MIDWEST: Cottage Housing is Rare, but There
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Most students would like to create a home away from home when they go to school, but the most they can hope for is their own bathroom (and a place to hang their One Direction posters). Cottage products, which started in earnest about 10 years ago, are as rare to find as a Dez Bryant Mother's Day Card. With student housing projects making up more than one-third of their design volume, Dallas-based Humphreys & Partners Architects president Greg Faulkner tells us that cottage developments are probably less than 1% of all student housing projects nationwide. One reason: cottage housing requires much lower density similar to single-family homes. They usually have huge amenities like bigger pools and clubhouses with a park-like setting spread across 10 to 30 acres. Finding a location like this that is a short shuttle ride to a top 50 campus is difficult if not impossible, Greg tells us.
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Cottage projects add to the variety of options for students, but what most students demand are walkable projects across from campus, Greg says. Most projects are five- to six-stories above parking in a mixed-use environment. That's to help achieve the returns needed to pay for the primo land location. Probably 90% of Humphreys' projects are for urban high-density student housing, he says. Two recent projects include a 351-bed, five-story over podium design for Columbia Student Housing in Columbia, Mo., for Collegiate Housing Partners. That's got a 2015 delivery target. The second is a 900-bed project called The District on Apache in Tempe, Ariz., for Residential Housing Development. That one opened this year.