[T]he widely acclaimed East College Street Project … blends apartments and retail shops with street-smart, environmentally friendly architecture.

The $17 million development grew out of an unusual partnership: Three friends decided to stick around after graduating and change their college town for the better -- even though they knew nothing about real estate at the time….

The project precedes a larger development to come: Oberlin College's $300 million, 13-acre Green Arts District, which will include construction or renovation of a dozen buildings between East College Street at the Allen Memorial Art Museum a block to the north.

SCUP is, BTW, collecting links to economic impact or community impact reports. You can see the 14 we have found so far here. Please use this simple online form to share any other such links you know of. Thanks.

We discovered this economic impact report while we were looking for news on the Iowa website about the $152M FEMA grant it just received to rebuild from its flooding. We didn't find much yet, just this, but when we do we will share it. The following language begins the executive summary of the report:

Statewide expenditures by the University of Iowa and related constituencies totaled $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2008-09. The University affected business volume in Iowa in two ways:

1. Direct expenditures for goods and services by the University, its employees, students, and visitors. This supported local businesses, which in turn employed local individuals to sell the goods and provide the services that University constituencies needed.

2. Induced or indirect spending within the state of Iowa. The businesses and individuals that received direct expenditures re-spent this money within the state, thus creating the need for even more jobs.

As a result of expenditures on goods and services by the University, the overall economic impact of all the University’s operations on the state of Iowa in FY 2008-09 was $6.0 billion ($2.6 billion direct impact and $3.4 billion indirect).

Many institutions have found it useful to publish a "Community Impact Statement," by one name or another. The statements attempt to make clear the value of the campus to its surrounding community and region. SCUP has begun a collection of links to such statements. You can view the current collection here and you can add additional links to more community impact statements at this easy to use online form.

We have links to community impact reports from North Carolina A&T State University, Missouri Western State University, Nicholls State University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, University of Texas at San Antonio, State University of New York at Oswego, Smith College, and Southeastern Louisiana University.

Please share yours.

 Last month ACUHO-I (the Association of College and University Housing Officers - International) released the results of a survey of its members regarding the economic impact the recession and funding changes have had on housing operations and planning. By the large the indicators look better than a year ago, but not as good as two years ago. This is a well-done survey and the results will be useful and interesting to planner, both for planning purposes and for their own benchmarking.

The questions respondents answered related to travel freezes, hiring freezes, salary increases, making departmental funds available to other entities, construction and renovation, planned capital purchases, and demand for on-campus housing within the next three years.

Of particular interest to physical planners, the number of respondents who anticipated restrictions on planned capital purchases, decreased in the past two years from 55% to 31% in this latest survey.

Read the executive summary of the ACUHO-I Economic Impact survey.

http://ht.ly/22byT