News

Student Housing Financing by CHF for Illinois State and Northern Illinois Highlighted

April 17, 2011
By Edith Brady-Lunny
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When Illinois State University breaks ground on its new student housing project, two private sector partners will be on board to oversee financing and construction of the $59.6 million project.

The university is working with Collegiate Housing Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Alabama that secures loans and developers for campus housing projects. Since its founding in 1996, CHF has completed more than 30 residential projects for colleges and universities.

[CHF will be working with] American Campus Communities to develop the ISU project. The two organizations have worked together before, including on two housing complexes at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and a 720-unit complex built in 2008 at the University of California-Irvine.

NIU will put the first shovel in the dirt on Monday for a 96-unit, $132 million project. In 2006, the university worked with CHF […] to build the 120-unit Northern View Apartments. The cooperative arrangement couldn’t have gone better, according to NIU spokesman Brad Hoey.

“The partnership worked out extremely well for NIU and our campus community. In this era of economic difficulty, it makes a lot of sense,” said Hoey, adding that ISU officials consulted with NIU before making a decision on how to finance and build the Cardinal Court project.

For its part, Collegiate Housing Foundation is looking forward to working with the two Illinois universities.

“We’re happy to be in a position to help ISU and NIU with what we do — assist college and universities with student housing,” said Will Givhan, general counsel for CHF.

American Campus Communities owns and operates student housing properties in 20 states. The publicly-traded company operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT), a corporation that owns and manages a portfolio of properties and mortgages.