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Local private schools are pouring big bucks into bricks and mortar
By Sara Withee
Special to the Worcester Business Journal
"Students are looking for that suite-style apartment experience and if you're not offering that, they're going to look elsewhere," said Tom Ryan, vice president for institutional advancement at Assumption College, which saw $70 million in construction since 1998.
Nationally, colleges have generally been building bigger and better for years to keep pace, a trend Mark Bilotta, president of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium, says prospective students drive as they compare schools. Bilotta predicts double beds are the next standard in college dorms, though he has already seen a Jacuzzi at one school.
"It's the old 'Keeping up with the Jones' mentality," Bilotta said. "It's really that simple."
But construction crews are digging especially hard right now at local private colleges, as population shifts south and west and New England starts losing public high school graduates. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education predicts the number will peak this year, dropping in 2008-2009 as Massachusetts and Conn-ecticut - which have the most high school graduates - start graduating fewer students.
Massachusetts will see public high school graduates decrease 6.4 percent overall between 2003 and 2016 while Rhode Island will lose 6.1 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the data arm for the U.S. Department of Education. Connecticut will actually post a slight increase of 1.7 percent, a gain overshadowed by Vermont and Maine, which respectively are projected to lose 21.7 and 18.7 percent.
"Basically, if we're talking about shrinking demographics, I think the people who are probably going to be the hardest hit are some of the smaller privates and some of the publics," said Michael K. Thomas, senior vice president at the New England Board of Higher Education and a trustee at Worcester State College.
Worcester has some of New England's smallest public and private colleges, with all 13 local schools in the Colleges of Worcester Consortium collectively representing just over 30,000 students - about the same number as Boston University alone.
Assumption, The College of the Holy Cross and Clark University in Worcester have all spent millions transforming their campuses over recent years with new academic buildings, large stadiums and upperclassmen apartments. Clark's new student apartments opened last fall while Nichols College in Dudley and Worcester Polytechnic Institute will both open new student apartments in fall 2008.
WPI is building Worcester's most expensive apartment complex yet, $45 million for a 232-student residence hall and a 189-space parking garage.
The complex between Boynton and Dean streets is designed to meet Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) certification standards. Plants will be grown on the roof to block the sun and lower heating costs and bikes will be encouraged with special storage areas, said Janet Begin Richardson, vice president for Student Affairs and Campus Life.
WPI hopes to motivate upperclassmen who have left campus to return, said Richardson, with the building's fitness center, technology suites and music rooms. A restaurant and convenience store will be built at nearby Founders Hall.
"It's a different generation of kids," Richardson added. "Most of these kids have cars and most of them have had their own bedrooms growing up. They want to kind of be taken care of, so that's what schools are building to bring that leadership back."
WPI also recently opened its $43 million Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center and $11 million garage last September, part of the 12-acre Gateway Park complex the engineering school is jointly developing with the Worcester Business Development Corp.
If the new structure and those to come aren't enough to attract incoming students, the researchers who start arriving next fall to use it will, Hurd said. "When you have world-class facilities, you're able to attract world-class faculty."
Holy Cross is also building big for science, breaking ground last fall on a new $60 million Integrated Science Complex, with 44,000 square feet of new lab space. The existing science building will be rebuilt inside and attached to the new labs.
Designed to promote collaboration between pre-medical, chemistry and psychology students, the four-story complex will feature a glass atrium with a fountain, glass walls looking into classrooms and a common dining area, said Professor Charles Weiss, director of the Holy Cross office of grants and corporate and foundation giving.
Holy Cross officials want high school students on campus tours to take home visual images of the science programs through the glass walls, same as they do the residence halls or the school's swimming pool, Weiss said. Because of safety regulations and the 1959 design of the existing science building, prospective students only get to see white hallway now.
"When a student walks down the hall, we want to get them excited about all that's going on," Weiss said.
Anna Maria College in Paxton and Becker College in Worcester and Leicester are also hard at work. Becker College recently launched a $7.5 million capital campaign to boost its endowment, build a wellness center and upgrade the Borger Academic Center in Leicester.
Drawing about 85 percent of its 1,300 students from Massachusetts, Anna Maria College may be especially vulnerable to the upcoming student drop and is implementing its largest program expansion ever to increase enrollment to 3,115 by 2012.
"It's a great institution that's ready to move in these directions," said President Jack Calareso, who joined the school last July.
The college's "Vision 2012" plan calls for new academic programs, Calareso said. Locally, the school hopes to reach more non-traditional students by opening a Worcester satellite location and adding new master's programs like nursing.
With just two residence halls and 430 beds, the school is building housing as fast as it can. The $3 million Coughlin Hall expansion created 44 new beds last fall, but the school still had to turn away students looking for campus housing.
A new modular residence hall will create 100 new beds next fall while a 200-student dorm will be built on campus and open in fall 2009.
Anna Maria's Fuller Activities Center is also undergoing a $2 million expansion.
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