Ground Broken For Apartments on CSU Campus

Cleveland—Cleveland State University, along with co-developers Polaris Real Estate Equities and Buckingham Cos., have broken ground on the Campus Village, a new $50 million mixed-use property on the Cleveland State University Campus. According to the developers, the project is the single largest residential development in Cleveland in more than three decades.

The Campus Village will feature nine buildings containing 300 market-rate apartments, various residential amenities—such as a parking garage, outdoor pool and clubhouse—and 9,000 square feet of retail space. The property will be marketed to young professionals, CSU alumni and graduate students interested in living downtown and near campus.

The university owns the property and agreed to allow Polaris to develop the 6.8-acre site, provided that the new property didn’t offer direct competition to student housing that CSU is planning. To facilitate the development, Polaris leased the site for 50 years, with seven five-year extensions possible. The university sold bonds to cover the cost of demolition and site preparation, and Polaris will pay for its lease partly based on the cost of the bond issue and partly on the appraised value of the land.

“We were able to create equity in the land lease to enable us to borrow funds for the vertical construction,” Polaris partner Guy J. Totino tells MHN. “We worked with Bank of America and Merrill Lynch on the bond issue. It’s a relatively complicated structure, but it’s going to work.”

The first phase of construction is expected to be completed by the fall of 2012, with the second phase finished by the fall of 2013. Buckingham, which joined Polaris on the development earlier this year, will be Campus Village’s property manager. Currently Buckingham more than 100 properties nationwide containing about 20,000 rental units.