Cordish, Maryland Could Break Ground in 2013 on East Campus

University of Maryland  University of Maryland Latest from The Business Journals Follow this company officials hope to break ground by this time next year on the institution’s ambitious East Campus redevelopment, a 38-acre project that was delayed by the recession but is seen as a vital economic development complement to its academic and research endeavors.

Rob Specter, vice president for administrative affairs and chief financial officer for the university, said if Maryland is to maintain or grow its standing among the country’s top public colleges it needs to concentrate as much on its outward appearance as it does on what takes place inside its classrooms and labs.

“We are recognizing the importance of working with our external community of College Park,” Specter said at a city forum on real estate Thursday. “It’s absolutely critical that we not only strive to be top 20 university but that we strive for a top 20 university community as well.”

The East Campus project, slated to cost at least $900 million, has been on the university’s books for more than a decade. But it was forced to sever its ties with a joint venture between Foulger Pratt and Argo Investment, which pulled out because of financial challenges caused by the recession.

The university later picked Baltimore’s Cordish Cos. as the project’s master developer, and is working with apartment developer David Hillman, CEO of Vienna’s Southern Management Corp., to build what’s planned to be a four-star, 266-room hotel. The hotel, to include about 18,000 square feet of retail space and 23,000 square feet of conference space, would be built in the first eight-acre phase of the project.

Other parts of that first phase would include another 70,000 square feet of retail, a music venue similar to Rams Head Live! at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and at least a portion of 335 planned residential units. The first phase is slated to cost about $171 million.

The site sits across Baltimore Avenue from the university’s main campus and was historically used for maintenance and infrastructure uses, including a heating plant. But the university hopes to convert the property next to Fraternity Row into a mixed-use complex with a hotel, shops, restaurants, offices and new housing for graduate students.

East Campus is one of several key economic development projects the university has made a priority. Among them, Specter said the university is also working closely with Columbia developer Corporate Office Properties Trust    Corporate Office Properties Trust Latest from The Business Journals Follow this company to develop three additional 150,000-square-foot office buildings at the M Square research park.

The university is hoping to get the buildings approved by local governments so that COPT can begin constructing them as soon as it lines up tenants to fill them. Specter said they would not be built speculatively.