A 272-unit, 1,002-bed student housing development is coming to property near the University of Oregon in Eugene.

Landmark Properties, headquartered in Athens, Georgia, partnered with CrossHarbor Capital Partners of Boston to acquire the 2.62-acre parcel that formerly held a PeaceHealth hospital. The firms are developing The Mark Eugene at 1290 Alder St., where ground will be broken later this month.

The project team includes ESG Architecture & Design of Minneapolis, civil engineer KPFF, VSM² Structural Engineers of Houston, Humphreys & Partners Landscape Architecture of Dallas, and mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineer Emanuelson-Podas of Edina, Minnesota. The general contractor is Landmark Construction — the construction arm of Landmark Properties.

The Mark Eugene will have nine studios, 15 one-bedroom units, 22 two-bedroom units, 29 two-bedroom/double occupancy units, 24 three-bedroom units, 119 four-bedroom units and 54 five-bedroom units.

The development will feature a contemporary urban aesthetic characterized by a strong mix of contrasting materials, Jason Doornbos, Landmark Properties’ chief development officer, stated in an email. Exterior materials will include a variety of brick, cementitious siding and wood composite siding.

The exterior is designed so that the facade’s length is broken up, ESG Architecture & Design Vice President David Stahl said. There will be a purposeful rhythm to avoid a patchwork-like look from changes of materials or colors, he added. Plans call for stacks of balconies with framed elements of a wood look and a nice stone base.

“Unlike a lot of other student-oriented projects, we do have a lot of balconies and articulation on the outside to give a little bit more texture and depth to the façade,” he said.

The building’s front door will essentially look out to the UO campus, Stahl said. One of the former hospital’s multilevel parking garages on the south side of 13th Avenue will be retained. The street is also one of the major bikeways that serve the campus.

Outdoor amenities will include a resort-style pool and spa with cabanas, a clubhouse, outdoor grilling equipment, a fire pit and seating areas, a dog park and multiple landscaped courtyards. Interior amenities will include a fitness center, a sports simulator, a wellness suite with a sauna and cold plunge, a study lounge with a café, a gaming lounge and bike storage.

The building will also have 5,785 square feet of ground-floor retail space within the parking garage at 13th and Hilyard Street.

“The idea is we want to encourage mingling and getting to know your neighbors,” Stahl said of the amenities. “The idea is ‘come on down where the activity is.’ When you’ve had enough activity, you can go back to your unit that is nice, peaceful and quiet.”

This project represents the first phase of two that are expected to ultimately deliver a total of 2,275 beds to the Eugene market. The second phase is planned for the land north of The Mark Eugene, Stahl said. A conceptual design completed by ESG calls for a greenway between the two buildings acting as a “pedestrian spine” connecting Alder Street and Hilyard Street, he added. Also, all streetscapes will have active facades.

Landmark Properties plans to reassess the second phase in two years, Stahl said.

Completion of the first phase is expected before the start of UO’s 2028-2029 school year.

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The University of Oregon is seeking to build a series of dormitories up to six stories tall on the east edge of campus where university land abuts the Fairmount neighborhood.

UO‘s plans for its next generation of student housing would not comply with current city code, so officials have proposed a slate of land use changes that require the Eugene City Council‘s approval.

The university’s neighbors are critical of the proposal.

The plans call for redeveloping areas that had been single-family homes along Moss Street on the southeast edge of campus into student dormitories. UO already has purchased the properties it wants to develop, but it does not own all the homes west of Villard Street, according to the UO Next Gen Housing Development Plan 2025.

UO wants Eugene to amend city code and the old land use agreement governing the area, as well as implement a zone change that will allow construction of student housing on the campus’ east side. Much of the 2003 Fairmount/University of Oregon neighborhood plan would change to “meet the needs of the growing student population.”

Proposed code changes would remove dormitories as a prohibited use within Eugene’s “East Campus overlay zone” historically meant to provide a buffer between campus and the Fairmount neighborhood and increase building heights allowed in the area.

