Forty-five percent of students in a recent survey ranked quality of life among their top-three factors when it came to choosing their college or university. That’s because, like any other community, campuses thrive when their residents enjoy great experiences driven by valuable amenities and thoughtful development.
Those amenities cost money, of course. And one of the smartest, most efficient, most cost-effective ways to provide them is through public-private partnerships. These institutional arrangements, when designed and executed properly, can deliver benefits that go well beyond student quality of life and actually enhance the campus and the greater community in amazing ways.
What Students Want
College admissions offices know what students want from their campus communities. Take an official tour and you’ll see. Prospective students and their families are chaperoned around campus hearing impressive stats and stories about curriculum and resources and alumni networks. And rightfully so. But what they’re shown are quality-of-life amenities. Every tour includes stops in the student center, dorms, and recreation and athletic facilities, plus a few nods to campus community highlights like shopping, dining, and nightlife. Because today’s students are all about the vibe, and facilities and environments drive decision-making.
What Else You Get
The motivations behind having and investing in lifestyle amenities and campus community development go well beyond enrollment and retention, though. For many schools, it’s the chance to generate revenue from non-revenue-producing assets or create new retail, sales, and job opportunities that didn’t previously exist. Others see it as an opportunity to burnish their brand, enhance the campus landscape, and boost alumni engagement with new features and events. Still others view it as a way to deepen their connection to the community and the region. Whatever the reason, new lifestyle assets can help advance as many relationships as a university has.
A Collaborative Solution
So we know lifestyle amenities can enhance campus communities and drive new revenue. The question, then, is how to pay for them. A small liberal arts school in the southeast is showing us the answer.
With enrollment slowing, under-activated assets, and an athletic program in need of facility additions and upgrades, the university pursued a unique public-private partnership with a local professional soccer team that could creatively address many if not all of those challenges.
They started by leaning on their long and strong relationship with the city to ensure there would be access to infrastructure for the project, leasing unused university real estate to the private developer, working with the local tourism agency to ensure available bed tax monies, and securing city, state, and federal support through tax increment financing, development incentive grants, infrastructure improvement grant, and clean energy resources. Collectively, the public-private partnerships should fund approximately 50 percent of the new campus-based, developer-operated sports facility at the center of the project, which is driving other private investment in residential and retail development on university-owned land.
What It’s Creating
The new athletic facility is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to gaining shared access to a facility to enhance its intercollegiate athletic programs (at no risk to the university, mind you), the university will start mining revenue from a non-revenue-producing asset, add a massive quality-of-life amenity for its students, and benefit from the exposure and publicity the pro team provides.
The project is also expected to include complementary new retail and commercial development, including a new hotel, bringing permanent jobs and long-term economic impact to the campus community. And when the new assets and eyeballs from the project enhance the school’s brand and attract new applicants and enrollees, the project will check yet another box for the university.
Projects like these tend to have domino effects, too. There’s already talk among the administration about adding new classrooms, flex space, and student housing to address the expected growth. And the school is considering federal grants to support new STEM infrastructure. Momentum isn’t the only thing this new development has generated; it’s drawn lots of interest and excitement from the alumni community as well.
Making It Happen
Not every school can partner with a pro sports team, obviously. But that’s by no means the only kind of public-private partnership that can enhance your campus community. Start by looking at your assets and considering what needs they might be able to fulfill if they were given a new purpose. Then talk to a real estate development adviser like McCullers Group. They can provide a more thorough analysis and help you with things like project feasibility and visioning, funding, partnership facilitation, planning, and construction and facility management. Before you know it you can turn that idle asset into an amenity that changes the quality of life on your campus for the betterment of the entire community.
