University of Utah sells off 2 downtown student apartment buildings

The University of Utah will no longer offer student housing in downtown Salt Lake City after approving the sale of two off-campus apartment buildings.

The school’s board of trustees moved Tuesday to accept an offer from a private company that will take ownership of the buildings known as Downtown Commons I and II.

The first building sits at 349 E. 1st Avenue. The other is about two blocks south, at 43 S. 400 East.

Combined, the two apartments covered a little more than an acre and could house around 60 students — with rooms reserved for upper-division students with at least one year of college completed.

But students often didn’t want to live that far away from campus and figure out transportation, Sean Grube, the U.’s associate vice president for housing and dining services, told trustees. Most of the time, the apartments were sitting at 75% occupancy, while on-campus housing is at 100% with “a robust waitlist.”

The U. decided in May — when students moved out for the summer — to have the property appraised before making room assignments for the fall semester, which starts later this month.

The value for both buildings totaled $3.6 million. Danny Wall, the executive real estate director, said the U. decided to put the buildings on the market. And they sold for $5 million total.

Wall did not divulge the company’s name, but said it already operates several small apartment buildings downtown that cater to students, so it likely doesn’t take away rooms for those attending the U. who need them.

But it gets the U. out of operating the buildings that he said are getting “old and a little tired at this point.” Downtown Commons I was built in 1970 and Downtown Commons II in 1980.

The school first purchased the buildings around 2009 for roughly $2 million, Wall said. Student rent ranged from $4,000 to nearly $5,000 a semester, depending on how many students were assigned to the suite — making it one of the cheaper options.

“They no longer align with university priorities,” he added.

The U. has in recent years been pushing for more students to live on-campus to get the “college town magic” experience, a major goal for university President Taylor Randall.

Randall has said he wants to see 5,000 more students in the dorms by 2027. That would mean roughly 11,000 total students living in residence halls, which is about a third of the school’s undergraduate population.

Move-in for the dorms for fall semester starts early next week. Currently, the U. has about 5,500 students living in the dorms — including several unique communities, such as honors students or entrepreneurial students.

The U. also has also launched private-public partnerships to expand options. That includes the Ivory University House residence hall, which is operated in partnership with the Clark and Christine Ivory Trust on land donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Also, the U. is continuing to build more complexes. A 1,370-bed dorm is being built on the former site of the Annex building by the Huntsman Center, on the southeast part of campus, with a planned opening date of fall 2026. There also is a proposal to build a new arena elsewhere to replace the aged Huntsman Center — and tear down the old facility to make room for more student housing.

The university also took control of about 50 acres that was previously occupied by the U.S. military at Fort Douglas in a major land swap announced last fall. The plan is to build more dorms in that corner of campus.

But the school has still had a hard time keeping up with the demand. It offered a first-year guarantee this year for freshmen and that was met, but it was a scramble last year. Sophomore, juniors, seniors and graduate students don’t have the same promise, so many who applied won’t have a room through the school this year.

Taking the Downtown Commons properties off the list, though, won’t make a substantial difference in that, Wall said, because of their small size.

It leaves the only off-campus option for students, though, at The Draw, which the U. is leasing from nearby Westminster University in Sugarhouse. Rent there ranges from $6,000 to $7,000 for an apartment. But it’s closer to the University of Utah campus.

Alex Rose, the student body president for the new school year, asked trustees at Tuesday’s meeting if the $5 million earned from selling the Downtown Commons property would go toward the new housing projects. The U.’s real estate office said it was not sure how the money would be used.