Buildings within 75 feet of Fairmount homes would have a 45-foot maximum height, and buildings farther away would have an 85-foot max height. Those would be increases from the current caps of 30 feet and 60 feet, respectively.

The buildings planned in the 85-foot zone would be up to six stories tall, and the ones in the 45-foot zone would be up to four stories, according to the university’s development plan.

Additionally, UO has asked the city to redesignate several of the properties on the edge of campus. Former “limited institutional” properties would become “institutional” and “low density residential” would become “residential” to facilitate dorm development.

The university’s neighbors aren’t thrilled. Some argue the heights of the proposed buildings and potential traffic impacts would be incompatible with the single-family homes east of campus.

The increased traffic created by the dorms “is not expected to have a significant effect on the transportation system” and changes to city streets aren’t needed, according to a university study.

During a City Council public hearing on Jan. 20, university officials argued that allowing the new dorms fits within the city’s goals of building more housing and doing so densely.

“Building and constructing properties in the most efficient and affordable way, though still expensive, is really, really important,” said Michael Griffel, UO’s director of housing.

Griffel described the university’s proposal as a needed update to the plan (now over 20 years old) governing east campus development and said it will let the university meet the needs of its growing student body.

By gaining on-campus living opportunities, students will have a better academic experience, UO officials said. They added that they engaged neighbors with public notice and a community meeting. Fairmount residents have said the concerns they voiced there were ignored.

The clash between the proposed dense housing and adjacent neighborhood would be “devastating” to the local character, residents said.

“Freshman year, I fell in love with Fairmount,” said Kate Bryce, a UO student and Fairmont resident. “That’s how families are born and raised here. But when you plan to build such a large structure, that charm begins to fade.”

Neighbors have voiced skepticism about UO’s transportation study and said city staffers weren’t skeptical enough of the university’s proposal, bringing it to City Council before properly vetting it.

Fairmount residents said this isn’t how the 2003 process went. They said that process was collaborative, and the university put forward enough mitigation measures to earn neighborhood support.

By contrast, they said the new plan more closely resembles Matthew Knight Arena’s 2008 development; Fairmount residents successfully appealed it to the Land Use Board of Appeals.

Eugene City Council voted to extend the public comment period. UO had until Tuesday to support its application, members of the public will have until Feb. 3 to respond, and then the university will have until Feb. 10 to respond.

At a meeting after thereafter, the City Council will vote on UO’s proposal.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in The Register-Guard and then was distributed on the USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.

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Portland State University is moving forward with plans to build a six-story, 124,000-square-foot dorm building for first-year students.

PSU on Tuesday requested an early assistance meeting with Portland Permitting & Development for the proposed project at 1831 S.W. Park Ave.

“This is an opportunity to build our first purpose-built, first-year residence hall,” said Ashley Wendler, PSU’s executive director of University Housing and Residence Life.

The project, first announced in January, would include approximately 550 beds, mostly in double-occupancy units. Some single-occupancy and triple-occupancy units would also be part of the mix.

GBD Architects is designing the building. Fortis Construction is on board as general contractor; subcontractors have not yet been hired.

Amenities would include private restrooms in each unit, multiple community lounges per floor, study nooks, classrooms, community and allergen-free kitchens, a music practice room and offices. A large porch area would front the South Park Blocks.

The location is “one of the more premier lots on campus, I would argue,” Wendler said.

Delivery of the building would free up space in others for transfer students, graduate students and continuing students, according to PSU officials. Freshmen currently reside in the Broadway and Ondine residence halls.

The development is in part intended to compete with other institutions’ buildings that offer modern amenities, Wendler said. PSU is projecting flat enrollment for the next several years.

“Our enrollment is steady,” PSU spokeswoman Christina Williams said. “What we’re doing is replacing some buildings that are at the end of their useful life as far as being modern, accessible and seismically sound.”

Prices will be on par with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines for affordable housing, PSU officials said.

“Portland’s an expensive city to live in,” Williams said. “Any housing that we can offer that’s affordable for students is better for student outcomes.”

