By Rachel Aretakis
The Board of Trustees approved a ground lease agreement Tuesday, allowing a private company to build and maintain a 600-bed, $26 million residence hall on Haggin Field.
In a unanimous vote, the trustees approved the first phase of the agreement with Education Realty Trust, a private firm from Memphis, Tenn.
UK will enter a 50-year contract with EdR, with the possibility to extend the contract to 60 or 75 years, said Angie Martin, UK’s treasurer and vice president of finance. There is also an option to terminate the contract.
UK Residence Life will manage the new residence hall, but EdR will pay a Residence Life Fee of $639 per bed each academic year for ResLife programming.
Martin said the university has “been on a very fast timeline.” The university hopes to sign the ground lease agreement in March, she said, and will then start working on agreements for the future of all of UK’s housing stock.
Martin said 700 students are turned away each year because of a lack of space.
The Haggin Field dorm will open in August 2013, with construction beginning in April 2012, and will mostly house honors students, as well as have high-tech classrooms and office space.
“It’s so much more than the residence halls,” Micah Fielden, student body president and trustee, said.
Residence halls often include living-learning communities and classroom space.
“There is a lot more that goes into residence halls than just beds,” he said.
EdR came with 100 percent equity, meaning no debt, and Martin said the university needed money and needed it quickly.
“We have a lot of capital needs on this campus,” she said. “We need to preserve as much debt capacity as we can for those academic facilities.”
Fielden said the new agreement will change student housing quickly.
“I’m really happy,” Fielden said. “I think this has been the quickest way we can see new and improved residence halls on campus.”
He said by working with a private company, the university can “concentrate our funds on other projects … it allows us to have our debt capacity used elsewhere.”
For the 2013-14 academic year, student resident rent will not exceed $3,490 per bed per semester for the Haggin Field residence hall, according to the agreement.
Until 2017, the student resident rent can increase up to 3 percent per academic year.
Trustee Bill Britton pointed out that by the fall of 2016, the residence hall on Haggin Field could be less expensive than other premium UK housing.
“The actual cost to the student for that facility could be less than what our older dorms are now … for quite an increased amount of space,” Britton said.
Vice President of Facilities Bob Wiseman said the Haggin Field dorm will be a LEED certified building. He also said it will use geothermal energy.
Fielden said he is excited President Eli Capilouto is so concerned with the undergraduate experience.
“For those of us now that are going to be gone, we’ll still see the value in improving our campus because it will increase the values of our degrees,” Fielden said.
Other notes from the meeting
John Wilson of the behavioral science department at UK was sworn in as the new faculty trustee. He replaced Joe Peek, who resigned from the Board in December to take a job in Boston.
Wilson said the trustees are a good group of people and everyone seemed congenial.
Kernel Editor-in-Chief Taylor Moak contributed to this article. Reach News Editor Rachel Aretakis at raretakis@kykernel.com.
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