Across from one of UB’s entrances is a dead end street, where the Center for Inquiry is located, along with the library’s archives, a welder, and an office park. These developments are side-by-side with a few dozen homes waiting to be sold. If the community can get their properties rezoned, they will be able to sell their homes to GMH, a student housing developer, who will transform the street into apartments akin to University Village at Sweethome, a student community on Sweet Home Rd.
This rezoning might not be easy to achieve. In a packed Amherst board meeting last Monday, UB officials met with members of the Amherst community to discuss the proposed Rensch Road development. While many residents of the community, as well as Amherst Town Supervisor Dr. Satish Mohan, are in favor of the project, UB officials and some of the development’s potential neighbors are voicing their doubts about just how beneficial the plan is going to be for the UB and Amherst communities.
UB’s Vice President of Student Affairs Dennis Black stated he was concerned about the development’s effect on student performance, and said that students who live on campus are more likely to graduate on time, with higher grade point averages. He criticized off-campus housing developments, saying, “They don’t have access to the campus intermediate problem-solving options that our residents do, and that can create a drain on town resources.”
In the coming decade, UB is set to enroll an additional 10,000 students as part of President John Simpson’s UB 2020 plan. According to Black, UB will be prepared to house them. He said at the Amherst Board meeting, “We have growth in our future. The state university system has approved a five year growth plan that…will require the addition of at least 1,200 beds.” Black added that further details of a “master plan” for UB would be revealed later in the semester.
But many Amherst residents who spoke at the hearing stressed that GMH is ready to start building now, not at an undisclosed time. And for a student without a dorm room, right now seems like the right time to start building one.
The debate that’s playing out in Amherst isn’t typical. Unlike the town’s past zoning disputes over big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, the sides of the story aren’t so cut and dried. 11 residents of Rensch Road have received what some have called generous offers for their homes from housing developer GMH, and are eager to have their land rezoned and sold. As the lawyer of one resident told the board, “This is the last chance for these homeowners to sell their homes.”
For decades, Rensch Road and some other parcels in Amherst have been zoned as research and development (R&D), for the development of office buildings. But the homes were standing long before the area was rezoned, and the street’s residents say they don’t remember being formally notified of the zone change. Many residents weren’t here for the change, and say they moved into their homes only because they didn’t understand the zoning restrictions. Residential structures cannot be built on R&D land. In fact, as one resident said, “If any of our houses burn down tonight, under the law we can’t rebuild them.”
One after another, residents of Rensch Road stood to address the board about their own experience trying to sell their homes for years, often being unable to even get a prospective buyer because of its zoning.
Its older residents describe Rensch Road as a quiet residential neighborhood torn apart by recent developments. The Center for Inquiry and the library archive building bring a steady stream of traffic to the street. Since the early seventies, nearly all of Rensch Road has been zoned R&D. But very few developments have been built; among them two privately owned businesses, a library storage building, and an office park. A lawyer for the 11 selling residents of the road offered the explanation, “You don’t have to be near campus to do research and development, I can do it in my living room. That’s why there are so many vacant lots.”
Black says that UB’s intention is not to block the project. He wrote in an email, “[UB] asked [the] town to wait on approving projects next to UB (not just housing) so we can work together on a new master plan.”
Amherst Chief of Police John Moslow also voiced his concerns about the project, questioning the Amherst Police’s ability to govern an off-campus student body so large. At Sweethome, he said, police have received over 300 calls since the development opened in 2005. “If that is any indicator, I suspect that we will have a similar number of calls for service there. In that case, what the Amherst Police Department will be charged with doing is policing a campus off-campus of 2,200 beds.” Chief Moslow specified that most of those calls are parking and public disturbance related, but that there are some far more serious calls as well.
Moslow said that if the proposed development is built, the Amherst PD will be forced to reexamine the current patrol routes and make changes to the way they operate. On the other hand, GMH has promised a full-time security staff to relieve the strain on local police, and says it will offer first choice of jobs to off-duty Amherst police officers.
When Town Supervisor Dr. Satish Mohan spoke at the meeting, he did so in favor of passing the rezoning. He later said he couldn’t understand the police department’s concerns over off-campus students.
