A new apartment community with a bridge that links to Florida Atlantic University is being pitched as a way to deal with the school’s “inadequate” housing supply.
The school has been growing out of its “commuter college” label, with a student population that has grown steadily since the 1990s. And the latest proposal, which calls for hundreds of new apartments, aims to relieve the school’s housing crunch.
The project is called “Liv on 5th Avenue,” so students can live along Northwest Fifth Avenue. It could have as many as 234 apartments, with a bridge over the El Rio canal to connect to the campus near Windwood, a large multi-family community.
Although the project is geared toward students, it wouldn’t be exclusively rented to students because of federal housing laws that prohibit discrimination.
Part of the success and challenge is that the FAU student population has tripled since 1990 to about 30,000 students, said Bonnie Miskel, an attorney for the project. Of those, about 25,000 attend school at the Boca campus. She said the school plans to grow even more with out-of-state and international students who won’t be able to commute from family homes in South Florida the way commuter students do. That creates a bigger housing demand.
An FAU spokeswoman said Wednesday there are 4,078 beds on campus. Another residence hall that will have 612 beds is being constructed.
“We want to play a part in the student’s unique college experience in what we try to build,” said John Clifford, a principle with CA Student Living property management company, which builds student housing. He said the school supports their idea of the pedestrian bridge.
Boca City Councilman Andy Thomson, whose parents met when they were commuter college kids at FAU, said the school needs help to address its overflow.
“Total enrollment of the school has gone through the roof,” he said. “While it’s true that some students commute from their parents’ home to Boca every day, more and more — like most kids — want to live near the college.
“It either gets addressed without the city’s participation, or with the city’s participation,” he said of the housing crunch.
The proposal is “good for FAU, it’s good for the city, it’s good for the kids,” he said. “I think it makes more sense to have college kids live near the college where they can walk to school, walk to the classes, take their cars off the road.”
But the plan could get some pushback. One resident said she was sad her home could turn into a noisy college campus, and a four-story apartment building would attract a “different type of element.”
City staff told the council that the plan was “unreasonable” and would be “disruptive” to the area.
Mayor Scott Singer didn’t feel the project was compatible in that area, and voted against the changes, saying it was too dense.
“FAU’s success with student housing will be what it builds on campus,” he said Wednesday. “They have room to accommodate more” on-campus housing, he said.
Other council members argued it would draw students out of family neighborhoods and into the dedicated college living space. Yvette Drucker, a newcomer to the council, said she’s heard from countless young professionals and students who want to stay here, but can’t find the right place for the right price. So groups of three or four of them end up renting single-family homes that they can afford in the middle of family neighborhoods.
“If we could free up some of those single-family homes, young professionals that study here can stay here and be a part of our footprint and our economy,” Drucker said. “Students want to be with students. They don’t want to be living among families and retirees.”
A quick search through online student housing groups shows groups of three students seeking a fourth roommate to rent a home, or owners offering furnished rooms in a townhouse a skip and a hop away from campus. “Currently mostly seniors & grads live here,” one post reads.
Parnia Mehrsa, a 19-year-old student who commutes to class from Boynton Beach, said she thinks affordable student housing near campus would be beneficial for everyone, even though she wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of it herself. She attended a dual-enrollment program through FAU in high school, and is set to graduate in the fall of 2021.
But if she was attending college classes there for the regular four years? She says she would have considered housing near campus.
“I think a lot of kids around here would live there,” Mehrsa said. “I know people who were in my situation but decided to do housing on campus.”
On Tuesday night, the majority of the Boca Raton City Council voted to send the land use change request to the state.
If the state approves the change, the city still has to vote on the site plan and land use change request before anything could be built.
