Creating Economic Superclusters – Powerful urban universities are reshaping metropolitan culture and character.

Intellectual Capital

by Nancy Egan and Paul Nakazawa

Powerful urban universities are reshaping metropolitan culture and character.

http://research.uli.org/Content/UL/UL_Sample.htm

Colleges and universities in major cities are becoming increasingly influential in urban development circles. With valuable real estate assets, research-related businesses, endowments significantly augmented by ambitious capital campaigns, and growing student populations, these institutions have the economic and political clout to reshape not only their own campuses but the surrounding communities as well. As the traditional divide between town and gown becomes less apparent, the programs and physical development of colleges and universities have both direct and indirect effects on municipal planning efforts and private development in unprecedented ways that can contribute to the reshaping of metropolitan culture and character.

Ever since the Middle Ages, universities have been powerful institutions that have enjoyed considerable civil and spatial privileges even as they exerted significant influence on other realms of society. The notion of the university as a place apart dedicated to the pure pursuit of knowledge persisted through much of the 20th century. That image has changed in recent decades, however, as the intellectual capital of universities, particularly in the sciences, has become a critical component in global economies driven by high-tech and biotechnology interests.

Today, universities are top-tier players in the creation of “economic superclusters” that bring together the resources of major medical institutions, corporate research and development, the government (often in the form of funding from the National Institutes of Health [NIH]), and venture capital. The emergence of this model has moved schools—especially those with urban campuses—to the front and center in discussions of regional and local economic development and its corollary in infrastructure development.

Effects produced by these developments can be seen in the surrounding communities at a number of levels, from escalation of salaries for professors and researchers, to the increased demand for a limited supply of housing to accommodate students, faculty, employees in the new technology businesses, and residents of the old neighborhoods. There also is pressure on traditional commercial districts near campuses as real estate developers recognize the opportunity to capture this evolving market with speculative and build-to-suit laboratories, offices, retail, and housing. These new developments threaten to displace older, less-generative businesses that nonetheless are important contributors to community life.

For their part, colleges and universities are faced with an unprecedented demand for transparency in their transactions and permeability in access and communications that challenge the kind of private decision making that schools have long employed. As the need to expand in order to meet demand generated by an increasingly diversified curriculum and the need for a competitive array of high-quality amenities pushes university administrators to look beyond the confines of their campuses, they often are confronted by community leaders who oppose these expansion plans, even though the local economy may experience significant gains as a result of them. On the one hand, a university can bring vitality to the surrounding community as well as economic benefits in the form of jobs, rents, and retail expenditures on the part of students and faculty. On the other hand, the institutions are able to exercise control over the area’s prime real estate. However, in spite of the university’s presence in the community, it generally has little control over the behavior of its students living off campus or over other aspects of community life including the delivery of services, infrastructure, and housing. And add to this the fact that the higher-education institutions are largely exempt from property taxes.

The potential for conflict exists not only at the large, technology-rich campuses, but also at urban schools across the country. Boundaries have blurred as businesses seek the innovation and intellectual resources of the university for competitive advantage, and the institutions, in turn, recognize increased political and economic leverage through their affiliations with related businesses. Pragmatic self-interest on both sides has led to a wide range of planning initiatives on and off campus that are redefining social and physical relations. The campus and the community are forging partnerships, some more fragile than others, that are remaking entire urban districts where it is increasingly difficult to tell exactly where the fine line divides the two.

The big-name technology powerhouses have spurred some of the most aggressive development, with loyal donors funding state-of-the-art facilities—often designed by architectural superstars—on university campuses while private companies and the development community have moved with equal vigor to create complementary campuses just outside the gates. Cities like Boston, Cambridge, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have acknowledged the benefits of large concentrations of universities and have worked to encourage these kinds of collaborations.

