What's in the works is University Square, a 13-story building that will house an estimated 600 students on a university-owned site, currently used as a parking lot, located at University and Central avenues adjacent to this city's Downtown area. The project will also bring a new retail component to this part of the city--University Square will include a ground floor complement of shops and restaurants.

Construction is expected to start sometime this summer, and university officials are targeting late 2005 for completion. More detailed plans, including architectural rendering, will be released soon, according to university officials.

Partnering with Keating Development are Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, and the New Brunswick Development Corp. Devco, as the latter is called, is involved in the project because the City of New Brunswick, located about 30 miles to the south of here, is the home campus for the statewide university system. Rutgers-Newark's portion of the 50,000-student university system is approximately 10,000 students.

Under the terms of the agreement, which were released at a meeting of the university's board of governors, held at the Rutgers-Newark campus, the university will lease the site to Keating and Devco, which will jointly develop and own the building. Keating's construction subsidiary will be the general contractor.

Once the facility is completed, Keating and Devco will lease the building back to the university. A portion of the student fees collected from residents of the building will be used to ultimately pay for its construction, according to university officials, who say the project is the start of a number of public/private partnerships they hope to forge to meet the institution's ongoing expansion requirements.

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Partnership Will Develop $50M Student Housing Project

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