$40 Million Luxury Condos Across from Tech Campus

[mrfootball]

Developer plans luxury condominiums aimed at Texas Tech alumni, students

BY CHRIS VAN WAGENEN

A-J BUSINESS EDITOR

After being stripped of more than 50,000 cubic yards of plumbing, electrical wiring, asbestos and other materials, what's left of the 40-year-old University Plaza building is bare concrete.

"If you weren't from around here, you would think this is a big parking garage," said Kurt Lauer, general superintendent for Cage Construction.

Beginning in January, Lauer's company will spend the next eight months converting the 236,000-square-foot building into luxury condominiums for Texas Tech alumni and students.

The $40 million project is a joint venture of Tallahassee, Fla.-based Student Housing Solutions and its partner, Gameday Centers Southeastern LLC.

SHS said it intends to operate 308 condos - 113 of which will be built for Tech alumni and boosters who will make use of them from eight to 12 times a year to attend Tech sporting events and other functions.

The company is talking with a hotel operator to brand the premises so that it can rent the Gameday condos and share the profits with unit owners.

"What we're doing here is beyond a retrofit. This building has been stripped down to the walls so what you'll see in the end is essentially a brand new building," said Dean Minardi, partner-in-charge of the 1001 University Ave. project - dubbed U Lofts Lubbock.

SHS has taken a 180-degree turn since its April announcement to build loft apartments.

Kurt Lauer, general superintendent for Cage, shows where a new pool will go. It is one of two being built for sporting event visitors and students who will occupy the 308-condominium complex that will be operated by Atlanta, Ga.-based Gameday and Student Housing Solutions.

Atlanta-based Gameday Centers, -which has four such facilities with others under development near major universities - originally planned to build its own complex in McDougal Cos. Overton Park, but for whatever reasons backed out.

Minardi said that decision opened a door for U Lofts, which will oversee the alumni condos and the 195 one- and two-bedroom student units which sell at $80,000 to $90,000.

Both will operate as separate properties.

"This (project) has really changed since we started," Minardi said.

U Lofts will feature two pools, a conference center for alumni, a full-size gym, a 60-seat movie theater, concierge service and a 500-slot parking garages.

In addition to the interior, Minardi said the building's entire facade will be getting a makeover, including a tiled roof and other accents that will mirror the architecture at Tech as well as construction now going on in Overton Park.

Wichita Falls-based Cage Construction has literally stripped the former University Plaza building.

In addition, SHS plans to revamp 13,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space that is being marketed by Colwell Banker Commercial/Rick Canup Realtors Inc.

Brady Collier, multi-family specialist with Coldwell Commercial, said SHS's idea is one whose time has come.

"Their partnership with Gameday only helps to diversify the project," he said.

Collier said the decision to operate U Lofts as a "contel" - a condominium-hotel project - also allows the ownership to rent out vacant condominiums as hotel rooms.

"Contels are a new concept that have gone over great in other markets. This product also will come online before any other new hotels in the area open up," he said.

New look

[brijonmang]

WOW! That's what they're turning the Plaza into? Hopefully they will start renovating it soon, because I'm tired of looking at that old gutted building. I live right next door in University Pointe and will next year too, so I guess I'll be able to walk by it everyday as they work on it.