Cambridge, for example, established a mayor’s committee on university/community relationships in 1991 to study the interaction between the community and the educational institutions that play an important role in the city’s landscape and economy. The four primary postsecondary educational institutions located in Cambridge—Cambridge College, Harvard University, Lesley University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—all participated in discussions that ultimately led to the issuance of a town/gown report. The goal was to improve university/community relations through mutually beneficial activities that include an annual joint review of university and community needs and plans.

At MIT, a $1 billion construction program designed to improve the quality of campus life and to help create a new sense of community includes the newly opened Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences designed by Los Angeles–based Frank O. Gehry; Simmons Hall, the student residence designed by Stephen Holl of New York City; the Albert and Barrie Zesinger Sports and Fitness Center, designed by Kevin Roche of John Dinkeloo & Associates of Hamden, Connecticut; and the brain and cognitive science project scheduled to open next year, designed by Goody Clancy & Associates of Boston. In addition to introducing a bold new architectural identity for MIT, the new buildings also address the issue of openness. “We realize that it is crucial to have a permeable campus, a welcoming environment without security guards everywhere,” emphasizes William J. Mitchell, former dean of the architecture school and architectural adviser to MIT. In the Stata Center, there are public zones as well as private zones with sophisticated card-key access. Another dimension is physical transparency of the buildings themselves, a real switch in laboratory design that makes life in the scientific community visible and provides unexpected rewards in vistas and observations,” he adds. “As the institution seeks increasing public support, it has to take the concept of transparency literally.”

The architectural renaissance on the campus has also played a role in attracting top scholars to MIT, which is mirrored by corporations and private developments in the near neighborhood that have created headquarters for a number of leading biotech companies, including Novartis, Biogen, and Gynzyme. The Cambridge community also benefits from new housing facilities on campus that have helped to bring students who were renting off campus back to the MIT campus, freeing up affordable housing in a tight metropolitan market.

Further down the Charles River from MIT, Harvard University has been running out of space on its Cambridge campus for years. In fact, the institution currently owns more land in Boston—over 200 acres in Allston—than it does in Cambridge where it is a major landholder. Harvard has owned and used land in Allston—home to the Soldiers Field athletic complex and the Harvard Business School—for more than a century. During the late 1980s and 1990s, it quietly acquired significantly more land in Allston. When the land acquisition finally was announced to the public in 1997, it was not well received. In a move to show its good intentions, the university then donated land and $25,000 for a new branch of the Boston Public Library in Allston.

While there is still concern over Harvard’s expansion plans on the part of the Allston community, it was largely mitigated in fall 2003 by the unveiling of a conceptual plan for the property. In an open letter, Lawrence H. Summers, the university’s president, described long-term plans to move the school of public health from the Longwood medical area and the graduate school of education from Cambridge to Allston. The plan also calls for the construction of science and engineering labs and graduate student housing on the new campus. The ultimate goal, according to Summers, is to create “a robust critical mass of scientific activities” in Allston that would serve as the foundation for a much stronger profile for Harvard in the dynamic bioscience economy. When plans were announced for the Harvard Stem Cell Institute this past spring, speculation suggested an Allston location.

An ongoing dialogue with the Allston community and the development of specific plans are needed with these future expansion plans. Task forces composed primarily of Harvard faculty have been studying how best to move schools and departments in ways that will maintain connection to the Cambridge and Longwood campuses and encourage collaboration. This spring, Harvard announced a shortlist of design firms for the master planning of the new campus: London-based Foster and Partners, and Cooper Robertson & Partners, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, and Rafael Viñoly, all of New York City. Questions persist about many aspects of the campus development—from escalating real estate costs in the neighborhoods to the new architectural image of venerable Harvard.

In Philadelphia, which is home to the nation’s highest percentage of physicians engaged in research and which educates more than 20 percent of the country’s physicians, the Science Center, a consortium of 30 academic and scientific institutions, recently announced the completion of a revised master plan. Located in west Philadelphia’s University City district, the Science Center incubates businesses in an urban technology park comprising more than 2 million square feet where relatively inexpensive rents are offered, along with access to nearby universities, hospitals, and other research entities.

