FaverGray recently accepted an Eagle Award for College Park at the 2020 Associated Builders and Contractors Excellence in Construction Virtual Awards Ceremony.

The College Park projects are made up of three separate student housing buildings on separate sites in Gainesville, FL. The three buildings, Viceroy, Heights and Edge have 108 units total and four floors each. Viceroy includes 79,173 conditioned square feet on a 1.13-acre lot, Heights has 60,627 conditioned square feet on a .58-acre lot, and Edge has 26,547 conditioned square feet on a .79-acre lot.

The College Park area of Gainesville borders the north side of the University of Florida.  This location makes College Park a very desirable location for student housing. The area has an assortment of student housing, from older converted single-family homes to apartment type student housing.

There are few student housing units in the area that have been built within the past several years. The availability of land is one of the primary reasons that there has been little change in housing in College Park.

The project was competitively bid and FaverGray was selected over the two other General Contractors bidding on the three buildings. Construction began in phases:

• Phase I: site work and underground utilities
• Phase II: elevated podium slab construction
• Phase III: remainder of the building construction

This process kept the construction activities progressing during the finalization of design. The local public services (e.g. power, water, sewer, etc.) were collaborative with the Owner, Designers, and General Contractor.  Throughout design and construction, these agencies were proactive and solution oriented.

The team’s architectural design approach included incorporating commonly used residential apartment building materials such as brick veneer and fiber cement siding, in ways which gave each of the three buildings a unique, yet similar aesthetic for them to be identifiable as new urban fabric with a common theme.

All three sites were tight and posed interesting urban design challenges, in order to meet the project goals of unit count and density, while meeting the city’s architectural design guideline requirements while allowing for adequate space between neighboring occupied residential properties.

The three urban sites, with the buildings built essentially to the property lines and sidewalks, with limited landscaping, are meant to be contemporary examples of a youthful urban lifestyle and seen as potential catalysts for the next generation of urban collegiate-focused housing in downtown Gainesville.

All three buildings were completed on time, without any safety issues, and were 100% leased before students took occupancy in mid-August 2019.