ACC/NU Residence Hall | 840 Columbus Ave | Northeastern University

JumboBuc said:
Is on-campus housing the limiting factor for admissions?
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TomOfBoston said:
No. Northeastern has become highly selective in the past decade. The low acceptance rate and high stats of entering students is a major selling point in the current admissions race among colleges. More selective, higher ranking.
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Another constraint is academic space (classrooms + labs). The principal finding/goal from the Institutional Master Plan 8 years ago was the desire to add 2 million+ square feet of academic space. ISEC & EXP are critical components to accomplishing that goal, and the partnership with ACC to have a net increase of on-campus beds north of the original 1,000 new beds goal will allow the University to demo existing campus buildings past their useful life (Burstein & Rubenstein Halls) for additional academic space (my guess is for Khoury College of Computer Sciences).
 
The number of beds in on-campus housing is a limiting enrollment factor when a university expects undergraduates to spend all four years living in on-campus housing, e.g., Harvard.

In decades past, a university would often guarantee, for example, only two years of on-campus housing. This resulted in a significant percentage of the students migrating to off-campus housing, to the great consternation of city officials. Students were displacing city residents, reducing the available housing stock, and driving up rents.

Thus, the initiative by the city of Boston to have universities within the city build and operate more residence halls, greatly reduce this off-campus migration, and free up housing stock..

A different example is Georgetown University in DC. With little land available to build sufficient residence halls to house most of its students on-campus,, the university entered into an agreement with the District government that caps its undergraduate enrollment.
 
Yet another example of how metro Boston is absolutely crippled by a lack of a regional planning authority. The great commonality between Harvard, BC, Northeastern, MIT, of course, other than their sheer proximity, astronomical tuition, highly-selective nature, rampant growth, endless battles over PILOT fees, and status as practical city-state empires/fiefdoms, is that they are chronically embroiled in town/gown disputes--but in several different municipalities (Boston, Cambridge, Newton, Nahant, Burlington) with their own separate planning/zoning boards. A regional authority dedicated just to this kind of town/gown stuff might work wonders... but god forbid we ever cede an ounce of our precious Norman Rockwell-esque home rule...
 
Why on earth would the Boston Socialist Alternative use Dianne Wilkerson as a spokesperson for their movement? Is this not the same state senator who was arrested by the FBI for corruption and spent three years in prison?

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shmorkin said:
Why on earth would the Boston Socialist Alternative use Dianne Wilkerson as a spokesperson for their movement? Is this not the same state senator who was arrested by the FBI for corruption and spent three years in prison?

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Because she is now suddenly concerned about her community instead of her bank account.
 
124000 feet of academic space seems like a lot. I wonder if Northeastern will leverage the new space so they can redevelop the forsyth building or cargill hall
 
shmorkin said:
124000 feet of academic space seems like a lot. I wonder if Northeastern will leverage the new space so they can redevelop the forsyth building or cargill hall
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I hope so. In my day the Forsyth Building was an ugly building on the edge of a drab campus. Now it is an ugly building squat in the middle of a beautiful campus.
 
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I thought the project died. It's been so long since we heard anything about this project.
 
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There is a crane on the plot of land now. Hard to tell if it’s for Renaissance Park or 840 Columbus, though.
 
TomOfBoston said:
Did anyone attend and could report?
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Half an hour of waffle about the new restaurant at LightView and the commitments to disadvantaged businesses in 840 followed by a single slide about the dorm densification (posted in the IMP thread) and that was the entire meeting. No new renderings or updates on the status of 840 that I saw. All the public comments and conversation was about the dorm densification proposal.
 

"840 Columbus Avenue is a proposed project that would be a combination student housing and 5 floors of university space. This is next to Renaissance parking garage. Currently delayed due to the changing Boston political landscape with a new mayor."

Has mayor Wu come out against this project? you would think with NU being over-enrolled that the city would approve this already. The school needs more housing
 
Looks like the project was held up by Wu but they’re restarting the process:

“840 Columbus Ave, which will hold 800 student beds and five stories of academic space when opened, is restarting its permitting process after delays with the city.

“[The project’s been] tied up in city politics and the transition to a new mayoral administration, [and] there’s been a general slowdown of new projects getting approved,” Nedell said. “[There’s] still a long way to go before [we] actually [get a] shovel in the ground.” (source)

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