NMU Students, Faculty and Staff,

One common question for colleges and universities, large and small, is what to do with aging facilities? It's an ongoing challenge, especially at an institution that has been around for approximately 117 years. In Northern's case, we've been concerned about our residence halls for a while. As discussions took place over the past several years about how to upgrade our halls, some primary goals developed: 1) to modernize our living spaces but still keep costs affordable for students and their families; 2) to bring more academic components into the halls, creating dynamic living-learning spaces that are accessible to all students; 3) to bring on-campus housing physically closer to the academic mall; 4) to create an interconnected walkway that helps students avoid the cold in the winter, including Quad II and commuter students. This "main street" design also allows for more small-group student meeting space throughout the walkway; 5) retain the "house" concept that is so important to the current and past students who have lived in the residence halls; and 6) if possible, to keep the current residence hall dining facility – the Marketplace – and save $10-$12 million in construction. The direction we are taking regarding new housing has been most impacted by these goals. The proposal we plan to bring to the NMU Board of Trustees on April 28-29 regarding a new residence hall complex addresses each of these. What follows is a detailed summary of the proposal's components.

A Public-Private Partnership
Residence halls are not the sole reason that students choose a university, but national research indicates that they are often one of the factors in choosing a school. Like many colleges and universities, our residence halls are showing signs of their age and their infrastructures are struggling. From 2005-08, we renovated the Quad II residence halls – Magers, Meyland, Hunt and VanAntwerp – and then began planning for the Quad I renovation. The Quad I halls – Gant, Spalding, Payne and Halverson – were built in the mid-1960s and still have their original ceilings, flooring, electrical and mechanical systems, the latter which are not energy efficient. While we pushed back addressing the Quad I situation for a period to explore renovation/construction and financing options, one thing that was never an option was doing nothing. The longer we put off a Quad I solution, the more expensive it becomes for the students who live in Northern's residence halls. A significant investment was necessary at this time no matter which direction was to be taken.

Public-private partnerships with development companies that specialize in university housing have become a very popular trend across the nation because they enable schools to modernize their housing without taking on significant debt. It is the option we're pursuing now. If the proposed partnership and project are approved by the NMU board, our new residence hall complex will comprise of six 4-story halls that provide 1,229 beds – about the same as what Quad I does now. The room types will include doubles, semi-private doubles and single options and the halls will maintain their current "house" model.

Our project (if approved) will be done in two phases with Payne Hall being demolished this spring, Halverson next spring or summer, and Gant and Spalding in spring and summer 2018. Two of the new halls would open for fall 2017, two more in January 2018 and the final two halls in fall 2018. The complex will have interconnected buildings to provide an interior path through the residence halls into the academic mall. It will also include a living-learning focus, with more open gathering spaces than our current facilities, along with two academic classrooms and the opportunity for student service areas.

Approval of the type of partnership being proposed means Northern will continue to own the land, buildings and furnishings. The university will be responsible for the daily operations, continuing to hire resident directors and advisers. Northern will also be responsible for food services that support the complex. The development company will pay to build the facilities and maintain them in exchange for a portion of the room revenues. The company hires its own custodial employees as part of facility maintenance, meaning 3-4 current NMU custodial positions would be displaced. However, we believe that we will be able to place those current workers in other areas of the campus through natural attrition.

The Financing
Housing and Residence Life operations are auxiliary services, meaning no tuition dollars or state funding can be used to renovate the residence halls and they don't qualify for state capital outlay funding. All auxiliary services are self-supported through the revenue they receive from those who use their services.

Currently, Housing and Residence Life only has $1.5 million per building to renovate Quad I or build a replacement facility. In looking at how to fund a Quad I renovation, one option was to use solely the funding Housing and Residence Life had available, which would have been enough to replace some the infrastructure including roofs and windows of the halls but not much else.

Renovating the entire facility similar to Quad 2 would require the university to issue bonds and a resulting increase in student rents similar to the public private partnership project that would build us a new facility. Public-private partnership deals are able to finance new construction projects for longer time periods than the university, thus reducing annual costs. Issuing bonds for renovation would have left no potential bond dollars available for future academic and university capital projects.

In the public-private partnership model, our chosen development partner, EdR, Inc., will invest $80 million to build the new residence hall complex. One might ask why companies put that kind of funding into a facility they will never own and the answer is that it provides them with a guaranteed revenue stream over a long period of time. We've also been asked about rates. They will not go up any more than what they would have risen if Northern had renovated or constructed the halls on its own, and they may be lower.

Who is EdR Inc.? How will the partnership work?
EdR has been considered a national leader in collegiate housing since 1964. It was one of six companies to respond to Northern's original request for qualifications (RFQ) and one of three who completed NMU's request for proposals (RFP). EdR was chosen from the trio of RFP firms for a number of reasons, including its extensive experience in university public-private housing partnership; its willingness to work with Northern students, faculty and staff on creating living-learning communities that represented the university well (the other two firms took more of a cookie-cutter approach); its willingness to allow Northern to retain its house model; and its emphasis on LEED certification design. One of the other things EdR brought to the table was in-depth, current and national research regarding university student housing needs, desires, trends and usage. It also had a proven model for the concept-to-design phase. EdR used their existing research as a foundation for the feedback charrettes held on campus, which more than 1,000 students attended.

In the last month, NMU representatives visited the new EdR residence halls at the University of Kentucky and we impressed with what we saw. Not only were the living spaces modern, but they incorporated learning aspects into the living areas really well. We also had a chance to speak with student residents and they clearly loved their new living-learning communities. Administrators there feel the new halls played a key role in Kentucky's transformational change from a traditional computer campus to a thriving and growing residential university.