The Jerde Partnership, a master-planning firm based in Venice, California, conducted workshops to incorporate feedback from the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and other private and public agencies in an effort to develop a master plan that will satisfy the demand for high-quality office and research space and the need to create a sense of campus community that reinforces the Science Center’s role as the synergistic hub of the academic and research institutions in the area. The plan introduces housing, retail, and other community uses into what had been a primarily research environment. The mix of uses underscores the need for the university-linked scientific community to participate in the social life of the neighborhood that surrounds and supports it.

“There is a real opportunity for place making in the neighborhoods surrounding campuses,” notes Tim Magill, senior vice president and principal designer at Jerde. “The university provides an anchor for other development that benefits the institution and the community. More livable environments make economic and social sense,” he adds. “We capitalized on the Science Center’s location at the hinge of the Penn and Drexel campuses to create an inviting, identifiable public space.”

Officials at the Cooper Union, located at the heart of New York’s resurgent Astor Place neighborhood, recognized that the changing fortunes of the area presented a prime opportunity to realize several long-term goals. As a major landowner, the institution acted on the opportunity to leverage its real estate holdings so that it will be able to substantially renew its endowment and, at the same time, provide modern facilities for academic programs. The redevelopment—part urban design, part real estate venture—reflects the entrepreneurial spirit of Peter Cooper, the philanthropist who established the school in 1859. Cooper’s legacy, a free education for working-class men and women, has long been linked to the properties at Astor Place. Symbolically, the historic great hall has come to represent open access to higher education in the city. The school’s real estate literally supports the Cooper Union’s endowment with monies raised in rent and property taxes that are rebated to the school by the city.

The multiyear, three-building master plan for the Cooper Square campus includes a 22-story residential building currently being developed by the Related Companies and designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates, both of New York City, on the site of the former Astor Place parking lot owned by the school. Future steps, outlined in a development study by Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects of New York, include the replacement of the existing two-story Abram S. Hewitt Memorial Building, located at 41 Cooper Square, with a new engineering building. The college’s new academic facility, a nine-story, full-block structure on the site owned by the city, is to be designed by Thom Mayne, founder and creative force at Morphosis, a Santa Monica, California–based architecture firm. Once the academic building is occupied, Cooper Union will lease its current engineering building site, which it also owns, at 51 Astor Place to a developer for design and construction of a mixed-use, primarily commercial facility—with space for some Cooper Union uses. The college intends the latter building to attract companies that have synergy with its academic programs and provide opportunities for research and creative ventures in collaboration with faculty and students.

While officials at Cooper Union believe that the new plan, which includes an improved streetscape, is an enhancement to the entire area, it is recognized that the introduction of new buildings, however necessary for the continued health of the school, has implications for the community. A lengthy public review process has provided a forum for discussion about the bulk and height of the proposed structures and other changes. “Since the beginning, we’ve convened numerous meetings with local groups, neighborhood associations, and city officials,” points out Ronni Denes, vice president of external affairs. “We’ve also invited them to join us in looking at opportunities for streetscape improvements in the area.”

Almost ten years ago, the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) concluded that its modernist campus with a collection of buildings by Mies van der Rohe, who once headed ITT’s architecture school, had lost its drawing power. The facilities were in disrepair and the surrounding neighborhoods on Chicago’s Near South Side were suffering. IIT convened a planning group to discuss the options. “Everything was on the table,” explains Lew Collins, president of IIT, “even a move from the city.” The decision was made to stay in its current location and to capitalize on its assets, which meant renovating a core group of the van der Rohe buildings to create “a state-of-the-art Mies museum” and updating the campus plan.

Selected for the master planning effort was Dirk Lohan of Lohan & Associates, a Chicago architect and van der Rohe’s grandson. Lohan recommended that the long, empty strip bisected by the Chicago Transit Authority’s elevated train tracks be the site for a new campus center and proposed holding an international design competition to choose the architect. Given the challenges inherent in the site—from the speed and noise of the commuter trains to the need to preserve the legacy buildings—the solution needed to be “out of the ordinary.”

