Phoenix » The University of Utah's proposed commercial development at Rice-Eccles Stadium is at the center of a brewing Salt Lake City land-use debate, but the concept of partnering with private developers is nothing new in higher education. Schools across the nation are blending retail with residence halls, apartments and offices, leaving management to the developers.
Arizona State University, Ohio State University and the University of Pennsylvania all undertook such projects, which are credited with revitalizing blighted areas. U. officials and neighborhood leaders have looked to those schools for guidance as they hash out the dimensions of the Universe Project, which would blend housing, entertainment and retail in the stadium parking lot.
In Phoenix, ASU contracted with Capstone Development Corp. to build and manage Taylor Place, a twin-tower residence hall that includes retail and offices on the ground floor at the school's new downtown campus.
"This arrangement allows us to offer housing without having to finance and build it ourselves. ASU is responsible for the academic programming; Capstone runs it," said Patrick Panetta, ASU's assistant director of real estate development. "It's a way for universities to leverage the programming dollars they have."
Re-creating a center
Many similar school projects were designed to revitalize the tattered fringes of urban campuses, but Phoenix city officials invited Arizona's largest university to open shop in its resurgent downtown.
Arizonan Mary Rose Wilcox remembers when throngs came to shop, work and pass time on the sidewalks and plazas along Central and Van Buren streets. But the 1960s mall-building boom turned the Valley of the Sun into a low-density sprawl and sucked the life from downtown Phoenix, leaving a vacuum devoid of much activity other than state government.
"If you want an area to survive, your center has to be the most vibrant," said Wilcox, a Maricopa County supervisor and long-time Democratic political figure. "It used to be wonderful. The heart of commerce was here."
Phoenix has been spending big to resuscitate downtown. In the 1980s, it was museums and high-end shopping centers, then sports stadiums and a library in the 1990s, and now light rail, a convention center and a university campus. In 2006, Phoenix voters passed a $223 million bond to finance the development of a new ASU campus on 15 acres of distressed downtown real estate, about 12 miles west of the main Tempe campus.
To pull it off, the city of Phoenix and ASU President Michael Crow forged private-sector partnerships similar to what the U. is pursuing for the 8-acre parking lot next to the busy Rice Eccles Stadium TRAX stop. U. facilities chief Michael Perez recently named Inland American Communities Group to build and manage Universe Project, which combines retail and lifestyle commerce with offices and apartments.
"It's a way to activate mass transit. Maybe we can do with less parking," Perez recently told Salt Lake City planners.
Schools and urban renewal
Inland American has a presence on at least a dozen other major campuses. This year, the Texas-based company completed The Radian, a 500-bed residence hall with 45,000 square feet of ground-floor retail at the University of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Ivy League school, under the leadership of then-president Judith Rodin, was the first school to venture into the world of commercial real estate development in the mid-1990s. Dozens of major universities have since followed.
During Rodin's tenure, Penn embarked on redevelopment projects in the West Philadelphia neighborhood known as University City, triggering friction with faculty and neighboring residents who wondered whether Penn was exceeding its mission.
"Along the way, many of us had to give up a little, struggle a little, defer a little, and trust a little," Rodin, now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in a speech last year. "But the outcome was a much stronger, more vital community -- physically and economically, but also psychologically."
Urban universities control $100 billion in real estate and employ 2 million people and wield enormous influence over local communities through investments, employment, purchasing practices and land-use decisions, according to Rodin's 2007 book, The University and Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets.
"We learned that a university can - and should - play a lead role in urban transformation by changing its perspective and altering its patterns of interaction," Rodin said in the speech. "This is not something you can do to the neighborhood, or even for the neighborhood. You must do this with the neighborhood. Revitalization must be undertaken in concert with the community -- its residents and activists, its community associations and city officials, its university administrators, students and faculty."
The importance of buy-in
Ohio State's 7.5-acre South Campus Gateway project, which is close to the Universe Project in scale, razed a dilapidated bar district along the eastern boundary of campus to develop 184 high-end student apartments with nine-foot ceilings, hardwood floors and Corian counters, offices, and a "lifestyle center" with shopping, entertainment and restaurants.
"There was a lot of suspicion early on. People were thinking it was the university trying to get rid of the bars, which was not the case. We want well-managed bars," said Doug Aschenbach, president of Campus Partners, a nonprofit the university set up to manage the project.
Boosting on-campus residential opportunities was a goal, but landlords were worried the project would glut the rental market. So developers worked with local interests to ensure the project would make the entire area a more attractive place to live and to visit.
"It was intended to be an urban, mixed-use lifestyle center, which we think is more authentic because it's in an area where that mix of uses has occurred for centuries," Aschenbach said. "What we have seen in the residential neighborhoods is that they used to be lowest rents and had taken the longest to lease. Now they are enjoying the highest rents and are the first to lease."
