News & Insights

At the start of this fall semester, the University of South Florida (“USF”) opened the doors to the first phase of The Village—a mixed-use project bringing student housing, student recreation, dining, and retail facilities to campus. USF’s Assistant Vice President of Housing and Residential Education Ana Hernandez told the student newspaper The Oracle that “the Village is really going to transform the on-campus experience” and will be “a great community gathering space.” It is an impactful project that is developed within a P3 structure in partnership with a competitively selected Capstone Development-Harrison Street Real Estate Capital team.

A few years ago, USF realized the time had come to comprehensively address how residential facilities serve a significantly changing population. In summary, USF needed to increase housing capacity, address aging facilities and deferred maintenance, and maintain competitive advantage. The University’s urgency to act also included limiting the Village’s impact on USF’s debt capacity and ongoing USF operating costs.

Serving as USF’s development advisor, B&D defined the project opportunity to ensure feasibility and compliance within the school’s overall objectives; this ultimately led to a successful financial close. Specifically, B&D advised USF through feasibility, programming, solicitation, selection, negotiations, and implementation with their selected private partner. B&D’s unique Value for Money approach was critical to informing USF’s decisions as it framed the University’s understanding of the range of risk transfer opportunities. USF selected an equity model that effectively transferred project delivery, operating, maintenance, and budget risk to the private partner while ensuring sufficient financial return to the University over a 45-year ground lease term.

The $133M USF Village is opening in two phases—fall of 2017 and fall of 2018—ultimately featuring 2,171 beds, 19,000 ft² of campus recreation facilities, 15,600 ft² of dining facilities, and 5,600 ft² of retail space. Also, the project was one of the first higher education P3 partnerships to successfully navigate the State University System of Florida’s recently approved Public-Private Partnership Guidelines.

The Village is an ambitious, exciting project. We look forward to celebrating its success with USF and the Capstone Development-Harrison Street Real Estate Capital team!