For all of their contributions to Greater Boston’s economic competitiveness and cultural vibrancy, local colleges and universities often have a rocky relationship with surrounding neighborhoods.

The expansions of Suffolk University and Emerson College in Boston’s Downtown Crossing over the past decade have added more than 2,000 undergraduate dorm rooms to the neighborhood with little controversy, creating a new model for town-and-gown relations that could serve as a guide for schools’ future real estate growth.

After failing in attempts to build a 31-story residence hall on Beacon Hill and shifting undergraduate housing to Downtown Crossing, Suffolk is developing an academic building at 20 Somerset St. while selling another Beacon Hill building with longer-range plans to unload another.

“We’ve established a relationship, or trust and openness, and it’s all-around a more productive relationship (with Beacon Hill neighbors),” said John Nucci, Suffolk’s vice president of government and community affairs.

Suffolk smoothed over relations primarily by pledging to steer dorm expansion into other neighborhoods. But it’s also scored points with neighbors by assigning campus security to keep the lid on off-campus parties, said MaryLee Halpin, executive director of the Beacon Hill Civic Association.

“They offered it as a way to help be good neighbors,” Halpin said. “It’s better from a city perspective to have the school stepping up than having the city police being called away from other things. There’s been very few complaints.”

Shifting Focus

Suffolk shifted its residential expansion into Downtown Crossing, acquiring the site of a failed condo project at 10 West St. for a 400-room dorm that opened in 2008, while acquiring the Modern Theatre from the city of Boston and adding 200 student residences in the floors above, which were occupied in 2010.

The 10 West St. project initially was opposed by residents of the Millennium Place condominiums, but the group backed the project after Suffolk agreed to a no-expansion zone on further student housing in the neighborhood.

In the meantime, Downtown Crossing has emerged from the recession with some of the city’s signature development projects, including the 1.1-million-square-foot Millennium Tower condos and the 665,000-square-foot Lafayette City Center office and retail complex. Once a fallback choice, the neighborhood has become a recruiting tool for the university.

“Suffolk’s location is our greatest asset – students generally want to live in an exciting city. That’s why they come to Boston,” Nucci said.
Currently, approximately 23 percent of Suffolk’s 5,000 undergraduates live on campus. The university’s 10-year master plan set a target of increasing that to 50 percent by 2018, so the school may look to surrounding neighborhoods, such as Back Bay for growth, Nucci said. But if it does, the neighbors will be the first to know.

“The key to any institutional expansion is to develop a productive relationship with neighbors before you ask them to approve expansion,” he said.

Learning Not To Overreach

Emerson, for its part, has added more than 1,200 dorm rooms in the past decade at the Colonial Building at 100 Boylston St., the Piano Row dorm at 150 Boylston St. and the Paramount Center Residence Hall at 555 Washington St., adjacent to the renovated Paramount Theater.

Margaret Ann Ings, Emerson’s associate vice president for government and community relations, said the college keeps the peace with neighbors through constant communication with neighborhood groups and Boston police.

“It is a really good flow. I don’t think we ever could have moved there unless we had these types of relationships early on,” Ings said.

That’s not to say colleges have gotten everything they wanted in recent years.
Emerson’s original proposal for a 750-bed dorm at 1-3 Boylston Place was scaled back last year after the BRA objected to the height of the proposed 280-foot-tall structure. The college came back with a plan for 450 dorm rooms and a 171-foot-tall building.

“You really get your project out there and commented on by almost every one of the stakeholders,” Ing said. “The community gets to tell us what they think. It’s the best process if you give the information consistently to the community. They don’t know what you’re working on.”

The project, approved by the BRA in February, is still in the preconstruction phase and no timetable for groundbreaking has been set.

Email: sadams@thewarrengroup.com