Rotterdam-based, Pritzker Prize winner Rem Koolhaas was selected with his one-of-a-kind design for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center, a campus crossroads that has made the enclosure of the disruptive commuter rail tracks an integral part of the structure. The 530-foot stainless-steel-clad tube sits directly above the one-story building’s roof, buffering the sound and vibration. At the same time, IIT also added the new State Street Village student residence hall, designed by Chicago-based Helmut Jahn, an IIT alumnus.

In Los Angeles, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) was enticed to relocate in 2000 from Santa Monica to a 97-year old freight depot in the downtown area by then-mayor Richard J. Riordan with a $1 million subsidy. The move, to a somewhat questionable part of downtown that was beginning to redefine itself, not only provided a living laboratory in urban issues for the architecture students, but the presence of the school also helped to encourage the fledgling artist colony in nearby studio lofts while helping to stabilize the neighborhood. Since its move, SCI-Arc has shown interest in the vacant lot adjacent to the campus, measuring some 15 acres in size, as a potential mixed-use environment with affordable lofts, a restaurant, and student housing. However, the improved fortunes of the neighborhood helped to drive up the price of the lot and the land was sold to developers before the nonprofit architecture school could raise the funds to buy it. Adding to the disappointment was the discovery that the new owners wanted to develop luxury high rises.

With strong support from the community and the local city council representative, SCI-Arc currently is working with the developer in order to have a say about what happens to the site. “We see an opportunity to accommodate a range of interests: students and teachers, artists, neighbors, and potential newcomers,” maintains Eric Owen Moss, director of SCI-Arc. “It is as important to construct a sociology here as it is to create architecture. In the long run, the discussion of the site is a discussion about a redefinition of Los Angeles, about the eastern edge of downtown, and its future,” he stresses. “We believe we have a role to play.”

And, so it is with the immediate issues surrounding urban campus plans everywhere, the discussion in the larger context is about the coevolution of the university and the city—and their shared futures. This convergence of interests has taken generations to occur; its continued success will depend on sustained commitment and collaboration.

Nancy Egan heads New Voodou, a consulting practice that provides image/content development to the real estate and design communities from offices in Santa Monica, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paul Nakazawa is an international business consultant based in Boston, and a member of the faculty of the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

FEATURE BOX

University-Related Development in Chicago Invests Billions

Over the last ten years or so, university development has been changing the landscape of large swaths of Chicago, including the downtown area. In some cases, the universities there are replacing outmoded facilities; in others, the intent is to create a greater sense of community or to reinforce their identities through new development efforts. Along the way, they have given new life to old buildings, addressed land use conflicts and historical and architectural preservation issues, turned outward to remake neighborhoods, and forged innovative partnerships.

A number of major downtown buildings have been redeveloped by Chicago’s universities in the last decade. In 1993, DePaul University completed a $70 million redevelopment of the former Goldblatt’s department store at the southeast corner of State and Jackson in the Loop, converting it into the DePaul Center with classrooms, offices, and retail space. The expanding university plans over the next few years to replace ground- and second-floor retail tenants with additional office and classroom space. Robert Morris College occupies large portions of a former Sears department store a block south along State Street. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago rehabilitated a half dozen buildings in the Loop into office and classroom space, including two dormitories that opened in 1997 and 2000. Roosevelt University has occupied the historic Auditorium Building, a National Historic Landmark that was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, since 1947, and rehabbed the Gage Building on South Michigan Avenue for the Center for Professional Advancement opening in 2001. In September, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies announced plans for a ten-story, $49 million building at 600 South Michigan Avenue to house its college, library, museum, and other facilities.

