News & Insights
Photo courtesy of: Greg Land
Photo credit: Western Kentucky University
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 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. B&D has served as WKU’s advisor and partner throughout the initiative and continues to support the University as it implements the plan.
In early 2025, WKU moved quickly to select an owner and development partner that would assume responsibility for designing, building, and financing a comprehensive program for housing renewal across campus. Following selection of the Collegiate Housing Foundation and Gilbane, the University achieved financial close in just eight months, unlocking $350m in initial investment without giving up control of its residential program or raising housing rates. By 2030, 100% of WKU’s housing portfolio will be replaced or renovated.
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 decisively 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. The initiative, now known as Elevate WKU, 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 four early decisions that enabled WKU’s success. 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.
From the earliest days of the crisis response, WKU’s central question was not only how to replace or reopen impacted beds, but how to rebuild the housing system the right way. Leadership worked with B&D to establish project success criteria that carried through procurement, financing, approvals, and implementation:
Though it sounds simple, this framing unified the message across stakeholders and allowed the University to make big decisions quickly. The Board of Regents was not being asked to approve a slate of repairs, but a new long-term vision with a comprehensive scope that would address the issues that led to the crisis. Partners were not being asked to pursue an undefined scope, but a 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 a housing system where accountability and financial sustainability had been clearly defined. And the commonwealth was not being asked to approve a stopgap. Because WKU defined the problem correctly as a system issue, 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.
A systemwide P3 was not the only possible response to the crisis, but it was the right response for WKU because it matched the University’s strategic imperatives. Therefore, the sustained effort that followed the development of these criteria was not reactive, but proactive.
At many universities, crisis response is slowed by isolated decision making. Housing studies operations. Facilities evaluates buildings. Finance tests the numbers. Legal reviews risk. Procurement manages process. Communications prepares the message. Each step is reasonable, but every handoff can erode momentum.
Knowing that speed was important,
WKU created a different environment. Early in the process, 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 regular 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.
Furthermore, the structure did more than create speed. It strengthened relationships among senior leaders and allowed WKU to solve problems across silos.
WKU began its partner selection process in May 2025 with clear objectives for affordability, housing capacity, risk allocation, operating accountability, and institutional control. Gilbane Development Company was selected in October. The Board of Regents approved a predevelopment agreement in December. Over the next several months, WKU negotiated project agreements, advanced Phase 1 design, developed the operations and maintenance framework, engaged students, and secured required approvals. Elevate WKU reached financial close on June 17, 2026, just over a year after the process began.
That pace was possible because WKU had defined what it needed. Procurement, negotiation, financing, and approvals moved through a disciplined process that kept strategy, finance, legal review, operations, design, student experience, and governance aligned.
Urgency did not shrink the University’s ambition. What began as a housing crisis became the largest residential investment in WKU’s history with $350m already invested and future investments to come through the structure.
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.
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.
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.
