Student Housing Under Way in Georgia

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Statesboro, Ga.—Work is under way on Forum at Statesboro, a new-construction, 780-bed student housing project by Parkland Development Corp. The property will provide one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom units, as well as efficiencies, to students in Statesboro.

The property’s amenities are resort-like, including indoor basketball, sand volleyball, a 24-hour fitness center, swimming pool, computer laband high-speed Internet access. The Forum at Statesboro will be managed by Greystar Student Living, and it will offer a roommate matching service and a “Student Living Program.” It is slated for completion before the fall of 2012.

Parkland Development says that resort-like is what market research has determined that students want. Namely, an experience that “combines luxury and convenience,” as Harold Tomlinson, chairman of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Parkland Development, puts it.

The company has similarly incorporated resort-like amenities in its two other student housing projects, Forum at Denton Station and Forum Sam Houston. The former, near the University of North Texas and Texas Women’s University in Denton, Texas, includes 1044 beds and was completed in 2009. The latter was finished in the spring of this year and is in Huntsville, Texas, with door-to-door shuttle service to Sam Houston State University.

According to a 2010 study by faculty members at Longwood University in Virginia, some student housing amenities are considered very important indeed by students. More than 90 percent of those surveyed, for example, rated private bedrooms, onsite parking and onsite laundry facilities as “very important” or “somewhat important.” Almost as popular among students are Internet access, a fitness center, private bathrooms and cable TV.