Colleges "Prowling" For Cheap Student Dorm Space Seek Out Desperate Developers Looking To Unload Unsold Condo Complexes

In Providence, Rhode Island, The Associated Press reports:

• River views, granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, 9-foot ceilings. This is student housing? When classes start this fall — if all goes as planned — more than 300 students at Johnson & Wales University will be living in Capitol Cove, an upscale condominium project that had been languishing on the market for more than six months.

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• Some universities around the country have found a silver lining to the real estate recession that has left condominium developers in the lurch. For less time and money than it would take to build a residence hall, universities in places like New York City and Ohio are buying or leasing entire condo projects.(1) And they are also eyeing vacant lots once targeted for high-end condos for use as retail and parking. "This is a bonanza of an opportunity ... for universities to acquire the space they desperately need," said Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics.

For more, see Empty condos give universities new dorm space.

(1) In New York, Columbia University last year paid $67.6 million for a residence hall for graduate students and staff in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx after a planned condo development called the Arbor couldn't sell out. In Ohio, Capital University bought a 30-unit building for $4 million in suburban Columbus that had been marketed as 55-and-older housing but is now reserved for about 60 upperclassmen in good academic standing.