Unlike in many market-rate buildings, on-campus renters do not have to post large security deposits or first and last months’ rent, Wendler said. No proof of income is required, and the application fee is a modest $50.

“We are low-barrier housing,” she said.

Work is expected to begin in late 2026 with deconstruction of the Blackstone and Montgomery buildings. Construction of the new building is slated to begin in winter 2027 and expected to finish in time to accommodate students in fall 2028.

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Project name: Flock13

Location: Eugene

Completion: August 2024

Size: 95,000 square feet

Cost: $24 million

Owner/Developer: deChase Miksis Development

Architect: Rowell Brokaw Architects

Interior Designer: Rowell Brokaw Architects

Engineers: KPFF, Säzän Group

General Contractor: John Hyland Construction

Submitting Company: Rowell Brokaw Architects

Other Associates/Key Consultants: Comfort Flow Heating, Twin Rivers Plumbing, Jensen Hughes, Brian Davies, Taylour White

Subcontractors: Acousti-Level Floor Systems, Advanced Cabinets, Building Material Specialties, Comfort Flow Heating, Commercial Metal Products, Empire Paint & Remodel, ES&A Sign & Awning, Geopier Northwest, Haines Brothers Masonry, Hartness Drywall, Home Insulation, I-5 Glass, Interior Technology, Kaminski Construction, Kelly’s Appliances, Largo Concrete, Omlid & Swinney,  Otis Elevator, Overhead Door Co. of Eugene-Springfield, Reynolds Electrical and Plumbing, Rexius, Sellwood Construction, Stedman Sheet Metal, Thomas Kay Flooring & Interiors, Umpqua Roofing

A new seven-story mixed-use building has strengthened the commercial corridor at the University of Oregon‘s west entrance, combining retail space with student housing in a project that emphasizes sustainability and campus community.

Flock13, a 95,000-square-foot, H-shaped structure, houses 107 student apartments ranging from studios to three-bedroom units, while its ground floor features three eateries open to university students and the broader community.

The building earned an Earth Advantage Multifamily Gold Level Certification through energy efficiency measures, healthier indoor air quality standards, responsible material usage and water conservation. Testing showed the building performing approximately 20.3 percent better than permitted code requirements.

The building’s construction presented challenges due to its location on a busy commercial street beside the university’s main entrance. John Hyland Construction worked closely with the city, university and subcontractors to minimize disruption to neighboring businesses and the thousands of students passing the site daily.

The structure combines two floors of Type 1 concrete construction with five floors of Type IIIA wood frame construction. Its design includes light courts that provide direct access to natural light and air on upper floors while bringing daylight into the basement level.

Student amenities include a second-floor 1,600-square-foot shared indoor/outdoor common space with built-in booths, an open lounge with soft seating, and a counter facing a covered terrace that overlooks 13th Avenue. The terrace features an outdoor grill and fireplace, while a garage door connects indoor and outdoor spaces.

The project embraces “Duck life” with yellow accents on both exterior metal façade and interior spaces, plus duck silhouettes in signage, paying homage to the university mascot.

Flock13 was designed and constructed alongside an exterior refresh of The Duck Store, the university’s flagship bookstore, creating what designers call “a cohesive, active street edge” that reinforces pedestrian vitality along 13th Avenue, a commercial street once known as “The Beach” for its popularity as a student hangout. The façade redesign includes new paint and glulam entry portals below an uplit, perforated metal panel screen that wraps the concrete frame and CMU infill building.

“The combined Flock13 and Duck Store exterior project re-establishes 13^th Avenue as the iconic campus-college edge at the University of Oregon,” said John Rowell, senior principal with Rowell Brokaw Architects, in the project nomination form. “With high-quality student housing, street-oriented amenities, new restaurants opening to south-facing seating, and the lively Duck Store refresh, this is where ducks land in Eugene.”

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By Michael Liedtke

The Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. — Berkeley, an eclectic city renowned for tie-dyed hippies and high-brow intellectuals, is experiencing a 1960s flashback at People’s Park – a landmark that has served as a counterculture touchstone, political stepping stone and refuge for homeless people.

