Giant PPP is First-of-Its-Kind in Student Housing
The University System of Georgia struck a unique, $518M public-private partnership with Corvias Campus Living. It's handling student housing for nine campuses across Georgia for the next 65 years. (Hopefully they won't have any students who need to stay the whole time.)
Corvias Campus Living managing director Kurt Ehlers says the firm will develop, construct, manage and maintain housing for the USG. The first phase will include 3,683 new beds and 6,195 existing beds totaling more than 3M SF across nine of the USG’s 31 campuses. What’s in it for the university system? Corvias’ P3 model offers a long-term relationship with performance-based fees, which tie compensation to metrics. And there will be a reinvestment account projected to exceed $2B over the life of the partnership so facilities are left in like-new condition at the end of 65 years. There will be $5.6M of upfront funding for capital repairs. This allows all residence halls to improve, Kurt says.
Kurt says the challenge lies in overseeing nine different campuses with a variety of demographics. Seven of the nine privatized campuses by July 2016 will get new developments. There should be some ripple effects across the country as other state systems look to address the funding and operation challenges of student housing. Corvias has experience with similar programs through the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (when the U.S. military turned to the private sector for its on-post housing in the late 1990s). Using traditional methods, the Department of Defense would have needed 20 years and $16B to complete the project. Corvias and the other private sector partners were able to clear the backlog 20 times faster.