Also, EdR has hired Detroit-based Neuman/Smith as the architectural firm and Walbridge for construction for the project, if it is approved. If Neuman/Smith sounds familiar it was the firm that did Jamrich Hall and it has worked on other campus projects in the past. EdR, Neumann-Smith and Walbridge are committed to hiring local talent for the project and paying prevailing wages, which will provide many good jobs for our family members, neighbors and friends.

Project Timeline
Northern will be working to finalize the details of the partnership contract. If the board approves the contract, two parts of the project will begin May 5: the decommissioning process for Payne Hall and the relocation of utilities for the construction site. The utilities relocation and general site preparation will need to be done by June 5, which is when construction will begin for the two most southern-located of the new halls, the ones that will be operational for fall 2017.The demolition of Payne would need to be completed and the site backfilled by the end of July so that site preparation could begin and footings laid for the two centrally located buildings. Those two buildings would open in January. Halverson would come down in the summer of 2017. The two remaining buildings will begin construction summer 2017 and be completed by August 2018. Gant and Spalding will come down in the summer 2018. It's an aggressive timeline, but one we hope will cause the least amount of disruption for students and our Housing and Residence Life, Admissions and Grounds staff. We don't want delays as that increases the cost of construction– as much as 10 percent for any significant delays – which increases the cost to our students.

Placement of the NMU Complex
Dozens of options were explored regarding the exact location of NMU's new residence hall complex. Ultimately, it was infrastructure, relationship and proximity to existing buildings and cost that determined the site. For instance, it was prohibitive to move the long steam and condensate lines that run from the LRC toward Quad II and it would be enormously expensive to reroute roads or parking lots (ie. one surface parking lot space = $2,500). Additionally we had to consider topography and the engineering aspects that are impacted by things such as hills. Another question that impacted location was whether to build a new dining facility. To do so was estimated to cost NMU $10-12 million, which we decided was an expense we didn't want to have to pass onto our students through higher food service rates. Also only 300 beds can be taken offline at a time to ensure sufficient capacity remained to house our students, so the complex had to move south to be out of the footprint of Halverson Hall. It's hard to describe all of the many, many options considered regarding placement, layout and style of the complex, but it's accurate to say that infrastructure played a big role in the building location decision, as did being able to achieve the six goals outlined earlier.

Sustainability Efforts
The new housing project will incorporate many sustainability aspects that support Northern's environmental core value. The plans for the new complex are designed to achieve LEED Silver Certification. If obtained, it would be NMU's seventh LEED certified and third Silver Certified construction/renovation project. Northern became involved in LEED Building Sustainability efforts as a member of the U.S. Green Building Council in 2004, 17 years ago, and obtained the first LEED Silver certification in the Upper Peninsula with the VanAntwerp Hall renovation. We remain committed to LEED construction efforts and plan for the new residence hall complex to achieve energy efficiency through high-performance mechanical, electrical, plumbing and building envelope systems.

Outdoor Learning Area
Unfortunately, the new residence hall complex construction will impact a portion of the Outdoor Learning Area (OLA). We worked very hard to find ways to not do so, including rejecting some early conceptual proposals that consumed the entire OLA and twisting parts of facilities to keep it from consuming more of the OLA. However, because we cannot accommodate taking down both Payne and Halverson at the same time due the number of beds we need for students this fall, 15-20 percent of the OLA's planting area (upland area) will be impacted by the construction. About two weeks ago, the group working on this project had to finally concede that there was no logistically feasible and affordable construction footprint with zero impact on the OLA and we immediately took that information to the Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Department, which oversees the OLA. Areas near New Science and West Science were identified as potential new OLA spaces for the lost area. We know that transplanting whatever plants can be moved is not ideal, but the end result will be an expanded OLA. We remain committed to such a learning space and we're pleased that students from EEGS and other departments will be involved in the learning experience of developing the new OLA areas.

The retention pond that will be eliminated was originally created by NMU to collect all of the storm water from Parking Lot 36. This retention pond was designated as a future development for the project site with chipped paths, observation decks and a lot of additional planting. However, this site has not yet been developed as planned. We understand that the pond may be utilized for water testing, but the turf area around the pond it still irrigated, mowed and maintained by the NMU Grounds staff. We are willing to recreate a retention pond in another location, if this is what the faculty who use the Outdoor Learning Area would like us to do so. Over the years, Northern has invested considerable staff time and money in the Outdoor Learning Area. We remain committed to such a learning space.

Conclusion – Opportunities
If the board approves the contract, construction will rapidly begin, but there are many decisions yet to be made that will impact the overall personality, climate and vitality of the complex. Things like how to best incorporate more academic opportunities into the halls, what other sustainability opportunities will be available surrounding the complex, and what type of inclusion and diversity opportunities we can explore. We hope for campus-wide participation in these discussions. We'll also be sharing detailed architectural renderings with the campus community as they become available.

Before closing, we want to thank those NMU employees (you know who you are) who have already put in hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work on this project. Our initial goal was and remains modern, affordable housing with dynamic living-learning opportunities for our students, and we're on target to making that happen.

Sincerely,
Fritz Erickson, President
Gavin Leach, Vice President, Finance and Administration
Kerri Schuiling, Provost and Vice President, Academic Affairs
Steve VandenAvond, Vice President, Extended Learning and Community Engagement