Student Housing: Housing planned near arena
By Diane Dietz for The Register-Guard
A Portland developer building a $12 million apartment near the Matthew Knight Arena means to make the east campus — as opposed to the west campus strip — the nexus of university life.
“We’re in the middle of a place-making exercise here,” said Harvard-educated developer Tom Cody, who is building a five-story, 47-unit complex on Orchard Street. “We’re trying to build a neighborhood. We’re not just building a project. That’s really important.”
Cody, who is building the Courtside project with Steve Romania, of the automotive family, and four other partners, envisions an upscale, modern, urban and hip — not hippie — district unfolding in the next year or two.
“This arena district is really emerging as the future of the University of Oregon,” Cody said. “It’s the epicenter in terms of the university; the energy is shifting east. When the new arena opens up next year, with the Jaqua Center being what it is, the alumni center and our project, it’s a new, energetic university district.”
Cody’s project — with 172 student bedrooms — is immediately behind the Franklin Avenue Market of Choice. When the building opens in September, the only thing between the student residents and the new Matthew Knight Arena will be the Villard Street Pub.
Fairmount Neighbors, meanwhile, aren’t sweating the arrival of the new, larger-scale apartment building in their neighborhood.
The developer offered to present his plans to the neighborhood board, co-chairwoman Shellie Robertson said. “We brought it up to the neighborhood. No one seemed to have any problems, so we never even bothered to really meet with the developer,” she said.
“It’s so close to Market of Choice, in an area that’s already so commercial in nature, so that it’s not really any big deal for us,” she said. “We’re trying to tackle the larger issues.”
Romania, who had left the family auto business, sought financing for the project more than a year ago. “Only one bank in Eugene was even interested in talking to us about the project, Pacific Continental Bank,” he said.
With preliminary loan terms in hand, the car-dealer-turned-developer lined up construction plans, city permits and a general contractor. In May 2009, he was ready to break ground. But when he went to the bank to complete the loan, Romania said, he found that the terms had changed.
“Basically, the bank announced a significant ($8.1 million) loss in July. That was the same time we were looking for final approval from them.”
The bank wouldn’t make the loan unless Romania came up with a lot more cash, he said, although he declined to discuss significant figures.
“The loan amount significantly decreased. The loan-to-value amount was significantly higher than we were talking about,” he said. “They came with a number that basically killed the project.
Enter Cody, a one-time principal dealmaker at Portland’s Gerding Edlen Development Co. who had recently founded his own company: Project^.
Cody brought a deep resume of West Coast condo and apartment development. For the Eugene project, he formed a “borrowing group” of four other partners, Romania and himself, and together they had a higher credit capacity than Romania alone.
“The local lending market has kind of seized up,” Cody said. “Even though the demand might be there for the product type, like there is for student housing, the underwriters are loaning less and less money and requiring more and-more liquidity from the borrowers and bigger cash deposits and more equity in the projects.”
Eventually, the borrowing group made a deal with San Diego-based California Bank & Trust, although Cody declined to disclose the final terms.
The delays left the Courtside developers with an unusually aggressive timeline to fulfill their ambition of a Sept. 1 opening for the 60,000- to 70,000-square-foot building.
But the Seattle-based general contractor, Lease Crutcher Lewis, is experienced with big projects, including the $41 million Lillis Business Complex, the $83.5 million EWEB Roosevelt Operations Center and the $15 million health and wellness building at Lane Community College.
The target market for Courtside will be students with modern urban lifestyles with a twist of environmental chic — and who can afford $667 to $685 for a room in a three- or four-bedroom apartment.
The price point is tops for student housing, Romania said. His son, a sophomore, lives in a fraternity on the west side of the campus, he said, and pays $650 a month but that’s for room and board.
“I was just there with my son on the weekend walking around. Some of these houses — that a lot of kids rent — have been there since the ’30s,” Romania said.
The upscale market is unmet on the west-side locus of student digs, Cody said.
“Whether you like it or you don’t — if you’re a landlord you like it, if you’re a city planner you don’t — there’s a lot of firetrap-type older housing stock around, but there’s not a lot of projects that are new and modern.”
The Courtside will include a common room for Xbox play and another for big-screen sports games. The apartment units are dominated by a combined kitchen-dining-living great room, so there’s floor space for friends.
Developers are seeking LEED Gold certification, meaning that energy and water conserving features are spread throughout — including regionally sourced cedar plank siding on the outside of the building.
“It’s dyed with a black transparent die, because we wanted it to be a modern use of wood,” lead architect Gene Sandoval said.
A key amenity is a shared “We Car.”
Courtside offers 35 parking spaces for the teenage and young adult occupants of its 172 bedrooms. The apartment includes a “Taj Mahal” of bike rooms — and other amenities designed to separate students from their affinity with cars.
“Being able to walk to a fabulous grocery store like Market of Choice, being able to skateboard to campus, going downstairs and hopping into a ride share vehicle is the wave of the future,” Cody said.