“The student body are not criminals,” he said, insisting that most police calls are for reasons of parking enforcement. In fact, the most serious safety concern he sees is finding a better way for students to cross Sweet Home Rd to get to school. He cited the possibility of a pedestrian bridge, built by GMH.
“We don’t think any viable project will come up in R&D,” Dr. Mohan said about Rensch Road. “This cannot be developed commercial or residential in the future, so it is so appropriate for it to be considered for student housing for UB. It’s across the street.”
One of the last people to speak to the board represented the University Heights Business Association, a popular spot for off-campus housing. He told the board, “The decision you make here today will define who we are in our neighborhood. President Simpson has a master plan. We need to trust that UB is putting together a plan for their vision and figuring out what is going to work. I’m not saying there’s not room for development like this in the future, but we need to give UB a chance.”
Another speaker echoed the Business Association’s feeling. “I think the heaviest weight should be put on what UB has to say. I don’t think the developer cares about UB student housing needs more than UB could. Maybe this is a good spot in the future, but not yet. This is 2007 and the plan is for 2020, I don’t see the rush.”
Those residents who are selling their homes are ready to move out, but what about the residents who don’t want to sell their homes, or haven’t been handed offers?
One homeowner, who works and resides at 3945 Rensch Rd., says he lives across the street from the proposed development. “It’s going to change my way of life. It’s not something I’m looking forward to. I would challenge anyone in this room to approve of this if they lived where I live.”
Another man owns four properties on the street, and has not taken the money offered for his home. “I don’t want to have my parents surrounded by 900 kids. That’s the reason I didn’t put it up for sale. It will affect [citizens] so that people out of town can make money.”
Robert Silverman, an associate professor and senior research associate of Urban and Regional Planning at UB, sees opportunity in the Rensch Road project. “My understanding is the property they want to build student housing on was zoned R&D in anticipation of some kind of expanded university activity in that area,” he said, adding that that didn’t seem to happen. He said that if UB is threatened by off-campus housing, “There might be possibilities for UB to be a little more creative about coordinating the kinds of campus services that contribute to student success in those private student housing developments.”
Alfred Price, an associate professor in Urban and Regional Planning, felt differently about the project, and looked to former president William Greiner’s policies.
“This university did the smartest thing it could possibly have done to be of benefit to students. It utilized the vehicle of the UB foundation, which is a vestige of our old private university days to get around all the issues that come with having the state of New York and its bureaucracy do anything.” Price said that building the apartments around the university, like Flint or Hadley, was perfect for students because of not only their proximity to classes, but for the great accommodations available.
Additionally, Price said the advantages to living on-campus are great, from the safety to the rent-controlled apartments. In fact, some of these housing apartments have almost created a sort of community. “As a planner thinking about what’s best for the area, I would say that one of the very positive contributions of the most recently built new housing is that is has started to create a sense of undergraduate community. The townhouses out by the lake have given a little graduate village. So it’s starting to feel like a real campus community at long last. Seems to me I wouldn’t monkey with that, community is a good thing.”
On-campus dorms are price-controlled, as Price said, and they’re not for profit. When asked about the possible financial gains of housing thousands of additional students, Dennis Black said that didn’t factor into the school’s decision whatsoever. “UB housing does not make money or lose money; that has not been any consideration. Our focus has been concerns for impact on town and impact on student experience.”
Black told the board that students are known to attend more student events and get better grades if they live on campus than off. However as one speaker told the board, “[UB is] not here asking you to do anything except to block building on this property which would be in competition with the university. We’re talking about 858 beds, they’re talking about 10,000 students. They can have their cut of the pie. They’re telling you that because a student lives across Sweet Home Rd., he’s not as good as a student that’s on the other side.”
Shelly Schratz, the UB liaison to the board, was one of the last people to speak. “While I’m not in favor of this one project, I can’t say that I give UB an A. If UB really has an interest in what they say, they should put money and purchase [Rensch Rd.] properties for what they’ve been offered if this deal falls through.”
The meeting was concluded with a tabling of the rezoning discussion, a few weeks to wait for UB to make a move as far as a master plan for their housing troubles. If one thing was apparent, though, it was that UB’s relationship with the surrounding communities of Amherst is strained at best, and at worst, the recipe for stalemate.
