“Mazza Grandmarc” Student Housing Project Languishes
After significant digging this is the information we have come up with:
The Mazza Grandmarc is a proposed four to five story 231-unit (630 bedroom) student housing project (here) that received preliminary approval in November 2004 and final approval from the PG County Planning Commission in May 2006. It would have been exclusively reserved for UMD graduate students with undergrads filling any vacant beds. County Councilman Dernoga (in who’s district the project would reside) exercised his right (in late May 2006) to have the project reviewed before the County Council and as yet the case has gone unheard. The project would be located in North College Park, provide a bike path to the Paint Branch Trail, convey 6.5 acres of parkland to the county, and would contract with Shuttle UM to bring students to the university. It also contains retail that fronts Route 1.
Mr. Dernoga is barred by a county rule from talking with us, since he may eventually hear/vote on the case. From what we can surmise, Mr. Dernoga disagrees that the developer should be eligible for a $1.7 million fee waiver ($7,000 per unit) that student housing within 3 1.5 miles of the university is legally eligible for. The principle behind the impact fee waiver is that since student housing (for university students) doesn’t burden the local public school system (few student have children), student renters shouldn’t have to foot the bill for local public school construction. This fee waiver is apparently essential for the financing of the project.
The City of College Park, the North College Park Citizens Association, and the university are all in support of the project. As we’ve reported in the past, UMD lags far behind its peer institutions in terms of graduate housing and the City of College Park has had real difficultly in holding on to graduate students. UMD maintains a private partnership with Southern Management Company that guarantees 476 units (740 bedrooms) in Graduate Gardens and Graduate Hills for Graduate students and their families. While the Mazza Grandmarc project will not be “University-Provided Housing” it will nearly double the amount of beds guaranteed to UMD grad students.
The following is from an extensive report that examines the dearth of guaranteed graduate student housing in College Park:
Rarely will we take a strong editorial stance on a project. In this instance we must: Any further delay of this project by the County Council is absolutely unacceptable and completely at odds with College Park’s aspirations to be a vibrant, dynamic city.
Read the Mazza Grandmarc:
Click here to view our interactive project map
February 14th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
I looked at the report on grad student housing. One of the points made was that ‘very low income families-, defined as those with incomes below $41,400 would have a hard time paying for housing in this area. ()The report is several years old so I’m sure the figure is higher now. The report says that grad students fall into this category.
You elitists may not be aware that regular people have the same problems. Who is going to benefit from all of the development that you say is needed to make College Park a real college town ? Do you even think about the thousands of employees on the campus who make less that $41,000? Graduate students will be here for a few years and then move on. What about the other people who live here.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Please let me provide a couple of facts about graduate student stipends and the role of graduate students in the community.
Graduate students who are lucky have an assistantship. The lowest-paying assistantships are about $12K, with the highest being about $20K. I do not know how this compares to the average staff salary at UMCP, but it is improper to imply that graduate students make anywhere near $41K.
The University of Md. needs graduate students to do the majority of the teaching and research work. They do this work at cut-rate in order to receive the benefit of an advanced degree and a foot in the door for a better job. Many of these students are PhD candidates who stay in the community for 5 - 8 years, and many stay in the DC area for a job afterwards. Grads are, very often, good tenants, good neighbors and good citizens. They are a vital part of the college town that is College Park, and they deserve decent, affordable housing.
April 25th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I don’t agree with providing a waiver for developers on these projects. I hear your point David (here and in your op-ed piece), but the same argument can be made (and often is…) for other development projects as well. Why should development residential development targeted at seniors have to pay the fee, when none of those seniors is going to be having kids? Why should an large industrial project with very few employees have to pay, if those employees are at most going to add just a handful of kids? The answer is that that is just the way these things work. You mentioned that you don’t plan to stay in CP after graduation (please reconsider–you’re a great member of the community right now!). Well, wherever you go, should you decide to have kids, there probably is a school … that someone else already paid for. (Maybe some unfortunately grad student at that…). In fact, if your are like many Americans, you may well choose where to live based on the quality of existing schools .. that someone else already paid for. These developers have the money to pay this fee, believe me; I know a lot of them. They just want to avoid if they can, in the same the way that they want to get a good price on sheetrock if they can. Don’t take their arguments too much to heart. Some (not most) of the fee will be passed on to students (some portion will be borne by the developers, and all of it will be amortized; remember micro), so this will raise rental prices, but not much. Perhaps not as much as those bricks…