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College Town Blues

Mac

Gold Member
Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
716
Location
Hamilton, NY
My jurisdiction is a rural village of about 2,000 population, with a Colgate University student population about equal. To say that town/gown relations are complex is an understatement.

A CEO from a nearby college town just called asking for help regulating student rental houses in the residential zones of thier village. They can be disruptive to 'family life' and I have a local law I shared with him.

Room & Board rates around here have increased to where landlords can get a far better return on investment renting a house to a group of students than , say, a family of four. And I'm not singling out any one institution either - we have four colleges & universities within 25 miles, and each CEO says the same thing. Heck, my daughter is in her last year of grad school and still hasn't had a dorm room yet!

Bigger cities with bigger colleges have 'university neighborhoods' too. Lots of cities have areas known as "College Town".

Anybody else here working in a similar environment? Wanna swap war stories?
 
Our rentals are handled through Zoning regulations. University with aroud 11K students, there is always a landlord that will ignore zoning and rent out a property to multiple student in a single family zoning district.
 
I've got a college kid house next door over....when they leave the garage door open you can see the hookah......a few in the town I live in...none at work...
 
The Hofstra soccer team just jogged past my office window hooting & cheering - cool.

Lots of places have large facilities, factories, or other major employers, A good thing about colleges is they produce well educated smart (mostly) young people.

I estimate about half of the residents in the village have a family member or friend, employed by or are in some other way connected with the university. From housekeeping & maintenance staff to the super VIP academics & administrators, I find them to be just good folk, easy to talk with and happy with thier lot. In my capacity as CEO, the construction & renovation work on campus is a major focus of my time. The building projects tend to be interesting and challenging, with lots of oversight and review, engineering & planning. Sometimes they have to make code required corrections, which are dealt with quickly & professionally by a construction team of about 10 people.

And the students, oh... And the Alumni, double oh!
 
In my opinion, the best way to handle this sort of issue is by licensing rental properties - it is also the most difficult to get adopted. However, it provides a clear set of incentives and deterrents regarding tenant management by the landlord, provides a basis for inspection of properties, and due process for dealing with problems related to quality of life. I've seen approaches based on definitions of "family" but I suspect they would be problematic in a State like New York. I will add that zoning in a small town is probably the worst approach to solving this type of issue because the activity is distributed throughout the community and influential residents are involved.
 
Municipal licensing of rental properties has gained momentum in the region lately. Another village next county over has a proposed law currently under consideration.

We use a Group Residence special use permit to license student houses with three or more unrelated persons. Each house (there are 35) gets an annual inspection, and an approval by the Planning Board, which reviews complaints, police responses, etc. It works here pretty well, but it's a small town.

There's also Fraternity Row, sixteen big houses on Main St. Some have up to 35 sleeping rooms, and the smallest has 5 sleeping rooms. All have commercial kitchens. A few years ago they were all (except one lone holdout) sold to the college, so now there is college staff in them, cooking, cleaning, etc. I'm told conditions are a lot better than in times past.

Downtown there are only a couple bars catering to students. Also lots of food service, I'm looking at eight restaurants, two coffee shops, and a few more furher up main St. Oh yes, and a chocolate/sweet shop.
 
I live in the metro area of a giant state research university, whose on-campus residence halls have been so gentrified that they have become "prestige" addresses, only affordable to those with big bucks or those foolish enough to borrow living expenses.

The host city/county has the usual neighborhood issues with town/gown conflicts over ruination or preservation of neighborhoods. On paper there are not supposed to be more than two unrelated people in a dwelling in a SFD zone, but one mayor who tried to require registration of rental properties got it shoved right back in the face.

OTH my own daughter successfully lived in an SFD hood with three room mates, but they were well behaved and courteous enough to not get busted.
 
The local zoning has long-standing provisions meant to keep on campus activities on the campus. They don't want classes held in downtown buildings, for example, in an effort to keep town & gown separate.

Now the gowns are considering relocating a (currently on campus) art museum into a downtown building. Needles to say, tongues are wagging and sides are being chosen. So far, I am maintaining my professional neutrality.

Anyone have an experience with this? Please feel free to share!
 
Mac,

My experiences with the colleges moving things like museums etc. into the downtown area has been good. My two longest hitches with cities have been in college towns. In both cases, when a museum or similar use was moved to or taken over by college in an old downtown area, it was great. Buildings that had been marginal as far as making any money or in maintenance, got a face lift and were kept up better. In these cases, it didn't really matter if the building made money, their were donations and endowments to keep the building looking good, and safe. In both cases the City and the college had discussions about the moves and the way things were. It even turned out that the college buildings were draws to the businesses in the area. People came to the college building and stayed for lunch or shopped the stores in the area. And if you have an old dying downtown, another 20 customers a day can make a big difference to an area that the profit margins are small.

My experience has been to get a dialogue started and make sure folks from the city and the college meet and talk on a regular basis. We started having lunch once a month with the vice president of administration just to keep up on what the college was planning and what could be done to improve the town/gown relationship.

We found that by working together our goals became common goals, and a lot of that town/gown feud that had went on for years stopped. A college is a great asset for a community, if some cooperation is there.
 
There is a private university on the edge of our jurisdiction in old money area of the county.

Had a call a number of years ago from an out of town student from NY that wanted a "noise permit."

He was renting a house in said nice neighborhood and every weekend when he had 60-80 of his fraternity buddies and their friends over the neighbors would call the cops at 10 pm (when noise ordinance kicks in) and they would break up the party. He wanted a "noise permit" so that he could show it to the cops and keep on partying over the neighbor's objections.

Had a hard time convincing him --

A--That there was no such thing here even though he claimed they had them up there.

and

B--Even if we did have such a thing there was no way the county would give an out of town college student a permit to annoy the long established well to do neighbors.

He claimed to be a political science major--lol he had alot to learn.
 
About eight years ago Colgate began the "Hamilton Iniative". An arms length development company was formed to buy and renovate and manage some down town properties. Now the Initiative owns several of the best looking buildings. All have undergone extensive work including fire alarms & sprinkler installs, exit stairs and so on. The upper floors are mostly CU non academic offices, with storefronts and services on the street level. The Palace Theater has live entertainment (Capitol Steps soon) and hosts other events. The CU Bookstore is a major tenant. I sometimes brag that the village commercial spaces are 100% occupied.

The difference with the museum/gallery is that it is also a teaching facility. It is viewed (by some) as an extension of the campus.

Thankfully, it is not my decision to make. The Planning Board and the Trustees will determine that, and I will administer their rulings.

See the live webcam view here:www.colgate.edu/news/webcams It's a nice view of hte park, my office is just out of sight to the left.
 
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