New student housing planned

With Hadley Village 100 percent "pre-leased" five months before the new undergraduate student housing complex is to open in August, UB has unveiled plans for its next residential project on the North Campus, a complex to be located on the south shore of Lake LaSalle.

Calling the demand for on-campus housing "intense," Dennis Black, vice president for student affairs, presented plans for the complex, which would be called South Lake Village, at the March 8 meeting of the UB Council.

UB already has circulated a request for proposals for the design of the complex, which would house 400-700 students in a mix of studio and one-to-three-bedroom apartments. The project would be developed privately as a joint project of UB, the UB Foundation, Inc., and the UB Alumni Association.

The alumni association's involvement is key because a clause in the state education law allows the SUNY trustees to work with alumni associations to develop housing on SUNY campuses.

UB administrators hope to receive ground-lease approvals from SUNY and have building designs, a financing plan and construction bids in hand by this summer for a possible July groundbreaking and occupancy by August 2000.

South Lake Village would be the third residential complex for UB students built in recent years. Flickinger Court, townhouses for 230 graduate students located on Chestnut Ridge Road adjacent to the North Campus, opened in August 1998.

Hadley Village, the first housing built on campus in nearly 25 years, will open this August for juniors and seniors. Black told council members that all 620 beds in the complex "sold out before there was even a model (apartment) to look at."

He downplayed concerns that building more housing on campus would negatively impact the University Heights neighborhood, where 4,000-7,000 students live.

UB is building on-campus housing units "in the hundreds, not thousands," he said, adding that that kind of growth "won't be destabilizing to the (University Heights) community."