More than 52,000 students and over 12,000 university employees were estimated in the 21 institutions of higher education in Chicago’s Loop and near south side (an area bounded by Lake Michigan, Wacker Drive, the Chicago River, and Roosevelt Road) in 2002—a number that probably is greater today than when the estimate was made based on a study led by Robert Fechtman, DePaul University’s executive director of government and community relations. Increasingly, these students are residing downtown, not only adding to the downtown population, but also creating a 24/7 environment.

The newest downtown project is the University Center of Chicago (UCC), a $150 million student residence built jointly by Columbia College Chicago, DePaul University, and Roosevelt University at the southeast corner of State Street and Congress Parkway in the south Loop, replacing a city-owned parking garage. Opened in August, the 18-story structure, designed by Chicago-based Antunovich Associates, houses 1,680 students and 43 staff in apartment-style units and contains 31,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

The three universities formed a not-for-profit entity, the Educational Advancement Fund (EAF), to develop UCC, which is governed by a board consisting of the university presidents and directors of facilities. Columbia and DePaul each own 40 percent of the beds, Roosevelt 20 percent. The joint ownership structure faced the challenge of blending different institutional cultures and decision-making processes, a task made easier, say the participants, by focusing on common business needs and related issues.

Columbia College bought its first building in 1972, and became a major anchor in the then-stagnant south Loop. With 13 buildings totaling about 1.2 million square feet, it is now the largest property owner in the south Loop. University Center is its first residential building. The center’s nearly 1,700 residents will “bring life to one of the more isolated parcels downtown,” says Alicia Berg, Columbia’s vice president of campus environment and former commissioner of the city of Chicago department of planning and development.

Private developers have responded to the demand for student housing, according to Reverend Mark Pranaitis, associate vice president for special projects at DePaul University and one of the board members of the EAF, who points to a former office building at State and Eighth streets that was redeveloped into student residences by Newtown Square, Pennsylvania–based College Park Communities, national developers and managers of student housing. Two additional proposed redevelopments in the area are considering student housing for all or part of their projects.

Less than four miles south of the University Center of Chicago on State Street, stand the McCormick Tribune Campus Center and State Street Village (SSV)—the centerpieces of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s (IIT) redevelopment of its main campus. After taking a strategic look at its future, IIT in 1995 committed to remaining at its mid-south location at State and 33rd streets and to remaking its campus. The goals were to have “high-quality programs attracting high-quality students to a high-quality campus and to have them all work together,” says David Baker, vice president of external relations for IIT.

IIT faced the challenges inherent in remaking a modernist masterpiece: the campus was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who once led IIT’s architecture school, and in 1976, it was named as one of the 200 most important works of architecture in the United States. IIT also hoped to help revive its surrounding neighborhood dominated by dilapidated high-rise housing projects south of 35th Street and had to work around the elevated (El) transit tracks that run north/south through the campus, dividing student housing on the east from classrooms and offices on the west.

A vision to renew the campus while respecting its history was articulated in a new main campus master plan completed in 1996—and updated in 2001—by Dirk Lohan (Mies van der Rohe’s grandson), of Chicago-based Lohan and Associates. In September 2003, IIT opened the $48 million, 110,000-square-foot Rem Koolhaas–designed McCormick Tribune Campus Center, built in the middle of campus underneath the El tracks. One goal was to “reenergize campus life by unifying the residential east and office west,” explains Baker, and to do that the El train track structure had to “disappear,” in this case into a 530-foot-long tube set atop the McCormick Center, which both muffles the noise of passing trains and hides them.

State Street Village, a student residence hall designed by Helmut Jahn, principal of Chicago-based Murphy/Jahn, who studied at IIT under Mies van der Rohe, also opened in fall 2003 across 33rd Street, south of the McCormick Center. The $28 million structure, composed of three five-story buildings, houses 367 students in apartment-style units that face State Street. The El, located in the back of State Street Village, is separated by concrete and glass sound walls that allow for views of the El from the courtyards.