The 3-acre site’s colorful history, forged from the University of California, Berkeley’s seizure of the land in 1968, has been thrust back into the spotlight as the school renews efforts to pave over People’s Park – this time for a $312 million development that includes sorely needed housing for about 1,000 students.

After a judge sided with the university in a legal scrum over the project, construction finally began Aug. 3 only to abruptly stop a few hours later after a swarm of defiant protesters, who had been sparring with police, toppled fences surrounding the park.

The delay was only supposed to last a few days, but the coalition fighting the university’s plans won an appeals court stay that will prevent more construction until at least October.

But the lull hasn’t muted the contentious debate around a historic spot once hailed as “a trace of anarchist heaven on Earth” by former UC Berkeley professor Todd Gitlin and derided by former city Councilmember John DeBonis as a “hippie Disneyland.”

The park turned into both a symbol of resistance and mayhem during a deadly 1969 confrontation known as “Bloody Thursday,” emboldening then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan to send in 3,000 National Guardsmen for a two-week occupation that evoked images of war in a city that was clamoring for peace in Vietnam.

Don Mitchell, whose father was a UC Berkeley professor during the 1969 uprising, views People’s Park as a social experiment worth saving as more cookie-cutter communities are built in the U.S.

“People’s Park has always been a place that was made and regulated by the people who use it,” said Mitchell, a professor of human geography at Uppsala University in Sweden. “It’s a free and open space, a place where the rules of exclusion are very different. So people who were poor, people who didn’t have housing, people who didn’t fit into dominant society in all sorts of different ways could find a space there. And many did.”

That ethos has long made the park a way station for homeless people, with scattered tent clusters and makeshift kitchens. Drug use and violence have helped spur support for the university’s development plans.

At Atmaa Das, 28, began spending time in People’s Park not long after leaving Alabama in 2014. He returned a couple weeks after workers left behind construction equipment, now splattered with obscene graffiti – part of $1.5 million in recent protest damage, the university estimated.

“I came here looking for the promised land and reckon I found it,” he said on a recent morning, strumming his guitar while singing parts of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”

University officials say they are sympathetic to both the park’s heritage and the needs of homeless people who have lived there since another set of fencing surrounding the property was removed in 1972.

The school and city moved dozens of homeless people into a motel as part of an $8 million relocation initiative and officials promised to keep most of the site as open space. The school also hired award-winning architect Walter Hood to design a memorial celebrating its history.

“Our plan will meet multiple interests to preserve the park, create urgently needed student housing, and provide permanent housing for unhoused and low-income individuals,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ wrote in an email sent to university alumni and other supporters. University spokesman Dan Mogulof declined a request to interview Christ.

Not even People’s Park supporters dispute more affordable housing is needed – the median sales price for a home near the university is $1.5 million. But critics blame mismanagement for the crisis and contend the university could build on its other property.

Under a 2005 long-range plan, UC Berkeley estimated enrollment at 33,000 students by 2020. Instead, it had about 43,000 students that year and expects roughly 45,000 this academic year – with only 10,000 campus beds.

The glaring shortage is mainly why city officials back the university’s plan, including city Councilmember Rigel Robinson, who represents the People’s Park area.

“People’s Park has been a powerful symbol of resistance against government oppression, but it has since become a symbol of something else entirely: our failure as a region to respond to the housing crisis,” he said. “The time has come to turn the page.”

But this month’s protests showed that a significant part of Berkeley isn’t ready to let go, mainly because of what the park has come to symbolize since UC Berkeley seized it for $1.3 million in 1968 under eminent domain and demolished homes there. After citing a need for an intramural soccer field, the school instead let the site deteriorate into a muddy mess mostly used for parking.

After boilermaker Michael Delacour led a grassroots group to plant vegetation, turning the eyesore into a community magnet, UC Berkeley decided to fence it off on May 15, 1969.

That set the stage for rebellion. At a rally outside UC Berkeley’s administration building, incoming student body President Dan Siegel urged the crowd to “take the park.”

