When junior Michelle Morgan and her friends were looking for a place to live for the 2005-06 school year, they chose University View because they wanted to be among the first to live in the brand-new building, the biological resources engineering major said.
“We didn’t look anywhere else,” Morgan said. “I love having my own bedroom and bathroom. That’s what keeps me here.”
Students who share Morgan’s desire for new surroundings have found plenty of options popping up in College Park and surrounding areas in recent years, and soon faculty and staff will, as well.
In addition to the 16-floor View, which will be filled to capacity with 1,056 student residents this semester, students are also flocking to the 910-unit, 16-floor Towers at University Center in nearby Hyattsville. The building, which will be open to residents for the first time this semester, is almost full, according to Sheree Wortham, the Towers’ resident service manager.
In June, the city council approved plans to begin construction of the 17-story Northgate Condominiums complex. Located north of the campus, the complex will offer 204 residential units to university faculty and staff.
The trend toward developing highrises stems from the fact that there’s a lack of developable land around the university, city planner Terry Schum said.
“When land is difficult to assemble, developers want to build up,” she said.
Buildings such as University View and the recently approved Northgate Condominiums can be built so tall because they are on deep lots with no residences behind them, said Brian Darmody, the university’s assistant vice president for research and economic development. He said taller buildings represent smart growth because they increase density while limiting effects on the environment.
If the tall buildings look out-of-place along a road populated largely by one- and two-story businesses, Darmody said that’s because “the tattoo parlor only needs to be one story.”
All the new development is having mixed, but mostly positive, effects on students. Director of Off-Campus Housing Services Adrienne Hamcke Wicker said the higher cost of new developments is making it harder for some students to find off-campus housing.
“Both University View and University Towers are full, so there’s a group of students willing to pay,” Wicker said. “But there’s also a group saying, ‘It’s way out of my league,’ and they’re ending up living farther away.”
Monthly rent at University View ranges from $695 to $890, while residents of the Towers will pay $695 to $930 per month.
Senior View resident Andy Rejent, an aerospace engineering major, said he had reservations about the cost, but the proximity to his classes and the chance to live with other engineering majors won him over.
“I’d say it’s almost worth [the price],” he said. “It’s nice to have four sinks for four people, the lighting is good and the maintenance is always on time.”
Morgan said she’s still not sure if the high cost is worth it.
“I’ve been to other places that cost less and have more room and a funner environment,” she said. She plans to live elsewhere during her senior year.
Schum said increasing the housing supply should eventually make pricing more competitive and that housing in single-family homes can also be expensive for a lot less quality than the newer developments offer.
Still, she said she has concerns with the possible effects of the trend toward highrises.
“In general, it’s much more difficult to provide a sense of place with high-rise development,” Schum said. “I worry about context. You can’t possibly have highrises all along the [Route 1] corridor because the road couldn’t sustain that much traffic.”
Darmody said he believes increasing density around the university will actually help ease congestion rather than add to it.
“We’ve got 50,000 people here every academic day,” he said. “If we get more of our students, faculty and staff living closer, it’s going to reduce congestion … 50,000 people can come from Howard County or the Eastern Shore, or they can live here in an environmentally sound way.”
Darmody also said the number of new highrises will be limited because there are so few lots along Route 1 capable of supporting them.
University and city officials hope the new development will attract the higher-quality retail and restaurant options for which students have long been clamoring.
“If you want higher-quality retail – grocery stores, movie theaters, better restaurants – you need to have more than just the student community,” Darmody said. “You need to have faculty and staff providing a mixture of year-round population. It benefits College Park to have more people living around the university because it will improve the quality of everything.”
He said nearby Silver Spring, a city that has been reinvigorated over the last decade by the kind of development just beginning in College Park, is an example of what aggressive development can do for a community.
“Silver Spring didn’t sit around and say, ‘We’re going to keep boarded-up businesses on Route 29 because there’s a lot of traffic,'” he said. “They took an aggressive position and had a lot of vision in bringing in new development. They got more people living downtown, and it’s remarkable what’s happened in the last 10 years.”
Schum said it is too early to tell whether the new development in College Park will end up helping or hurting the town.
“Only time will tell,” she said.
Contact reporter Andrew Schaefer at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.
