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THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

By focusing on the right questions upfront, WKU leadership created a plan not only to rebuild its beds, but to reinvent the system that builds and maintains them

This is the first installment in a three-part series on Elevate WKU, Western Kentucky University’s systemwide student housing transformation. Part 1 explains how WKU acted decisively to define the problem and its solution at the right scale. Part 2 will cover the details of the P3 transaction and how each part serves a strategic purpose. Part 3 will reflect on the transferrable lessons for campus leaders.  

Elevate WKU is a university-wide initiative designed to modernize WKU’s residential and student life facilities, restore housing capacity after the unplanned closure of flagship residence halls, and optimize the University’s framework for facilities ownership, operations, reinvestment, and accountability. The first phase of the initiative will deliver 1,000 new beds in the fall of 2028 to be followed by subsequent phases that will replace or renovate 100% of the University’s housing portfolio by the fall of 2030. B&D has served as WKU’s advisor and partner throughout the initiative and continues to support the University as it implements the plan. 

Elevate WKU was recently shortlisted for Best Financial Structure at the 2026 P3 Awards, among the industry’s most recognized programs celebrating excellence and innovation in public-private partnerships across North America. 

On an interconnected college campus, a residence hall is never just a building. An unplanned closure creates immediate consequences: students need new assignments, families need answers, enrollment teams need a clear message, and campus leaders need to explain what happened and what comes next. 

In early 2025, Western Kentucky University faced that crisis when Hilltopper, Regents, and Normal halls were required to close for repairs, affecting housing assignments for more than 1,000 students. Furthermore, the Student Life Foundation, which had owned and operated campus housing since the 1990s, lacked the financial capacity to fund the necessary work. 

Over the next 12 months, WKU’s leadership responded with both an immediate contingency plan and a long-term systemwide solution: a new private partner would step into the role of the Student Life Foundation and assume responsibility for financing, designing, constructing, and maintaining a comprehensive renewal of the housing portfolio. Following selection of the Collegiate Housing Foundation and Gilbane in October of 2025, the University embarked on a rapid design and negotiation process, achieving financial close in just eight months and unlocking $350 million in initial investment without giving up control of its residential program or raising housing rates for students. By 2030, 100% of WKU’s housing portfolio will be replaced or renovated through the initiative. Now known as Elevate WKU, the plan not only unlocked the financial capacity to fund this comprehensive program, but also a stronger framework for housing accountability and performance. 

This article focuses on three early decisions that enabled WKU’s success.  

• First, by defining the problem correctly and establishing clear success criteria, WKU was able to align every major decision from procurement through financial close as well as unify its leadership around a comprehensive solution that will deliver much more than new beds. 

• Second, WKU intentionally organized its leadership team to make decisions at pace.  

• And finally, WKU resisted the urge to “get back to normal” and pushed for advancement of its housing system despite the headwinds.   

WKU defined strategic imperatives before defining the solution 

From the earliest days of response to the crisis, the central question of WKU’s leadership team was not only how to replace or reopen impacted beds, but how to rebuild the housing system the right way. In early 2025, leadership worked with B&D to establish project success criteria that would be sustained through partner procurement, financing, design, approvals, and implementation. The sustained effort that followed was therefore proactive, rather than reactive. 

Crucially, a systemwide P3 was not the only possible response to the crisis, but was the right response for WKU because it matched these strategic imperatives: 

• WKU must bring national expertise to deliver world-class student housing. Because housing is central to WKU’s recruitment and student success strategy, partners brought on board must understand how to bring the best of the industry to bear to create housing that reflects the institution’s ambitions of excellence. This excellence must be apparent to prospective and current students. 

• WKU must move quickly and decisively to respond to the immediate capacity crisis and implement a long-term program for housing renewal. With three flagship residence halls closed, the University must deliver new beds as quickly as possible but not lose sight of the ambitious plans to advance the housing system that predated the crisis.  

• WKU must create a clear accountability framework for housing ownership, operations, maintenance, and long-term housing performance. Future administrations must never again be forced to manage a crisis like the closure of Hilltopper, Regents, and Normal. The solution must create clear accountability and build an intentional incentive structure and governance strategy to ensure long-term performance.  

• WKU must maintain student affordability by avoiding housing rate increases. It would not be fair to ask students to shoulder the burden of the housing repairs and advancement of the program. Therefore, the University would prioritize strategies that maintained its rental rate structure and continued to provide a wide range of accessible options to its students.  

• WKU must maintain its control over Residence Life programming and student experience. Housing is intimately tied with enrollment and academic strategy, and so housing policy and residence life operations must be housed within the University to enable holistic thinking and action.  

• WKU must implement the program without compromising its long-term operations or balance sheet capacity. Despite the ambitious scale of the reinvestment program, it must not take away the ability of the University to advance its core mission. 