ASU opened Taylor Place this fall. So far, tenants include a Starbucks and a convenience store, with a restaurant, an urgent medical care clinic and a clothing store on the way. The Starbucks employs 25 baristas, mostly students, including future journalists Ariana Heet and Brittany Statt.
"Everything is convenient and close," says Heet, 19, who lives in Taylor Place and ditched her car at her parents' home to avoid shelling out $700 for a parking pass. "The media market is downtown, broadcast studios are all around us. It's great for internships. It's nice to have everything so close. It's more business-y, more of a feel of a community college."
Heet and Statt study downtown in ASU's new $71 million Walter Cronkite College of Journalism and Mass Communication, one of a few programs the university located there to engage with nearby businesses. Like Taylor Place, the Cronkite building also harbors retail businesses, as will the basement of a nearby car dealership being converted to a 350-seat public auditorium. Mary Rose Wilcox and her husband Earl will be Cronkite's first commercial tenants when they open an outlet of their popular Mexican restaurant El Portal.
Wilcox believes ASU's new campus, which connects to the massive Tempe campus via new light rail, will spark downtown's much needed renaissance.
"I'm excited to be a part of it," she says.
Still, downtown Phoenix remains an island surrounded by urban decay. The once-glamorous Westward Ho is now a senior center with a transmission tower clinging to its top floors. Blocks of abandoned real estate sprawl north of the new campus, filled with shuttered businesses and dilapidated apartments, fenced-off cinder-block compounds with names like The Edgewater. In the midst of this wasteland is a tiny bustling cafe, Matt's Big Breakfast, where the sight of diners waiting on the sidewalk offers a glimpse of what could be in the downtown.
bmaffly@sltrib.com
But will Universe hurt local businesses?
University of Utah President Michael Young planted the seed for the Universe Project a few years ago when he asked an architecture professor to enlist the help of her students in conceptualizing a mix-use commercial development for the 8-acre asphalt lagoon at the southwest corner of campus.
"We developed a plan that we thought was quite doable. We looked at how it might pencil out," says Brenda Sheer, dean of the College of Architecture and Planning. "This project will be a wonderful addition to the city, and it will attract students and faculty who would otherwise say, 'Where's the there there? '…We want to have a university-town experience and solve this problem of a big ugly parking lot as our main entrance."
Universe Project would replace the Rice-Eccles Stadium parking lot, where UTA's second-busiest TRAX stop is located. The proposed development has been incorporated into the U.'s Campus Master Plan, despite concerns about its impact on local businesses and the surrounding neighborhood. Officials are negotiating with a developer to transform the corner of University Street and 500 South into a vibrant gateway.
"Instead of a hopscotch through the parking lot, we'll have nice pathways. It will have places for people to gather and things to do," Young says.
While many applaud Young's goals, local residents fear the congestion, loss of parking and activity the development would bring. But what really upsets some is a potential invasion of national chains at the expense of local businesses.
"I don't see how it can pencil out without chains," says Kings English Bookstore owner Betsy Burton, chairwoman for Local First Utah. "They can come in and lose for three or five years. It's part of their model. In the long term, that predicts a bad development. They come and go with great frequency and leave black holes behind them. I find the potential frightening."
Ohio State's Doug Aschenbach faced similar concerns when South Campus Gateway turned a seedy Columbus bar district into a lifestyle center.
"They wanted more of the local mom and pops. We wound up with a mix of chains and local. While everybody says they want to eat at the neighborhood cantina, they'll still go to Chipotle," Aschenbach says. "From a market-reality standpoint, you have to have a mix of tenants."
Burton says the U. should work hard to ensure a local presence, even if it means a break on rent. Last year, the U. commissioned a marketing study that found the district could support a great deal more retail activity. The area around 200 South and 1300 East is hardly the blighted hole other university-driven mixed-use projects addressed. It has decent restaurants, a bike shop, historic homes, a Kinko's and a bagel franchise.
"Why not enhance that and let it grow up to TRAX? Why superimpose something?" she adds. "The most successful independent businesses grow organically."
The U. district doesn't compare with most commercial districts near big state universities, such as Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue, Austin's Guadalupe Street or Eugene, Ore.'s East 13th. These districts support the very things the U. district lacks -- bookstores, coffeehouses, bars, music, street life, and, yes, vagrants and rowdy youth.
"My highest priority is to get students to spend the day on campus and enhance the intensity of that experience," Young says. "Too many are taking a class, then driving off campus for work. I want them leaving at 11 at night exhausted intellectually, physically and socially."
It's uncertain when work will begin on Universe. The U. has identified Inland American as its preferred development partner, but more than a month later, a letter of intent has yet to be signed. U. facilities chief Mike Perez does not anticipate that recent turmoil in financial markets will imperil the agreement. But should the Inland deal fall through, the U. will start working with runner-up Woodbury Corporation, a Salt Lake City developer.
