Expansion Would Keep QU Kids On Campus

A new 417-bed residence hall, school of business, and auditorium-laboratory complex on Quinnipiac University’s Northern Hamden campus should mean fewer students taking up Hamden housing, not more.

QU leadership told Hamden’s Planning and Zoning Commission at a meeting Wednesday night that a $244 million plan to expand its Mount Carmel campus will support an effort to keep an additional quarter of the university’s current 7,000 undergrads in dorms next year.

The unveiling of the plan amid ongoing concerns in the neighborhood surrounding QU about potential expansion of student housing, and the problems that potentially brings.

The university first announced on Feb. 3 that its board of trustees approved a plan to spend over $200 million investing in ​“innovative modern learning and living spaces” within the existing footprint of its Mount Carmel campus. The university first presented a draft of that plan to Hamden’s Planning and Zoning Commission in January of 2021.

The proposed new buildings include a 79,000-square-foot School of Business; a 137,000-square-foot general academic building, which will include wet and dry labs, a greenhouse and vivarium, space to expand QU’s computing programs, classrooms, and an auditorium with roughly 800 seats to hold ​“many important university and community-oriented events”; and a 417-bed residence hall.

Now QU begins a process of earning municipal approvals before opening those three buildings as planned by 2024.

Bethany Zemba, Quinnipiac’s vice-president for strategy and community relations, led a presentation describing the scope and potential impact of the project on Wednesday. 

While the three-building development may suggest an expansion of QU’s hold on Hamden, Zemba argued that the purpose of the architectural growth is to accommodate more students on campus — and thereby build a better bridge between the university and the town.

“Student residents living in the community has been an issue for a long time,” Zemba said. 

“Dealing with community complaints is something we take very seriously,” Otoniel Reyes, QU’s chief of public safety, added on Wednesday. ​“People understand that these are college students.” What community members want, he posited, is ​“responsiveness from the police department and the university.”

Quinnipiac reports fewer community complaints this year compared to last. It reports receiving 73 calls citing concerns about student behavior in 2020 – 2021 compared to 34 so far this academic year (with a quarter of the academic year left to go). This year, 16 of those calls were regarding loud parties; six highlighted trash and littering left behind by students; six referenced general noise issues; three pinpointed student-concentrated traffic; two cited students standing in streets; and one reported lawn drinking. 

The Independent also spoke with residents of Quinnipiac-proximate neighborhoods who worry that student take-overs of their town will hurt Hamden’s sense of close community: read more on that here.

Angry calls to campus, as well as a general sense of resentment towards the university among non-student Hamden residents, may decrease even further next year, with QU promising to keep all juniors on campus beginning in fall 2022. That means mainly seniors, supposedly the most mature members of the student body, will be residing off-campus from now on. QU also has around 3,000 graduate students.

The upcoming developments, if approved by the town, will help enact that new three-year campus life policy. In addition to providing more available bedrooms, Zemba said, the idea is to ​“make students so happy on campus” by providing better amenities and programming ​“that they don’t wanna move off campus.”

Despite the campaign to keep students on campus, Quinnipiac has still been busy purchasing single-family homes throughout town to consolidate off-campus housing opportunities for students.

The town also recently settled a lawsuit that accused it of implementing policies that enforced housing discrimination against students under 24 — as well as against landlords who chose to rent to those students. That lawsuit was based on a complaint not by the university, but by a landlord, filed back in 2017 with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.

Until a settlement reached in early January temporarily repealed such requirements, the town forced landlords renting to students below age 24 to pay additional fees and observe special bureaucratic procedures.

Fees included $75 for a house inspection by Quinnipiac Valley Health District; $40 or $80 for fire marshal inspections of buildings up to 11 or over 12 units; $300 or $500 for a ​“student housing permit” for individuals renting our either single- or two- family dwellings for the first time to students. Also required were the completion of a new student housing application signed by all student tenants containing tenants’ license plates numbers, an administrative zoning permit form, a site plan with parking, a floor plan, and a neighbor resource information sheet for student housing sent to all property owners within 100 feet of the given house.

Another requirement stated that landlords must live in the same building as student tenants if they chose to rent one, two or three unit dwellings to more than four student tenants.

While the town is currently in the process of determining how to modify student housing regulations, there are now fewer barriers to renting to students in Hamden.

Despite the outcome of the lawsuit and Quinnipiac’s ongoing buy-ups of Northern Hamden neighborhoods, Zemba said clearly on Wednesday that the ​“master plan” is ​“not a plan to grow the student population.”

She said that the number of Quinnipiac undergrads is actually projected to decrease by about 1,000 students next year, down to roughly 6,100.

Instead, she said, the plan is just a long-overdue means of giving students the resources they deserve. It was born out of a realization that ​“for the student body we had, we don’t have enough space to properly educate them,” Zemba stated.

“This is a plan to make sure there are better resources available for them, so, one, they wanna live on campus or those three years… and we also wanna make sure that whatever classes they’re taking, they have the proper facilities,” Zemba concluded.