Looking beyond its campus, with the intent, according to institution officials, of fostering a greater sense of community, in 1996 IIT began building a 120-unit townhouse and condominium development for faculty and staff on university-owned land located east of campus at Michigan Avenue and 31st Street. As a partner in the neighborhood redevelopment efforts, the city of Chicago has provided the landscaping on State Street and built the new Chicago police headquarters at 35th Street and Wabash Avenue, one block east of campus. The Stateway Gardens public housing high rises south of 35th Street have been demolished and construction of Park Boulevard, a mixed-income condominium, townhouse, and single-family housing project, is expected to start later this year or early in 2005.

The University of Chicago, long the anchor in its Hyde Park neighborhood located about six miles south of downtown along Lake Michigan, has completed a number of major projects over the last few years, including an athletics center, a dormitory, and renovation of several buildings. Under construction are a 430,000-square-foot Interdivisional Research Building, scheduled to open next year, and a 242,000-square-foot Comer Children’s Hospital, due to open later this year. This past April, the University of Chicago Hospitals approved plans for another $300 million in new facilities.

The Graduate School of Business’s (GSB’s) 415,000-square-foot, $125 million Hyde Park Center, designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects PC of New York City, opened in September at 58th Street and Woodlawn Avenue. The building consolidates classrooms and offices that previously were spread among four buildings. The building’s centerpiece is an atrium and winter garden, measuring approximately 90 by 90 feet, and soaring 92 feet high. About half the building is below grade and has stepbacks, making the roofline consistent with that of neighboring buildings on each side.

About a mile west of downtown, the 25,000-student University of Illinois at Chicago is in the midst of its South Campus development, adding student housing, general housing, and retail and university facilities. Two apartment-style residences for 750 students have been built and about 120,000 square feet of retail space for national and local companies, some on the ground floor of the student residences, is under construction. Approximately 900 residential units, 21 percent earmarked for affordable housing, for an estimated 2,000 residents are underway; with over 640 units sold, construction of the final phase is expected to start before year-end.

Echoing the business and residential displacement controversy surrounding the university’s initial construction in the 1960s, the South Campus project faced challenges, including lawsuits, from preservationists who wanted to preserve the open-air Maxwell Street Market—a historic immigrant market and a place where blues musicians played in the open air—and nearby structures. In an eventual compromise, 21 buildings or facades on Maxwell and Halsted streets were reused, preserving some of the original architectural flavor of the area, and the market was relocated to Canal Street a few blocks east. A $115 million additional development east of Halsted Street was approved by university trustees in August, including an 850-bed dormitory, a convocation center, and an additional 20,000 square feet of retail space.

A number of universities in Chicago have served as economic anchors and stabilizing forces in their respective urban neighborhoods, often while the surrounding areas continued to deteriorate for decades. University-related developments in the city of Chicago in the last decade easily amount to more than $1 billion, perhaps several billions of dollars. The universities made these investments to enhance education and research efforts, and in many cases they also had explicit neighborhood revitalization goals. The results are long-lasting contributions to the vitality of their surroundings and the city of Chicago.—Jerry Szatan, a Chicago-based consultant and writer on corporate site selection and economic and real estate development

FEATURE BOX

College Leases to a For-Profit Entity

Times have changed for Boston’s Emmanuel College, owing largely to the value unlocked from its 17-acre urban campus. Enrollment is rising, a major overhaul of its campus facilities was completed this past summer, and its endowment has jumped from $7 million to nearly $50 million since the 1990s—even though a few years ago the college, which now has 1,000 undergraduates and 800 graduate students, was contending with slumping admissions, outdated campus buildings in need of maintenance, and a scarcity of funds.

What Emmanuel College did possess was a real estate strategy that helped to reverse its fortunes. The idea was to set aside an “endowment campus,” a few acres of the main campus not needed for future growth that could be leased on a long-term basis to a for-profit entity. The college’s location—in the Longwood Medical Area (LMA), a tightly packed district that is home to Harvard’s medical school and its 17 affiliated hospitals, research institutes, and other medical enterprises—was key to this plan. As such, it is also the site of approximately 2 million square feet of health care and biomedical research laboratory projects now underway, with an additional 4 million square feet being planned at a cost that reaches $900 per square foot.

