Campus housing planned
by Clayton Woullard
The Metropolitan
Metro’s long-standing legacy as a commuter college may be history two years from now.
Urban Ventures, LLC., a local real estate development company, has made plans to build student housing units near the Auraria campus by fall semester 2006.
Earlier this year, the company acquired the 5.33-acre plot of land, located at Fourth and Walnut Streets, which is currently occupied by Atlas Scrap Metal Company.
Susan Powers, CEO and co-founder of Urban Ventures, said her company chose the location based on its proximity to campus and because it would sit right near the light-rail tracks that run by the south end of the campus.
“We feel very positive about the location and feel that with the light rail passing by that it’s a very convenient location,” Powers said.
“It’s a real nice benefit to have that so close to this campus.”
Powers said her company plans to build about 550 to 750 rental units total, but the first phase, to be completed by fall 2006, will consist of about 280 units, with about 700 beds.
It’s more appropriate to focus on the number of beds since students will only have to pay for their bed, and not have to worry about a roommate, she said.
“For many people, having the uncertainty of whether a roommate will be there or not,” she said, “is a pretty big economic burden.”
The second phase of the project, which will consist of about 500 beds, won’t begin until the first phase is completely finished.
Powers said market research shows that the campus could support 2,800 beds.
“But you don’t jump in and build that many in a day,” she said. “We think you work up to that.”
The majority of the units will be two-bedroom and four-bedroom -- some of the two-bedrooms will be double occupancies—with some one-bedroom units.
All the units will come with full-service kitchens since no 24-hour food service is available on campus.
The company is still in the process of deciding the pricing, but Powers said her objective is to get the price as low as possible, while making the economics work.
“We want to have the rent as competitive as it can be,” she said. “We’re still working on what the exact mix of those units will be.”
Powers said other developers had tried to acquire the Atlas property, but couldn’t gather together the finances or missed the deadline.
Other past attempts to build student housing near Auraria have failed, mainly because of opposition from the surrounding communities.
A previous proposal looked at developing student housing at 10th Avenue and Osage Street, in the La Alma-Lincoln neighborhood south of Colfax, which mostly consists of low-income housing.
Neighborhood groups, including NEWSED, a non-profit organization that helps low-income individuals move into homes, put pressure on the developer to kill the plan because they felt it would have broken a promise made to the neighborhoods by the Auraria Foundation that student housing would never be built there.
Veronica Barela, executive director of NEWSED, said she has always been opposed to the idea of student housing for Auraria.
“It’s a commuter campus so they don’t really need student housing,” Barela said.
“We’d like to see affordable housing projects for people who do live here,” she said.
Patrick Jiner, chair of the Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board (SACAB) and a CCD student, said affordable student housing would be great because it’s definitely needed.
“It would bring a sense of camaraderie to the campus that we don’t have right now,” Jiner said. “If we had something close to the school like that with affordable pricing…that’s going to be important to the student body.”
While Urban Ventures’ planned development is set away from the low-income neighborhoods, Barela said she’s afraid it might start a trend of building student housing, which could encroach on low-income neighborhoods in Denver.
“This whole last decade we’ve seen a problem with poor people being pushed out to the inner suburbs and poor people in the neighborhoods being gentrified,” she said.
“This is a community of poor people and we’d like it to stay that way and we’d like to make it a better community for the poor people living here.”
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