“Some of the issues now are like 1969,” Siegel, now a lawyer in nearby Oakland, recently told The Associated Press. “People’s Park is both a park and a symbol of activism that is worthy of protection.”

The infamous 1969 clash between hundreds of police, some of them dubbed “Blue Meanies,” and protesters became a flashpoint in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. During the hourslong melee, police fatally shot a man standing on a rooftop and blinded another who was struck in the face with birdshot. Dozens of protesters were wounded.

Then Reagan, who had vowed “to clean up the mess in Berkeley” during his victorious 1966 gubernatorial campaign, called in military troops. Before an uneasy truce was reached May 30, 1969, hundreds more were arrested and, in another infamous moment, an Army helicopter sprayed a crowd with what authorities called tear gas but others insisted was an even more dangerous substance.

Some of Reagan’s detractors still believe he deliberately deployed strong-arm tactics to establish himself as a law-and-order leader while pursuing a political agenda that led to his 1980 election as president.

Harvey Smith, president of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group that is spearheading the legal fight for preservation, likens UC Berkeley’s plan to Reagan’s 1969 crackdown.

Reagan “wanted to wipe out the social and political history of Berkeley and now the university is carrying it forward,” Smith said Aug. 3 while construction crews used bulldozers and buzz saws to topple most of the park’s trees, including some that predated the school’s purchase 54 years ago.

The clear-cutting depressed Bertha Jones, who lived in People’s Park for several years before accepting the university’s offer to move into a nearby Rodeway Inn.

“My grandparents got married at one of those trees; my mom got married at one of those trees,” Jones, 43, said. “I wanted to keep the tradition going, but obviously that isn’t going to work out now.”

Other former People’s Park inhabitants told the AP they moved into the motel reluctantly, though they like having their own bed and bathroom. What they don’t like is not being given room keys, or being banned from leaving the premises from midnight to 6 a.m.

After spending most of his time in People’s Park for seven years, Eric Morales moved in early June to the Rodeway Inn with his dog, Bonita. But he will always consider People’s Park home.

“It’s not like any other park,” Morales, 54, said. “You can go to other parks and you say, ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’ Then you won’t ever see them again. But People’s Park is a community, you know? We are a family.”

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Core Spaces, a Chicago-based developer known for upscale student housing, is building its next project in Portland.

Construction of The Collective on 4th – a 15-story, 417-unit luxury residential tower – is now under way on a full block near the Portland State University campus, at the intersection of Southwest Fourth Avenue and Harrison Street. The building will include ground-floor retail space – potentially a grocery store – and 278 below-grade parking spaces. The apartments will be a mix of micro-units, studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units with an array of amenities suited for young urban professionals.

“Really, at Core, what we’ve always done is to build campus properties in an urban setting – places like Madison, Wisconsin, or West Lafayette, Indiana,” said Chip Schell, vice president of new business for Core Spaces. “And they’re always conveniently located where our residents could walk or take transit; they really fit that model. And Portland really fit that model.”

Chicago firm Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture designed the building, while John Hyland Construction of Springfield is the general contractor. Ground was broken in May 2017. Completion is scheduled for late 2019.

“So right now we’re pouring the second floor and part of the third floor, and our last concrete pour is scheduled for the end of January 2019,” said Jeff Durmaj, project manager for John Hyland Construction. “Starting a little bit later this summer we’re following with all the mechanical trades, HVAC systems, fire protection, electrical work – all this stuff is starting to follow.”

What was originally a U-shaped building oriented toward Southwest Fourth Avenue transformed over the course of six meetings with the Portland Design Commission into an L-shaped structure that opens toward Pettygrove Park on the northeast side. Inside the tower’s two wings, a four-story section tops out with a tree-lined amenity deck intended to smoothly connect the building with the park.

Materially, The Collective on 4th will include a structurally glazed window wall system with aluminum slab edge covers on the upper parts of the south and west sides. The rest of the exterior will have roughly 75 percent glass and 25 percent metal panels.

It’s the interior of these future apartments, however, that’s really meant to capture attention. There are quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances and Bluetooth shower speakers in each unit. Every resident will have access to a pair of rooftop hot tubs, a fire pit and barbecue stations, as well as a large fitness center, a steam room, a sauna, a dog park and even a bocce ball court.

