Cottages for Students?

Should there be more cottage-style development in the Northern US? Trinitas Ventures completed construction of The Cottages on Lindberg serving Purdue. It's the farthest north anyone's developed such a property, and it's blowing away expectations.

Trinitas COO Loren King and CFO Mark Larson tell us they've held this 18-acre site since the early 2000s, when they developed 1,134-bed Willowbrook West Apartment (the first by-design student housing project at Purdue). They planned another medium-density student housing project there, but local officials wanted a low-density development and repeatedly refused rezoning. As cottage properties became more prevalent through the South, Trinitas saw the opportunity to make a student housing project work on the site.

Loren says demand has been extraordinary. The project was 90% pre-leased in the first nine weeks of pre-leasing (Willowbrook wasn't even in the double digits at that point), and they already have a waiting list for 2014 and 2015. Rents are up 18% from opening day (August 2012), and the project is now priced at the top of the market. Loren says cottages aren't the easiest product, and they aren't right with every market. Since they're low-density and require lots of land, most aren't really close to campus (Trinitas' site is a mile and a half away). The secret to cottage success: an intimate sense of community (and a pool that doubles as a Tetris block).

Trinitas plans to develop 1,500 to 3,000 beds annually for the next few years, but no more cottage communities are in the pipeline. It recently broke ground on the Collegiate on Angliana, an infill redevelopment one mile from the University of Kentucky. The 699-bed property is a four-story townhouse format and will open this August.