Though it sounds simple, this framing unified the message across stakeholders and allowed the University and its partners to make big decisions at the required pace. Because WKU defined the problem comprehensively, it could explain why the solution needed to address financing, governance, operations, accountability, affordability, enrollment, and student success together. The same project definition that aligned the leadership team internally also aligned partners, the commonwealth, and provided confidence to the capital markets: 

• WKU’s Board of Regents was not being asked to approve a slate of repairs, but a long-term vision that would address the issues that led to the crisis. 

• Development partners were not being asked to pursue an undefined scope, but to provide the best solution to meet clear objectives. 

• Investors and rating agencies were not being asked to assess an uncertain model or a one-off project, but support an investment where accountability, risk, and financial sustainability had been clearly defined.  

• And the Commonwealth of Kentucky was not being asked to approve a stopgap measure that would leave long-term issues unaddressed, but a comprehensive solution that would sustain and advance an important public institution.  

At B&D, we focus on project definition not for its own sake, but because the right definition unites stakeholders and catalyzes action. WKU’s response to its housing crisis is a clear example of the necessity of this way of thinking when moving big projects forward. 

WKU built the leadership structure to move with discipline 

At many institutions, crisis response is slowed by isolated decision making. Housing officers study the impact on operations. Facilities evaluates potential building-level interventions. Finance tests the numbers. Legal reviews risk. Procurement manages process. Communications prepares the message.  

Each step is reasonable, but each handoff can erode momentum. 

Knowing that speed was a critical strategic imperative, WKU created a decision environment designed to minimize silos and bring decision-makers into the process early. The University brought the president, chief financial officer, general counsel, housing, academic affairs, procurement, government affairs, enrollment management, communications, and project leadership into the same solutions room for biweekly meetings. 

That structure allowed issues to be surfaced, tested, and resolved in real time. Decisions could be evaluated against financial capacity, legal authority, student experience, enrollment strategy, communications risk, procurement requirements, and the approval schedule. Tradeoffs did not disappear, but became visible. 

The structure did more than accelerate decisions. It also strengthened relationships among senior leaders by forcing cross-functional problem solving into the same room. A comprehensive P3 like Elevate WKU required sustained attention from leadership, especially on an accelerated timeline. Financing, design, operations and maintenance, Board of Regents approvals, and state coordination all had to advance together. WKU’s senior leaders engaged directly in that work. The President participated in design discussions. General counsel joined operations and maintenance meetings. Housing officers joined financing meetings. That level of involvement required significant time, but it meant that issues could be raised and addressed quickly. Moreover, the leadership team developed a deeper understanding of the housing system and how to work more effectively across institutional boundaries. This type of collaboration was crucial for implementing the P3, but also will have enduring benefits for the University as it continues to advance its mission. 

From B&D’s perspective, this kind of integrated leadership structure is what allows complex P3s to move quickly without losing discipline, because it keeps strategy, risk, finance, operations, and student experience connected throughout implementation. 

WKU resisted the instinct to “get back to normal” 

When a crisis hits, the natural question is how to get back to normal. But normal may be the system that allowed the risk to accumulate. 

The better questions are harder:  

• What did this crisis reveal about the operating model? Where were responsibilities blurred? 

•  Which decisions had to remain under University control? What capabilities were missing?  

• If WKU were designing the system today, would it build it the same way? 

WKU’s housing story is about buildings, but its deeper lesson is about governance: the ability to see the whole system when the pressure of the moment pushes everyone toward a patch. 

Leadership turned that response into a new direction. Instead of simply finding a way to replace the closed beds and restore the prior ownership model, WKU used the transaction to preserve University control over residence life, protect students from housing rate increases, and create a clearer framework for long-term maintenance accountability. 

WKU is not the only institution facing enrollment pressure, deferred maintenance, and legacy systems that are no longer working. WKU offers a blueprint for how leaders can respond to those headwinds with clarity, discipline, and a willingness to rethink the system itself. 

Crucially, the lesson is not that every institution should pursue a systemwide P3. The lesson is that institutions make better long-term decisions when they define the problem broadly enough to see the whole system. 

At B&D, this is the work we do: define the problem clearly, align leadership around the right solution, and move complex projects from crisis response to long-term strategy. We are proud to have supported WKU in advancing this important initiative. 

In Part 2, we will examine why WKU chose a systemwide student housing P3—and how its financing, ownership, development, operations, and governance components fit together. 

Julian Sagastume is a Senior Associate in Brailsford & Dunlavey’s Chicago office, where he advises colleges, universities, healthcare systems, and public institutions on public-private partnerships, strategic capital planning, and infrastructure development. Julian served as the lead advisor to Western Kentucky University throughout the development of Elevate WKU. He works with executive leaders to structure and implement complex projects that advance institutional priorities. His experience spans education, housing, healthcare, energy, and infrastructure development initiatives across the United States.