Canadian universities are catching condo fever as they attempt to raise money for academic programs and enhance their communities.

From the University of British Columbia in Vancouver to the University of Guelph in Ontario, post-secondary institutions are teaming up with private companies to develop on-campus market housing for the general public.

In most, if not all, cases, developers build and sell high-rise, mid-rise and townhouse projects on university land under prepaid 99-year leases through strata corporations.

"We want to become a complete community - not just a commuter campus," says UBC planning director Joe Stott. "We want to have more residential opportunities and a more 24-hour lifecycle."

Universities also view condo development as a way to recover their student, faculty and staff housing-construction costs.

UBC and Simon Fraser University, based in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby, started the campus-condo trend as part of large mixed-use communities. Universities in other provinces are slowly following suit.

Quest University is a new private not-for-profit institution in Squamish headed by former UBC president David Strangway.

It is scheduled to open in September and is another B.C. post-secondary institution campus that will contain condos.

The University of Saskatchewan began rolling out its condo plans earlier this year.

In Ontario, the U of Guelph has already partially completed market-priced seniors housing, and the University of Waterloo is starting on library and recreational projects slated to precede future campus condos. The Royal Ontario Museum also wants to develop condos in conjunction with the University of Toronto.

At many universities, campus condo dwellers get title to their units the same way other homeowners do, along with access to such benefits as recreational facilities, day care, car-share programs, and other amenities usually enjoyed by university students, faculty and staff.

UBC's condos are part of its University Town, which has more than $1 billion worth of student, faculty and staff housing projects under construction.

The latest condo project to go on the market, Coast, being developed by Vancouver-based Bastion Development Corp., is a $100-million venture that will provide 145 units of the total planned 625 units for the Chancellor Place neighbourhood.

Bastion is also developing Corus, a 47-unit, 14-storey apartment tower and 14-unit townhouse complex.

Unit prices range from $600,000 to $4 million for penthouses overlooking Georgia Strait, the Gulf Islands and North Shore Mountains.

Other UBC condo projects include Hampton Place, completed in 1999; Hawthorn Place, which is expected to be complete this year; and Wesbrook Place, where construction is commencing. The condos are expected to boost UBC's resident population to 18,000 in 2013 from the current 13,000.

UBC's first objective is to develop a "sustainable community" that will reduce student, faculty and staff reliance on the regional transportation system, which accounts for a large share of greenhouse gas emissions, says Stott.

He hopes UBC will enjoy the same success as downtown Vancouver, which has seen a large influx of residents over the past two decades and become "a pretty thriving community at the core of our region."

Downtown Vancouver's "live, work and play" model has won international awards.

"You don't have to leave the campus every day," adds Stott.

Net revenues from market-condo development go into two UBC endowment funds. Interest from the endowment goes toward UBC's academic mission.

"UBC is increasingly recognized on a global level and the margin on the land leases provides for that margin of excellence," says Stott.

Presold land leases accounted for about 15 per cent of UBC's approximately $900-million total endowment last year, he says.

"I think it's appropriate for campuses like SFU and even UBC in that we're built in locations away from the city," Stott notes.

"If you look at the traditional patterns of the universities, whether it's Oxford or Cambridge (in England), communities grew around ... the university."

Cambridge was among the first universities to develop condos. But Stott says some downtown-based Canadian universities, such as McGill in Montreal and the University of Toronto, do not face the same on-campus housing needs because they are located in urban cores.

"But where a campus is not in the heart of an urban community then, yes, I think it's a good thing to balance off residential opportunity, particularly for people who work or study on the campus," says Stott.

Some municipalities, including Vancouver and Burnaby, allow campus condos to have mortgage helpers - self-contained rental suites with fridges, stoves, sinks and bathrooms - which make student housing "a little more affordable."

High-end units also cater to affluent customers.

"(UBC) is one of the most desirable places to live, especially if the development can provide high amenities and views," says Stott.

SFU's condos are contained within its 4,500-home UniverCity community, which is slated to house 10,000 people.

The condos, developed by Vancouver-based firms Millennium University Homes Ltd., Intergulf Development Group and the Polygon Group of Companies, are intended to offset the costs of affordable faculty and staff housing.

In Saskatoon, renowned Vancouver-based architect Stanley Kwok is helping the U of Saskatchewan plan and design its 148-acre College Quarter mixed-use development, which will include condos, a seniors complex, student housing, retail outlets and perhaps even a twin-ice arena.

James Cook, the U of Saskatchewan's business opportunities manager, says administrators see market housing as a way to recover the costs of student housing, help the institution as a whole and give the area "more of a community and neighbourhood feel to it."

"Our vision is to have a vibrant community with services that are sustainable with the university community and the surrounding neighbourhoods," says Cook.

If approved, market housing would be one of the earliest components built within College Quarter, which is expected to take 15 years to complete, so that the university can use the revenues to develop other infrastructure in the future.

Cook stresses the U of S is exploring the feasibility of market housing and no decision has been made. Officials still have financial concerns over the whole College Quarter project, and are examining how the university should use its land.

If condos are developed, officials would also have to figure out what to do with pieces of land that have been used for agricultural research for many decades and are very important to the university.

Further east, the University of Waterloo (UW) has entered into an agreement with the city to put a library and YMCA on campus. Those properties will likely be forerunners for future condo development within 10 years.

"The long-term view is there will be residential activity on our land contiguous with that development," says Bud Walker.

UW's official six-decade plan calls for market housing to be built there by the end of its sixth decade, which has just begun. Walker says universities are leasing some parcels of their land to developers in order to keep the properties for possible long-term future use and to gain revenues.

But profit is not necessarily UW's main motive when it comes to providing market housing.

"We'd see it as an opportunity to do the residential activity in line with our (educational) mission," says Walker. "It would be intended for students or to provide a good residential community for faculty, basically to enhance the role of the university rather than to get a lot of commercial return out of it.

"The commercial return isn't necessarily that great, because we'd be leasing out unserviced land and the amount of return on unserviced land, even though it's fairly valuable land, is not the big gain.

"The gain is being able to provide an attractive community for faculty and staff and students. It makes the whole institution more attractive, so I think that would probably be our major consideration."

At the U of Guelph, Reid's Heritage Homes is nearing completion of Phase 5 of its Village by the arboretum, which is billed as an adult-lifestyle community. It lies beside a 165-hectare Arboretum owned by the university and includes independent-living and 100 assisted-living units.

The University of Toronto may eventually get condos, but several issues remain unresolved.

The Royal Ontario Museum, located within the university but operated independently, is attempting to develop condos to help fund its $250-million reconstruction.

William Thorsell, the museum's CEO, has pledged to put condos on the site of the former McLaughlin Planetarium through a public-private partnership with the U of T.

A 46-storey condo and commercial development, proposed in 2005, was scrapped after the university's administration opposed possible rezoning of land to residential from institutional, and also cited concerns about esthetics.

But U of T administrators could change their minds if the university can get a share of net proceeds.

In 2005, the estimated profit was $20 million.

A few years from now, it could be much higher.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it )