University students won’t be the only demographic targeted for The Collective on 4th.

“We’ll be including students in our marketing approach, so they’re certainly be an appeal there,” Schell said. “What we’re trying to do is take a brand that’s been successful to a more targeted group and then expanding it. This is something that’s unique to The Collective; this is the first time we’re doing it.”

Dennis Huffing, Core Spaces senior general manager in charge of leasing at The Collective on 4th, said the idea is to provide more options for both students and young professionals attracted to the central city, as well as fill Portland’s incessant need for more housing overall.

“We’re not leaning toward one or the other; we want everybody to have more options,” he said.

The Collective on 4th is one of the four primary styles of residential housing currently being developed by Core Spaces. The others include the Hub on Campus, State on Campus and The James. The Collective on 4th is the firm’s first attempt at this brand, and its second project in Oregon. Its first was in 2015: an eight-story, 183-unit Hub on Campus building near the University of Oregon in Eugene.

“What we’ve done with The Collective is really try to expand and take what’s been successful with our Hub brand and bring it to a wider audience,” Schell said.

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Among the housing issues facing Portland presently is the lack of affordable units for college students.

One project expected to contribute to a solution is The Amy, a development under way near Portland State University. The project is the brainchild of College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit that works to make housing more affordable for Oregon college students.

One aspect that will set The Amy apart from similar buildings is that its residents will be exclusively students. Managers of many “student” complexes give preference to students, but may allow nonstudents to rent units.

“Our organization is committed to renting to college students,” College Housing Northwest Executive Director David Garnand said. “You have to go to a public or not-for-profit institution.”

The five-story building will be constructed at 2031 S.W. 10th Ave., where a 30-unit, decades-old, wood-framed complex sat previously. The Amy will include 139 studio apartments, two one-bedroom apartments, 32 vehicle parking spaces, 230 bike parking spaces and 3,000 square feet of community space.

One of the biggest challenges for the project team surfaced in the permitting process: how to hold the hillside up. The slope of the lot caused problems with the planned retaining wall. The lot has more than 50 feet of elevation change and borders a Portland Bureau of Transportation right-of-way. Also, a 115,000-volt power line crosses a corner of the lot.

“There were some challenges with the shoring system to hold the hillside up across the PBOT right-of-way,” said Joshua Lupkin, a project architect with SERA Architects. “We had to redesign that system a couple times to where we aren’t encroaching on their right-of-way.”

The engineers devised a way to use a soil nail system to help stabilize the hillside. The system involves drilling holes into the exposed wall face. Then, tension-resisting steel bars are inserted into the holes and grouted.

“The city planners were skeptical of our system working,” Lupkin said. “We had to do continuous inspections and have a geotechnical engineer on site.”

The permitting issues delayed the project near the beginning of construction.

“Permitting took about 10 weeks longer than we thought,” Garnand said.

SERA Architects and Pavilion Construction helped straighten out those design issues. Each unit will average just 300 square feet – bigger than a so-called tiny house, but smaller than most studio apartments. Each unit will be furnished, and include a bathroom and a small kitchenette featuring a sink and a microwave. One of the major goals is to give residents a sense of privacy not found in other student housing environments.

Durability became a major factor in choosing everything from décor to building materials.

“When you are designing for students, you want everything to be more durable,” said Ryan Sturley, internal development manager at College Housing Northwest. “Being nonprofit, we want it to be as affordable as we can, but we want something that we are going to be able to hold for 20 years or more and be able to stand up to the abuse of college students.”

“Door frames and the quality of the paint was considered,” Lupkin added. “We wanted to make it easier to patch and paint.”

Accomplishing those goals while keeping within the price target for a nonprofit organization hoping to provide affordable student housing was another challenge.

The $18 million project was funded through bonds that were arranged by the Oregon Facilities Authority. Funding such facilities is often a difficult endeavor.

“That was a complex process, but (Oregon Facilities Authority) really helped us and made a complex process go really well,” Garnand said.

