Student Housing Business is the voice of the student housing industry.
Issue link: https://studenthousingbusiness.epubxp.com/i/783396
VIE W FROM THE ACADEME January/February 2017 35 Filippone: Yes. We finance the projects and oversee the construc- tion. When the project is com- plete, we transfer it over to the operations side of the campus. SHB: What is happening with your team in terms of housing on the campuses, as far as develop- ment or repurposing? Filippone: We have housing on three campuses currently. The Amherst campus has over 14,000 beds. Amherst is our larg- est campus and is our flagship campus. We built 1,500 new beds for the Commonwealth Honors College, which opened up about three years ago, representing an approximately $185 million to $200 million investment by the university. That is really the only new housing they've had on that campus over the last several years. The Amherst campus is looking at rehabilitating existing beds and looking to see whether a public-private partnership might be done to bring apartment-style housing out of the town and onto campus. The Amherst campus wanted apartment-style housing, and not necessarily the same resi- dential life that they already have. The idea is to provide indepen- dent living to the students, while still having them be on campus. SHB: Is there demand for more housing on the campuses? Filippone: At Amherst, you'll see a lot of people stay on-cam- pus. It's mandatory freshman year, but students often stay on- campus for their freshman and sophomore years, then move off- campus for the experience of liv- ing in an apartment or living on their own. We'll invest in new housing and give an on-campus experience, but it will probably be apartment-style. SHB: That's atypical of the state college experience, right? Filippone: Right. We just built University Suites, which is apart- ment-style housing, for Lowell. We have about 4,000 beds on the Lowell campus and continue to invest in more beds. We just bought Perkins Loft, an apart- ment building in Lowell which we're going to transform into residence halls in September 2017. The Lowell campus still has additional needs for housing. Lowell was part of the first pub- lic-private partnership on private land where they have a master lease of 800 beds that were built over two phases. It has been very successful. SHB: UMass obviously isn't afraid of acquiring properties that can be converted into student housing. Are you looking at these alternatives, beyond building? Filippone: Well, before we pur- chased the housing, we looked at whether the cost of buying the apartment buildings and renovat- ing them for several million dol- lars was more cost effective than building it brand new. We con- cluded it was. SHB: The structure of the UMass Building Authority is a little dif- ferent than what many public uni- versities have. Is it modeled after anything? Filippone: It was set-up to cre- ate bonding capacity in 1960 for the UMass campuses. At that time, UMass was just the flag- ship — Amherst. The medical school was created in 1962. The Boston campus wasn't even envi- sioned, and UMass Lowell and UMass Dartmouth were different schools that came into the system in the early 1990s. The Building Authority was really just created for Amherst so that any revenue- producing asset could be bonded through this entity. SHB: Clearly, the purpose has evolved a bit. Now the Building Authority is working on some public-private partnerships on various buildings. How do you determine whether to do that ver- sus self-develop through bonds? Does it depend on the capacity you have at the minute? Filippone: We have a board gov- ernance policy where we expect each of the campuses to maintain a debt-service ratio to operating expenses of less than 8 percent, and overall the total university should never go above 10 percent. If an individual campus were to EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED elauwit.com EXPERIENCE THAT'S UNEXPECTED