January 30, 2018

WITN: Board Approves Proposal for Another Student Housing Development in Greenville

GREENVILLE, NC (WITN) The proposal to build another new student housing facility within Greenville that would completely replace one neighborhood in the city, was approved Thursday night at a local government meeting. The vote by the Board of Adjustment was unanimous.

The special use permit brought before the Greenville Board of Adjustment would turn the current Glenn Arthur neighborhood near 14th street into a student-housing complex complete with 800 beds, a parking garage, and room for retail space.
Throughout the hearing, representatives from Dewitt Carolinas, the Raleigh development firm behind the project, presented testimony on the project.

Company president Everett Daniels, an ECU alum himself, spoke about building something near his alma-mater. Daniels says, “It’s very rare I get the opportunity to personally want to put my own touch and guaranteed quality on a development, and that’s something we get to do here.”

But for some members of the board, the project brings along with it several concerns, including the student housing market saturation and increased pedestrian traffic, especially along the notoriously busy and dangerous 14th St. and Charles Blvd. intersection.

Board of Adjustment member Ann Hills says, “They’re going to cross that street like a bunch of chickens. We’ve been dealing with students for over 30-years and they cross where it’s convenient whether a car is there or not, so it’s the students we need to worry about.”

The discussion comes just after a study was done for the Greenville City Council assessing the market for student housing in the city. It found that the overall estimated vacancy rate of off-campus student housing is currently 11.6 percent or 1,276 empty bedrooms. Throughout the city there are already four student-targeted communities currently being constructed and scheduled to be constructed between 2018 and 2019 that will increase the supply of bedrooms by nearly 2,000.