The Daily Collegian
Trend: Colleges buy land without specific purposes
By Marc Beja
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW YORK Colleges and
universities are buying up chunks
of land at bargain prices, some
times without a clear idea how
they’ll be used.
Some are taking advantage of
good sales during a sluggish econ
omy, while others, like Columbia
University, are continuing a prac
tice they’ve done for decades, buy
ing even if the price isn’t discount
ed.
The University of Dayton last
year acquired the 115-acre world
headquarters of technology com
pany NCR Corp. for the fire sale
price of $lB million after buying 50
acres from the company for three
times the per-acre price in 2005.
And the University of Delaware
last year bought a 272-acre former
Chrysler auto plant in Newark,
Del. for $24 million.
The schools are banking on
future growth to make their pur
chases good investments. In the
interim, many are leasing the
properties they’re not using until
they need them.
It’s good that colleges are look
ing years or even decades ahead,
Fire triggers evacuations
By Dan Elliott
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
DENVER A wind-driven
wildfire broke out in the rugged
Colorado foothills and quickly
spread across 4 square miles
Monday, destroying some homes
and triggering evacuations of as
many as 400 others.
No injuries were reported.
Authorities could not say how
many structures burned down,
but they said at least some of
them were houses.
The fire started in Four Mile
Canyon northwest of Boulder,
and erratic winds gusting to 45
mph spread the flames both to
the west and northeast.
At least four roads in the area
were closed, and a billowing,
white plume of heavy smoke was
visible for miles. The cause was
unknown.
“It’s fast-moving. We’ve got a
lot of wind up there,” Boulder
County sheriff’s Cmdr. Rick
Brough said. He said emergency
crews were concentrating on
evacuations.
but investing in real estate can be
risky, academic research analyst
Jane Wellman said.
“People who just lost their
shirts in the last real estate crash
know the risk of real estate as an
investment portfolio,” Wellman
said. Colleges “are banking that
now is the low point in real estate,
and it may not be.”
For years, Columbia bought
land wherever it could, amassing
more than 17 acres on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side
between 2002 and 2009.
Construction has begun on a
multibillion-dollar expansion that
would build new housing, labora
tories, open space and tree-lined
sidewalls.
University President Lee
Bollinger said it won’t be finished
for at least 30 years. And while
some of the space has been dedi
cated to specific departments,
Bollinger said he’s intentionally
not deciding how the rest of the
buildings will be used.
“You want to give future genera
tions the ability to create their own
university,” he said.
Dan Fasulo, a managing direc
tor for real estate research firm
Real Capital Analytics, says many
About 200 homes scattered in
and near the canyon were evacu
ated earlier in the day. Brough
said residents of two other subdi
visions closer to Boulder, each
with about 100 homes, were
ordered to evacuate Monday
afternoon.
At least 100 buildings were
threatened. One fire vehicle was
destroyed, said Patrick von
Keyserling, a spokesman for the
Boulder County Office of
Emergency Management.
At least two heavy air tankers
were sent to the Rocky Mountain
Metropolitan Airport southeast of
Boulder to help, but the winds
were too strong for them to fly
over the fire.
“They just can’t get up until the
wind dies down,” Brough said.
The strong winds accompanied
a cold front moving across the
state. They weren’t expected to
slacken until Monday night, said
Scott Entrekin, a National
Weather Service meteorologist.
About 100 ground crews were
on the scene and 75 more were
on standby, Brough said.
STATE & NATION
colleges are jumping at new
opportunities to buy land cheaply
since the economic slump.
Previously, “universities were
very much shut out of the market
at its top,” Fasulo said. “You really
couldn’t compete with private
investors who were scooping up
properties in their neighbor
hoods.”
Some schools say the economic
downturn drove prices so low that
it was cheaper to buy land with
existing buildings now than it
would be to construct new ones
later.
University of Dayton President
Daniel Curran thought he got “the
deal of a lifetime” five years ago,
when the Ohio university bought
50 acres from NCR Corp. for $25
million. Then he got a better offer
the company’s expansive world
headquarters property com
plete with a moat and a mini golf
course for $lB million.
The university started moving
in this summer. The property
includes a 415,000-square-foot
building that will house a science
facility, an alumni center and a
huge parking garage. Curran said
the university saved itself the
expense of building new space,
FOOD FIGHT
Matt Rourke/Associated Press
International Longshoremen's Association union members toss Del Monte company pineapples into
the Delaware River following a Labor Day parade in Philadelphia on Monday. The union members were
protesting the possible loss of jobs.
and is leasing unused parts of the
building for extra cash.
The university still has 90 acres
available for expansion.
“We don’t know what the library
of the future is going to be, but we
need a space for that library,”
Curran said.
The former Chrysler Group
LLC plant the University of
Delaware bought won’t be com
pletely built out for 50 years, said
Executive Vice President Scott
Douglass. Since nearly a quarter
of it has no specific plans, it may
be used for scientific testing,
Douglass said.
At Columbia, where tuition and
living expenses are soaring in
New York, junior Jose Robledo
said although he’d like his univer
sity to put more money toward
financial aid, it’s more important
for it to expand and try to improve
even if he’s not around to see it.
“If the university continues
being a leader in research, that
makes sure my degree is still valu
able 20,30 years down the road."
At York College in York. Pa..
most of a 28-acre plot bought last
year foe. $5.8 million is being set
aside. George Waldner, president
of the 4,750-undergraduate cam
Tuesday, Sept. 7,2010 I
pus, said it was better to buy now
than wait, when “you’re going to
pay a premium because everyone
is going to know you need a piece
of land close to your campus.”
Fasulo offered colleges some
words of caution, though, saying
land investment in a rural area is
riskier than near a place like
Columbia, in one of the nation’s
most desirable real estate mar
kets.
“From a market perspective,
there would be a lot less risk wor
rying about surplus property in a
place like Manhattan than if you
were out in the woods some
where,” he said. “Let’s say enroll
ment falls in half, you can sell it off
as a condominium.”
And Wellman, executive direc
tor of the Delta Project on
Postsecondary Education Costs.
Productivity and Accountability, a
nonprofit studying college costs,
noted that even when a building
isn’t being used for academics, a
university still has to pay to main
tain it.
“You’re going to have to keep
raising money and getting more
money every year just to keep the
hamster running in the cage,” she
said.