Private Developer Built Georgia State’s Newest Dorm
Georgia State University’s newest dormitory on Piedmont and John Wesley Dobbs Avenue is called Piedmont Central.
It’s the first dorm at Georgia State University to be built under a new public-private partnership.
The University System of Georgia has accumulated billions of dollars in debt trying to keep up with student housing demand.
So in 2014, it asked voters if they would be willing to amend the state constitution so private developers could build student housing facilities.
In return, developers can collect rent money from students and maintenance fees from participating schools. They would also be exempt from local property taxes.
Georgia State University President Mark Becker says long-term lease agreements without property taxes means developers can charge rent comparable to other campus housing.
“If the university would have had to build it, we would have had to take out debt to do that, so there wouldn’t have been a quote-unquote profit to be made,” Becker said.
Becker said private developers take on the financing and management of the facility and are also able to build facilities faster with less bureaucracy.
“For the students, it’s seamless,” Becker said. “It’s a Georgia State facility as far as their experience goes. It’s our dining services running the dining hall, our resident advisers, our policies, our practices. So it’s really a win-win because we’re not encumbering any debt, yet students are getting state-of-the-art facilities at an attractive price.”
Piedmont Central dorms, which will be used for freshman housing, will cost between $2,675 and $3,650 per semester. On-campus student housing rates range from $2,380 to $5,583 per semester.
The new dorm, built by Corvias Campus Living, will house 1,152 students this fall, bringing the total number of Georgia State University beds available to about 5,000.
Becker said there are no plans to build more student housing right now.
“We’re now at 20 percent of the size of our undergraduate student body and that’s been our target,” Becker said. “This is where we’re holding for the time being. We’ll assess where the demand is after this opens. If we start to build up a substantial waiting list again, we’ll evaluate, but there’s nothing in the works at this point.”
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