When Ilya Zusin decided to buy 2.6 acres of downtown College Park to build housing for 600 to 700 students, he said was trying to fill a need left by the university’s housing crunch.
But Zusin’s planned project — a high-rise building at the site of the Maryland Book Exchange — is just one of many new student apartment buildings that have recently opened or are already under construction in College Park, leaving some developers and city officials wondering how much new housing the area really needs.
The University View just opened its second building and is working on a third. Nearby on Route 1, the Varsity at College Park and Starview Plaza are starting to go up. The university’s Oakland Hall dorm is coming along steadily. Mazza Grandmarc is now leasing its apartments a little further north.
Combined, these projects and Zusin’s will bring nearly 6,000 student beds to the area.
The student housing shortfall has its roots in the early 1990s, said Mike Glowacki, assistant to the director of the Resident Life Department. That was when waitlists for on-campus housing first developed.
Since that time, a housing lottery for upperclassmen has forced many students off the campus, and until recently, off-campus housing options were largely limited to aging apartments or rented single-family homes.
But is the influx of new housing over-correcting for the shortage?
“That’s the question of the moment,” College Park planning director Terry Schum said.
Student housing “used to be a sure bet when there was a clear demand,” Schum said. “I don’t think you’ll see a lot of new student housing projects in the near future.”
Schum said many developers will most likely wait and see how current projects are absorbed into the market to determine whether more housing is still needed.
David Dorsch, chairman of the College Park Landlords’ Committee, said the abundance of new student housing has begun to have an effect on rental homes in the area, which are losing business to the new apartments, especially when they aren’t within easy walking distance of the university.
“There’s not a shortage of student housing; in fact, I’m starting to think there might be too much student housing,” Dorsch said.
But District 3 City Councilman Mark Cook said new amenity-laden apartments that let students move out of aging rented houses that are sometimes in questionable condition is a positive change for the city.
“The desire of students to live in older homes is softening when they are given the opportunity to live in new housing,” Cook said, adding that it creates a better balance of year-round and seasonal residents in residential neighborhoods.
Matt Brigham, who graduated in 2008, agreed with Cook that the new housing projects are giving students more options than they had even a few years ago.
When he was an upperclassman, Brigham said, students who did not get into the university’s South Campus Commons or University Courtyards complexes had little choice but to live in a small, old house in College Park. A variety of new developments will also benefit students by driving prices down, Brigham predicted.
“I think it’s great,” Brigham said, “It’s definitely improved since I left.”
Some developers, however, feel the influx of competition may prove to be too much of a good thing. Mukesh Majmudar, whose 669-bed Starview apartment building is scheduled to open in time for the spring 2011 semester, said while he’s confident his housing project will fill up, newer projects might have trouble.
“It needs to be done at a planned pace, instead of all at once,” Majmudar said of new student housing development, adding he plans to distinguish his building from the competition by offering superior ground-floor retail and restaurants.
Zusin declined to elaborate on his earlier comments about the housing crunch or provide more details of his planned downtown apartment building as he wraps up negotiations to purchase the Book Exchange property.
Brandon Regan, leasing director for the Mazza Grandmarc apartments further north on Route 1, said he feels any housing crisis has less to do with the amount of student housing available and more to do with the varying number of students the university admits each year.
“There’s still a pretty heavy demand,” he said — he has had a steady flow of students signing leases for the fall — and he said many students from other Washington-area universities also choose to live in the area.
Regan also said there is a continuing “housing crisis” for graduate students, who often can’t afford the same rents as undergraduates and therefore make it harder for a developer to recoup his investment in a new apartment building. Mazza Grandmarc, originally pitched as graduate student housing, changed its plans to market also to undergraduates.
Meanwhile, Glowacki said the university will be prepared to accommodate all interested freshmen, sophomores and juniors on the campus once it opens Oakland Hall in the Denton community. Even so, he said university plans from 2008 called for a total of 5,000 new student beds in the College Park area, so even all the new apartments have not saturated the market.
Cook, whose legislative district includes Zusin’s planned project, believes location is the key to success for student housing projects.
“Any facilities from the university up to the Beltway will be a success,” Cook said.
Schum said she believes any additional projects would need to win over commuters, not just students living elsewhere in College Park, to see continued success.
Junior history major Anna Cypron is a commuter who, despite all the new housing projects, has not considered living closer to the campus. Her biggest deterrent is the added price of living in a new apartment building.
“I’m fine with living at home and not having to pay bills,” Cypron said.
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