New student housing building approved

As Portland State’s enrollment has ballooned to more than 27,000 students, the university is struggling to find adequate housing for students and is sending many students off campus for boarding.

However, the university has a plan in place to combat the housing crunch. The proposed building will have between 600 and 800 beds, will possibly lease retail space on the ground floor and hold additional classrooms. Much of this depends on who wins the contract to operate the building.

TriMet is building a new MAX line turnaround at the corner of Southwest College Street and Sixth Avenue. The transportation group purchased most of the land parcels surrounding the turnaround for the express purpose of selling it to PSU.

“We would build above the tracks, and we also own some of the surrounding buildings where we can build as well,” PSU President Wim Wiewel said, explaining some of the proposed plans for the new land use.

The State Board of Higher Education’s winter meeting approved an $8 million bond increase for PSU to purchase land from TriMet for the project.

“The board, at the last meeting, approved authority for us to go forward and acquire it [the land] from TriMet,” Wiewel said.

The university initially requested increased budgeting for this land acquisition in November 2006, when it initiated plans for construction of the recreation center.

This project is unique from other building projects the university has undertaken in the past. According to Mark Gregory, associate vice president for the Office of Finance and Administration, the new housing building will actually be privately owned and operated in close cooperation with PSU.

The light rail turnaround is just one of the options for this sort of housing project, modeled after the housing Arizona State University has adopted in recent years. Gregory reported that PSU also owns the land that the University Place Hotel sits on, and that it may be developed in the future as well.

“Our overall goal is to meet housing demand and serve a growing campus. We also want to increase the percentage of campus resident students to make the campus district a more vibrant and active place,” Gregory said in an e-mail.

While the university knows where it will build, the question of whom will build it remains.

“We are in the process of indentifying a developer to build more student housing,” Wiewel said.

The problems in the housing market have left many developers out of work, and according to Wiewel, this has contributed to the number of high quality applicants bidding for the contract.

“We are pleased with the quality of the responses we’ve received,” Wiewel said, “We’ve narrowed it down to four finalists for development that we’re interviewing.”

With the downturn in the economy, however, the building will likely not be completed by next fall. At this point, though, there is enough housing for the rest of winter and spring.

“Now we just have to wait to see how many applications we get to see what measure we need to take by next fall,” Wiewel said.