Landlocked Peace University plans to add residence halls, academic buildings. Here’s how.

William Peace University, hemmed in by premium land prices and a rapidly growing downtown, is making plans to accommodate the students it hopes to attract by making better use of its campus instead of spreading out.

The university has just completed a master plan that envisions new on-campus residence halls, academic buildings and retail, and connections to surrounding neighborhoods.

“Our location is one of the things we love most about the university and being in downtown Raleigh,” said Kristin Cohen, vice president for enrollment management and marketing. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for our students and our faculty and our staff to be engaged in a vibrant, metropolitan area with lots and lots of opportunities.”

That doesn’t include expanding outside its 19 acres at the northern end of downtown Raleigh into the adjacent Seaboard Station retail center, some of which the university owns as investment property. But Cohen doesn’t rule the possibility out.

Cohen said separating the master plan from Seaboard gives the retail center more flexibility. She said if it turns out that some of the property is available for student housing or academics, then another master plan could be written to accommodate that option. If there isn’t enough real estate there, then the university can proceed with its master plan.

TradeMark Properties, which is the management and leasing agent for the Shops at Seaboard Station, is still planning for a project that includes a Harris Teeter grocery store, additional retail and multifamily housing. A previous consideration to build dormitories for 300 students as part of a mixed-used project at Seaboard is not part of the university’s plans, TradeMark CEO Billie Redmond said.

Reassuring neighbors

When the university bought Seaboard Station in a bankruptcy sale in 2013, some tenants and neighbors in the nearby Mordecai and Oakwood communities were concerned that growth would force Peace to take over the retail center for dormitories, student parking or athletic fields.

A lot of development is occurring in the area around Peace Street and Capitol Boulevard, and the university wants to tie that in with downtown destinations and the neighborhoods through walkways, Cohen said.

“The master plan is very intentional about helping our neighbors have access to different parts of downtown Raleigh,” Cohen said. “We’re really excited our neighbors are seeing that and are excited about being able to use our campus, walk through it, take advantage of some of the ambiance and maybe some of the other retail options here.”

Small private colleges across the country are struggling financially as they look for income from tuition. Market Watch reports that about one-third of them – defined by Moody’s Investor Service as those with operating expenses of less than $100 million – ran deficits last year, which was up from 20 percent three years ago. A recent report by the Council of Independent Colleges found that colleges with fewer than1,000 students have had consistently weaker financial performance than larger institutions.

In part, Peace is banking on returns from its Seaboard investment, which amounted to taking $10.75 million from its endowment fund and borrowing $10 million using the retail center as collateral.

Increasing enrollment

Peace also hopes to bring in more revenue by increasing its enrollment from about 1,000 to 1,500 students over the next five years. It would like to add graduate programs at some point.

To handle that growth, the university is planning for two new residence halls. On-campus housing is currently full. There are students living off-campus in university-leased housing, and Peace wants to move as many of them as possible into residence halls.

Academic buildings are also full, Cohen said, which is a roadblock to expanding the kind of learning Peace has in mind: moving away from lectures to hands-on, group exercises in specialized classrooms.

Making room for expansion will require moving field sports off the campus. A site to handle those has not yet been found, but it is unlikely to be adjacent to the campus, Cohen said.

The campus softball field is the proposed site for a residence hall, parking garage and retail. Softball and tennis are the only field sports the university hosts. Soccer, baseball and lacrosse teams play on fields in Raleigh and Cary.

Building walkways from Person Street to Seaboard Station is one of the plans for drawing visitors to campus and encouraging foot traffic into downtown, which has exploded with restaurants, bars and stores.

Cohen said it is too soon to know how much the plans will cost.

This story was originally published December 15, 2017 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Landlocked Peace University plans to add residence halls, academic buildings. Here’s how.."