While the apartments will not meet Portland’s technical definition of affordable housing, the group is aiming to keep rents 15 percent below market rate. The median rent for a studio apartment near the PSU campus was $1,655, according to a February 2016 study by the Scion Group. A one-bedroom unit went for $1,571, according to the study.

“At the core of our mission, it is to provide more affordable housing,” Garnand said, “and make it really close to campus.”

College Housing Northwest manages developments totaling 725 housing units throughout Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood and in Corvallis, near Oregon State University.

“The rents are going up, up, up,” Garnand said. “It is tough to find any place at all. You have a lot of new housing, but it is mostly market-rate housing.”

The nonprofit’s hope is that The Amy will make living in Portland a little easier for its studious residents – presumably sophomores through grad students. Despite the hurdles, the building is expected to be completed in time for students to move in for the 2017 fall term.

“Other than the permitting hiccup, we are really excited about this project,” Garnand said. “It is going to be great for the students.”

The Amy

Location: 2031 S.W. 10th Ave.

Cost: $18 million

Owner: College Housing Northwest

Architect: SERA Architects

General contractor: Pavilion Construction

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A Chicago-based development company may build high-rise student housing in Southwest Portland.

Benson Angelo and Tom Harrington of Core Campus LLC last week applied for early assistance from the Portland Bureau of Development Services in regard to plans for a 13- to 15-story mixed-use complex with 97 underground parking spaces.

The proposed location, at 325 S.W. Harrison St., near Portland State University, is a parking lot.

Information filed with the city indicates that the building would have a grocery store on the ground floor with residential units above. The paperwork filed with the city does not indicate how many units the building would contain.

Core Campus specializes in acquiring land and constructing student housing exclusively, according to its website.

The firm is developing in Eugene a 183-unit high-rise that features apartments with 9-foot ceilings, 42-inch flat-screen TVs, stainless steel kitchen appliances and built-in dry bars with beverage coolers. The complex, named Hub on Campus Eugene, is scheduled for completion in mid-2015.

A call to Core Campus was not returned by press time.

The Southwest Harrison Street property is owned by Portland-based Bay City LLC.

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A Texas company that builds student housing has bought a six-acre site near the University of Oregon for $5 million, raising concerns that the supply of student housing in Eugene may soon outstrip demand.

Several other large student housing projects are under construction in Eugene. Developers for Capstone Cos. of Alabama are building an $89-million, five-story housing complex to house up to 400 students.

Meanwhile, developers for Core Campus of Chicago are proposing a $44 million, 12-story student housing complex on the east edge of downtown Eugene.

“I’m surprised to hear about this Texas outfit coming,” said Ed McMahon, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Lane County. “We’ve pretty much reached our limit when it comes to student housing.”

What surprising, said McMahon and other observers, is the size of some of these developments.

“There has been a glut of new developments going on around campus, and they seem to be growing in, shall we say, stature,” said Sadie Dressekie, a Eugene real estate broker who also taught marketing at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business.

“The challenge is that the university is growing, but it is not growing at the same rate as student housing,” she said.

The University of Oregon grew by some 4,000 student between 2000 and 2007. Student housing grew accordingly, said Dressekie, but housing projects kept coming even while the student population leveled off.

“The university has slowed because they are at capacity in terms of classrooms.” she said. “You’re starting to see concessions — one month free rent and so forth — even on the new units. A number of landlords near campus have told me this is the first year they’ve had trouble filling their units.”

The next big development could involve the acquisition of land by American Campus Communities based in Austin, Texas. Company executives bought the land now occupied by the Franklin Village Extended Stay motel on Garden Avenue and the Boulevard Grill on Franklin Boulevard.

On their website, American Campus Communities’ executives call their company “the nation’s largest developer, owner and manager of high-quality student housing communities.”

The company opened a 16-story building at Portland State University last year as well as a 700-unit complex at Southern Oregon University in Ashland.

Phone calls to the company were not returned.

A previous proposal for the Eugene property, made by a California architectural firm, called for a series of five-story buildings with a total of 192 units.

