College Park complex to house 669 students

Posted: 6:37 pm Wed, December 16, 2009
By marylandreporter.com

COLLEGE PARK — Ten years ago, Mukesh Majmudar and his Star Development Group in Columbia bought a small parcel on Route 1 in College Park to build a hotel.

By the time he broke ground on the project on Monday, Majmudar’s plans had changed. He has begun work on a privately financed, $33 million apartment complex that officials hope will help alleviate the University of Maryland’s continuing housing crunch.

After years of negotiations with the local officials and struggles with reluctant banks, Majmudar has high hopes for Starview Plaza, which will provide 669 beds for undergraduates in a seven-story apartment complex.

“It has been a very long road for us,” Majmudar told a small crowd that included Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson, Mayor Andrew Fellows, and members of the county and city councils.

Several years ago, university officials convinced Majmudar to build student housing, he said in an interview. He had hired engineers and architects to begin planning the project, then last year a Texas bank “walked out” as credit markets collapsed.

Eventually, in walked the State Employees Credit Union, or SECU, taking on what company officials say is an unusually large commercial project for them.

“It is unique,” said Calvin Thompson, chief credit officer of CU Business Capital, a Florida firm that brokered the deal, which will be syndicated among credit unions.

Typically, a life insurance company or a large bank would be financing such a project, which includes both construction financing and a long-term mortgage. But Thompson said credit unions “are searching for yields” on their deposits and looking for projects to sponsor. He said it was a good example of a partnership “to fund an answer for the shortage of campus housing.”

Sen. Jim Rosapepe, a former university regent who represents College Park and heads a nonprofit partnership between the school and College Park, said he has been “pushing for almost 20 years for public-private partnerships” to offer university housing.

He said university officials were initially reluctant, but now a number of housing projects on campus have been built on campus with private developers.

Like the private high-rise University View apartments down the road, Starview Plaza is part of the North Gate development district on the west side of Route 1 adjacent to the Paint Branch that has been set aside for “university uses,” Rosapepe said.

“It’s really very exciting,” he said. “We need private development of university housing.”

More juniors and seniors are choosing to stay in campus housing, but the space-strapped university is forcing some of them to leave. UMCP estimates that it will be short 1,200 beds by the end of next year.

Rosapepe said studies have shown that the highest rents in Prince George’s County are for student-oriented housing in College Park.

Starview Plaza will consist mostly of furnished four-bedroom apartments, each room with its own bathroom. Attached will be a 359-space parking garage, with two stories built underground. The complex will have a LEED Silver environmental certification. The ground floor facing Route 1 will have retail space.

The city and county hope to get outside funding for a bike and pedestrian bridge across the Paint Branch that will connect Starview to an existing path through a park onto the main campus. County Council member Eric Olson said this would hopefully keep the students from driving on campus.

“This is really going to help transform the Main Street of College Park,” Olson said.

Starview Plaza will sit on 2.5 acres once occupied by the Terrapin Taco House and the Starlight strip bar.