University not planning any new dorms

In the face of an unprecedented housing crisis, university officials said they won't pursue any new on-campus housing projects this year despite high developer interest and assurances that the Board of Regents would provide loans to fund construction.

In the past year alone, the university passed on at least three bids from developers looking to enter a public-private partnership to build a new dorm - an arrangement regents said in interviews this week they have encouraged.

"We're committed to do partnerships with developers that place the projects on campus," said Joe Vivona, system vice chancellor for administration and finance. "If you have that kind of demand you might be able to get developers to build on campus. The university certainly has partners willing to work with them."

While it has been disputed whether regents have held this position since last spring when they made their decision not to provide funding for the proposed dorm, the board's recent promise to support an on-campus housing project failed to move university officials. Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement said that until the university wraps up its negotiations on the East Campus development project begun last month, the school is rejecting all other housing projects, putting off a decision on any sure solutions to the university housing woes for at least six months.

Clement said the university is banking on East Campus - the planned 38-acre development between Route 1 and Paint Branch Parkway - to ease the shortage even though there are no guarantees it will include student housing and may not be finished until 2015.

If the university and its preferred East Campus developer, FP-Argo, can't agree to include student housing in its plans, Clement said the university would likely resume its search for on-campus housing once the talks are finished.

"We need to honor our commitment to our developer that we are currently engaged in," she said.

Jeff Jones, executive vice president for Capstone Management, the development firm in charge of South Campus Commons, said the company would be ready to start work with the university to work on a new dorm immediately if the university asked them.

"There's an ongoing lack of housing for the university's students," he said. "We are always interested in working with the university to address its housing needs."

The university has avoided the type of public-private partnership the regents - the university system's governing body - said they would finance, said Clement. She said officials worried it would commit the university to building a dorm with 12-month leases and little resident assistant supervision, an arrangement not geared toward the underclassmen who would be housed in the new building.

Despite the perception these accommodations would not be possible in a public-private partnership, at Towson University, Assistant Vice President Jerry Dieringer said these worries were not issues in two dorms being built with Capstone. Also aimed at freshmen and sophomores, Dieringer said these dorms, which will be finished in almost 18 months, would be traditional dorms fully equipped with RAs with 10-month leases.

Still, in applying for money to build a new dorm last spring, this university only applied for a direct loan from the regents, an arrangement refered to as "direct debt." However, the regents had already set a precedent in favor of approving public-private partnerships funded through what regents call "indirect debt," where a private firm would share some of the risk involved in construction.

Resident Life Director Deb Grandner said she would be open to taking on indirect debt to solve the shortage.

"From our perspective, both arenas direct debt and indirect direct debt were possibilities for us," she said.

Vivona said he was puzzled by the university's decision to apply for direct debt in the first place. Other than Towson University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Frostburg State University also recently received system funding for housing projects using indirect debt.

Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.