‘It will have a positive impact on the neighborhood’
College dorm life goes deluxe
Collegiate Village to house 1,348 students in a gated Cheektowaga community
A basketball court, tanning beds, fitness machines and a movie theater. Think that sounds like an exclusive club or pricey hotel?
Think again. It’s the latest in student housing.
Collegiate Village, a $100 million gated community in Cheektowaga, is taking shape as a sprawling old-fashioned apartment complex off Eggert Road. The first students will begin moving in on Monday, with more coming next weekend.
Mark Chason, president of Chason Affinity Cos., first considered the project about 2z years ago. He had noticed that a lot of students were moving into the Kensington Village apartment complex because of its proximity to nearly a dozen local colleges. He said he saw a need for the “rebirth” of the aging complex.
Ownership will be transferred to WNY Student Housing LLC, an entity established by Villa Maria College. The college’s involvement allowed the project to receive special tax breaks.
The project complements Villa Maria’s goal to increase its four-year programs and draw more students to the commuter-based school. The college, two miles away from Collegiate Village, does not offer any student housing.
“The project will play an integral role in attracting students from various regions and assist our institution in expanding its recruitment strategy and strategic plan initiatives,” said Sister Marcella Marie Garus, president of Villa Maria. The college will offer five baccalaureate programs and eleven associate degree programs this fall, she said.
At Collegiate Village, brick exteriors, wood floors and copper porticos remain from the old complex. New are carpets, furniture, windows and kitchen areas. There will be a 6-foot fence around the entire property and it will have a guardhouse entrance. The student portion is a little over 50 acres.
The community lodge, equipped with a fitness center, pool, game room, and other amenities, will be accessible to all residents. It should be finished in October, and the pool should be ready by next summer, Chason said. The rest of the apartments will take a year or more to finish, he said.
There is expected to be a 10-acre green space for a “college commons” or “quad.”
There are 400 beds for students available now. Each bedroom has its own bathroom. When it is completed, there will be room for 1,348 students in mostly two-and four-bedroom apartments.
“We’ve kept a lot of the really nice, older features and we’ve modernized everything else,” Chason said. “We had a wonderful footprint to work with and it would have been really different without that.”
Collegiate Village also seeks to attract students from other area colleges.
The project has overcome several challenges. In December 2007, the state Division of Human Rights served subpoenas on the developers to determine if they were violating anti-discrimination laws. The developers had told the former tenants — including many elderly, minorities, and families with young children — that they had to vacate the apartments and could not move into the new student housing.
Chason Affinity settled the federal housing discrimination complaint in April by agreeing to set aside 126 units for tenants who qualify for “affordable housing.”
Another complaint, filed by Housing Opportunities Made Equal on behalf of former tenants, was resolved when Chason agreed to pay $57,000 in compensation and set aside 25 units for low-income tenants with rent subsidies, as part of the 126 affordable units. Qualifications are based on the federal low income guidelines, said Nancy Whelan, chief operating officer of Chason Affinity.
Chason said the “affordable housing” units, located closest to Eggert Road, will be available sometime in 2009.
The apartment complex will be exempt from taxes because of its “educational purpose” and Villa Maria’s status as a not-for-profit. However, WNY Student Housing will pay the town, county and school district various payments in lieu of taxes that have been negotiated. Starting in 2010, it will pay the town $302,736 a year, the county $62,462 and the school district $307,219. The payments are subject to annual increases as tax rates increase.
The project also received a $100 million tax-free bond issued by the Kenmore Housing Authority.
Chason said the bond and taxes were key components for the financial side of the ambitious project.
“It’s a very complex process and there are a lot of pieces that fit together, but that was definitely important in making it a reality,” he said.
Cheektowaga Town Supervisor Mary Holtz agreed. “I don’t know how they could have done this type of a large-scale project without it,” she said.
Holtz said the project fits into her vision for the town’s future, one of increased development in older, vacant neighborhoods on the Cheektowaga-Buffalo border.
“It’s going to bring new life to the area,” she said. “It will have a positive impact on the neighborhood. We had been losing businesses there.”
She hopes the influx of students to the area will attract new businesses. “If you have 400 or 500 students, I can’t imagine little shops not opening up to cater to that kind of life,” she said.
A month of rent for one person living in a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment is $720; rent in a four-bedroom, four-bath unit is $603 per person. Roommates can be matched up by request or through compatibility forms.
“Student housing really has taken a big leap forward,” Chason said. Some students nowadays expect luxury, he said.
“Students now when they are looking at a college will turn it down because of the housing,” said Whelan, Chason Affinity’s
COO.
The company is looking into other development projects, and Chason said that “there are some things in the pipeline.” Yet in comparison to Collegiate Village, he said future projects would be “nothing of this scale.”
