Indiana University plans $81M housing project for former Poplars site

Indiana University plans to build an $81 million, 158-unit apartment building in Bloomington on the site that formerly housed the Poplars Building, which IU tore down last summer.

The university wants the 193,000-square-foot, six-story structure on Seventh Street on the Bloomington campus to provide housing primarily for graduate students.

“The housing project will increase on-campus university-affiliated apartment housing in response to recent demolitions of university-owned facilities that had exceeded their useful life,” the university said in the agenda for the trustees, who are scheduled to meet Thursday.

The 394-bed complex also may provide housing for faculty, staff, employees, undergraduate students and visiting scholars.

End of an era: Poplars Building coming down

The structure would offer furnished apartments with up to four bedrooms and areas for study and exercise.

The former Poplars Building, a city landmark with shifting identities over its nearly 60 years of existence, was demolished last summer. It was built in 1964 as a luxury dorm for female students, but three years later was converted into a hotel that hosted celebrities including Elvis Presley. It later served as an office complex for university employees.

At the time of the building’s destruction, the university said it planned to retain the area as greenspace.

Barbara Brosher, the university’s interim executive director for media relations and editorial content, said via email Tuesday that the new housing project had not been approved and the best way to get additional information would be to attend the trustees’ meeting on Thursday.

IU President Pamela Whitten previously has said the university needs more housing for its graduate students, but high costs made affordable projects difficult.

"The challenge we've been facing is thinking about trying to right-size housing for graduate students — and affordable housing, in particular. Given the costs and challenges of construction these days, it's not as simple as saying that, 'We'll just build something and it's affordable housing,' because it's so expensive to build," Whitten said.

The cost of IU’s planned project for the Poplars site, $81 million, is comparable to the $80 million apartment complex that Lafayette-based Trinitas Ventures is building at the old eastside Kmart site. However, the IU project would provide less than half as many apartments as the Trinitas project. Put another way, the Trinitas project was projected to cost about $235,000 per apartment, while the proposed IU project would cost $519,000 per apartment.

Chelsea Brinda, a doctoral student and co-chair of a university working group for graduate student housing, said Tuesday that adding apartments was “definitely a great step forward,” though she withheld her final judgment on the project until the university approves it and releases information on the apartments’ affordability.

Brinda also criticized the university’s response to the working group’s recommendations, none of which, she said, made it into the university’s overall strategic plan.

“I’m really surprised that this (project) is even on the agenda,” she said.

Brinda encouraged the university to poll the graduate students to get a better handle on what kind of housing the students and their families actually need.

Another 400 bedrooms are a good start, she said, but the project by itself won’t solve Bloomington’s housing crisis.

“Housing is still extremely unaffordable in the entire city,” Brinda said.

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For the planned Poplars project, IU has asked the board of trustees to approve a 60-year lease agreement with BPIU Partners LLC, which would design, construct and finance the project. The lease could be extended by two 10-year terms.

According to filings with the Indiana Secretary of State’s office, BPIU was established in 2015 by Andrew I. Klineman, general counsel for Indianapolis-based real estate investment firm Buckingham Companies. According to the latest SoS filing, BPIU’s registered agent is Corporation Services Co., based in Indianapolis at the same address as the Hackman Hulett law firm.

IU also recently announced that it would demolish Redbud Hill Apartments North and East next spring. The university said the buildings had accumulated significant deferred maintenance and it did not consider renovation a feasible option. The site joins Evermann, Banta, Bicknell, Hepburn and Nutt apartments as campus housing buildings that have been identified for demolition.

All of those apartment complexes are just west of the new IU Health Bloomington Hospital.

Coming down: Redbud Hill apartments on IU Bloomington campus to be razed in spring 2024

Thomas A. Morrison, vice president of IU Capital Planning and Facilities, said at a recent trustees meeting that on its Bloomington campus, IU has consistently provided about 12,000 beds, though the share of those beds that are occupied by undergraduate students has increased in the past few years.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: IU plans to build 158-unit apartment building on former Poplars site