In the compact city of Boston, however, real estate concepts such as these can languish because development in general is complex, arduous—and costly. For example, it routinely takes at least two to three years to secure all the permits and approvals needed from government agencies and local advocacy groups for projects larger than 50,000 square feet. In the case of Emmanuel College, the partnership it formed with Corcoran Jennison Companies (CJ), a Boston-based real estate firm, helped turn the strategy into a profitable plan.

As the college’s development adviser, Corcoran Jennison obtained the government and neighborhood approvals for the college’s development plan, directed the survey of the college’s land and buildings, assessed its growth needs, and found the lessee, the New Jersey–based pharmaceutical firm Merck & Co., Inc., which signed a 75-year ground lease with a 24-year renewal option. Merck agreed to make a $50 million lease payment on its two-acre site in advance, and with the proceeds the college was able to afford to fortify its endowment and redevelop its campus.

“We’ve needed cash forever, and there have been many attempts to convert the excess property,” explains Sister Anne M. Donovan, the college treasurer and chief negotiator. But Emmanuel’s partnership with Corcoran Jennison proved providential. “This deal had a dramatic effect on Emmanuel. It enabled us to do deferred maintenance and new construction so we could have more activities, go coed, and attract more students.”

Despite the singularity of the college’s situation, “We think we went through a process here that other educational institutions can replicate,” says Joseph Corcoran, Sr., chairman of Corcoran Jennison Companies. He says he believes that many schools may want to devise their own version of this deal because “with improved finances, Emmanuel can do great things academically,” he points out.

Emmanuel College sought out Corcoran Jennison to be the first developer of a two-acre parcel of the endowment property in 1995. In exchange, Corcoran Jennison agreed to produce an institutional master plan of the campus. Boston-based architecture and planning firm Goody Clancy & Associates was hired to survey the college’s land and buildings, and to determine how to double the school’s capacity while leaving excess land to lease. After considering several possible development scenarios, Emmanuel College agreed that biotechnology should be pursued. CJ’s first stop was Merck’s New Jersey headquarters.

By 1998, CJ had introduced Merck to Emmanuel College and launched negotiations. The college favored Merck’s goal of conducting basic biomedical research as long as it was compatible with Catholic precepts. “We wanted to help ourselves and [put] the land to a beneficial use,” says Sister Anne, who noted that the college and the company agreed to exercise design review over each other’s new buildings.

For security reasons, Merck does its own facility development; therefore, CJ agreed to change the scope of its work. “We flipped our role from owner/developer of a speculative research lab to development coordinator representing the college, the landowner,” notes Corcoran. Merck paid CJ’s development fee but understood that the developer’s loyalty was to the school. For Corcoran Jennison, the compensation was less but, says its chairman, the satisfaction just as great. “We’re pleased that we could bring a Fortune 500 company to Emmanuel and the city of Boston,” stresses Corcoran.

By 2001, Merck had designed its research building; Corcoran Jennison had presented it to the city, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and the institutional and residential neighbors, and had won approval to build. The city planners and neighbors helped to decide all details, from curb cuts to building materials. After Emmanuel College concluded the deal with Merck and received the $50 million lease prepayment, it then obtained an “investment-grade credit rating and borrowed $40.4 million in the tax-exempt financing market to redevelop [the] campus,” recalls Sister Anne.

“Collaboration between the college and the for-profits was the name of the game,” notes Sister Anne, “and it led to a successful end result.”—Otile McManus, a former reporter at The Boston Globe, and currently director of special projects at Corcoran Jennison Companies in Boston

Urban Land October 2004
© 2004 ULI–the Urban Land Institute, all rights reserved.