2008 Woodie Awards
Northeastern students could miss opportunity to live in YMCA dorm
Danny Deza and Rachel Zarrell
Issue date: 7/2/08 Section: News
Northeastern officials have yet to express interest in leasing space in a planned private dormitory housed partially in the YMCA building on St. Boltoph Street. The project is slated to be completed in fall 2011, according to the developers.
Following concern from the community and local universities, the developers, Phoenix Property Co., and Lincoln Property Co. have altered their model of leasing directly to students, and will instead lease blocks of rooms to neighboring colleges, who will in turn lease the suites to their students.
John Capellano, the senior vice president for development and construction at Lincoln Property Co., said "four or five" local schools have already expressed interest in leasing from the GrandMarc private residence hall.
Despite the proximity of GrandMarc to campus, Northeastern is not among the list of interested schools.
"I want to say we've had six or seven meetings with various people at Northeastern in several departments and we have never gotten any kind of interest," Capellano said. "We really never talked very much about Northeastern students being in the building."
In Boston, which has a competitive real estate market with nearly 30 colleges in close proximity to many smaller universities, like the Berklee College of Music are forced to look for alternative options.
"Right now, Berklee houses about 20 percent of its students and we are interested in developing more dormitories," said Bill Whitney, vice president for real estate and campus planning at Berkelee. "And the difficulty we have found is that we don't have a large campus such as Northeastern, and the land is expensive and hard to come by."
Although construction for the GrandMarc has not started, meetings between the Dallas-based developers and local schools have been in the works; born from these meetings are a handful of local schools rooting for the residence hall to pass review from the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA).
Following concern from the community and local universities, the developers, Phoenix Property Co., and Lincoln Property Co. have altered their model of leasing directly to students, and will instead lease blocks of rooms to neighboring colleges, who will in turn lease the suites to their students.
John Capellano, the senior vice president for development and construction at Lincoln Property Co., said "four or five" local schools have already expressed interest in leasing from the GrandMarc private residence hall.
Despite the proximity of GrandMarc to campus, Northeastern is not among the list of interested schools.
"I want to say we've had six or seven meetings with various people at Northeastern in several departments and we have never gotten any kind of interest," Capellano said. "We really never talked very much about Northeastern students being in the building."
In Boston, which has a competitive real estate market with nearly 30 colleges in close proximity to many smaller universities, like the Berklee College of Music are forced to look for alternative options.
"Right now, Berklee houses about 20 percent of its students and we are interested in developing more dormitories," said Bill Whitney, vice president for real estate and campus planning at Berkelee. "And the difficulty we have found is that we don't have a large campus such as Northeastern, and the land is expensive and hard to come by."
Although construction for the GrandMarc has not started, meetings between the Dallas-based developers and local schools have been in the works; born from these meetings are a handful of local schools rooting for the residence hall to pass review from the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA).
Viewing Comments 1 - 3 of 3
Rockland
posted 7/02/08 @ 9:54 AM EST
Opportunity??????????
Was someone smoking crack while writing the title of this article?
Matthew Soleyn
posted 7/03/08 @ 7:53 PM EST
Northeastern right now is trying to EXIT the leased properties business. The University would be taking two steps backwards if this building gets approved and the University leases space. (Continued…)
viewfrmhere
posted 7/11/08 @ 10:48 AM EST
Seriously, this is a joke, right? Because nobody wants to live in that bug-infested, dilapidated "opportunity".
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