Dressekie said she wonders if student housing projects are being built the right way to appeal to students.

“The way developers seem to be constructing campus housing at the moment is that they’re building units that house multiple people,” she said. “My sense is that is not the way students want to live. They don’t want compromise their living environment. I wonder if these large-scale developments are going to struggle more than single-studio model.”

But while high-rise developments may cast long shadows, Dressekie said they might be what a smaller community like Eugene needs in terms of sustainability.

“I think it is a wise use of land to grow up instead of out,” she said. “We don’t want to be a teeming metropolis.”

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In the past, college students living on campus often had to share their dorm’s shower area with many others.

But times have changed.

“A ‘dorm’ is not a term you hear very much anymore,” said Brian Stroup, an assistant director of housing at Oregon State University. “A dorm sounds like a place where you just eat and sleep.”

Students want housing that resembles apartments rather than traditional dormitories, Stroup said. Tony Church, a project manager for , said developers are eager to provide it.

“It’s one of the few housing markets that’s actually hot right now,” he said.

Stroup said OSU’s International Living-Learning Center, which opened last year, is an example of how student housing is changing. The building follows a model already popular in the United Kingdom in which a seamless web is created between living and learning by placing offices and classrooms in the middle.

Many of the building’s rooms have private bathrooms. Small clusters of students share spacious living rooms with flat-screen TVs. All students have wireless Internet connections. But they don’t have everything, Stroup admitted.

“There is still no air conditioning,” he said. “That’s something that is still years off.”

Of course, Church said the International Living-Learning Center is the exception to the rule among student housing at Oregon’s colleges and universities. Most on-campus housing is still awfully spare, he said. As a result, he added, private developers are trying to fill the gap.

“The Oregon University System is behind in updating the campus housing they provide,” Church said. “No one wants to live in a 1960s dorm room with a gang bathroom. What we’re seeing is private developers competing with what the institution is providing.”

Lease Crutcher Lewis recently completed student housing projects at Western Oregon University in Monmouth and Pacific University in Forest Grove. The projects meet students’ expectations for apartment-style living, Church said. Their tastes work well for developers, he added.

“You can turn these projects into multifamily residential units if the market changes,” he said.

Stroup said 80 percent of OSU’s freshmen live in on-campus residence halls. Each year, about 400 to 600 sophomores return to the residence halls. Altogether, Oregon State’s residence halls have a capacity of 4,300 students.

“I think that’s fairly standard for a land grant college like us,” Stroup said. “A small, private school might look different.”

Something else is different. Students no longer are segregated by gender; almost everything is co-ed. Of some 50 student co-ops provided by OSU, only four are divided by gender and only one is reserved for males.

Stroup said the nature of student housing is determined a lot by the students themselves. Many are in their 30s and 40s, and dorm life is obviously not for them, he said.

“It’s not the 17-, 18-year-old student just getting out of high school that is the big boom demographic these days,” Stroup said.

Church added that something else is evident at campuses in Oregon.

“You look at the license plates in Corvallis and Eugene, and it’s all California and even foreign students,” he said.

Out-of-state students paying out-of-state tuition and fees can pay $650 to $700 a month in rent, Church said.

“They want something a little sexy,” he said.

Styles range from “urban chic” to “Oregon hippie,” Church said. Urban campuses like Portland State University make creativity a bit more difficult, he added.

“There’s so many eyes in downtown Portland and people telling you what you can and can’t do,” he said. “Eugene is a little more laid back.

“Everyone is targeting these under-utilized markets. It’s like a race.”

Jack Dillin, a fourth-year student at OSU, said no one was racing to meet his expectations when he arrived in Corvallis.

“I really didn’t have any expectations,” he said. “All I expected was a clean bathroom and a place to sleep.”

He lived in a 10-foot-by-12-foot room. The International Living-Learning Center may be more ritzy, Dillin said, but most on-campus housing is far less attractive.

“Everything is pretty old,” he said, adding that most students prefer to live off campus. “The general consensus is that townhouses have the best features.”

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