university’s Department of Africana Studies.

The state bonds are also going toward the renovation of the Lincoln Field Building, an 18,500-square-foot-facility located on the Simmons Quadrangle, including facilities for Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental ‎and Planetary Sciences.

The $87.2 million bond is among 27 bonds facilitated for Brown University by the building corporation since 1968, according to the quasi-public agency, totaling more than $1.3 billion intended to assist the Ivy League school.

“For more than 50 years, RIHEBC has been proudly providing financing assistance to help Brown University meet their facilities’ needs,” Mooers said.

 Marc Larocque is a PBN contributing writer.