On October 29th, Purdue Fort Wayne broke ground on their newest student housing option – a 600-bed, 213,000-square-foot apartment building by Ginsberg Hall on the North Campus. The $90 to $100 million project is being constructed in partnership with Gilbane Development Company.
Roughly half the beds will be contracted to students through the university, with the other beds being leased to students directly through Gilbane.
It’s a change from the existing housing options PFW offers.The university currently offers students two options – on-campus housing contracted through the school, and leases with nearby apartment complexes that have arrangements with the school.
In 2024, PFW entered into a public-private partnership with Gilbane to develop and manage the housing project. It’s not the first university to do so.
This August, Eastern Michigan University debuted Westview and Lakeview apartments, built through a similar public-private partnership with Gilbane. The $200 million EMU project also included plans to refurbish the university’s current housing, something that is not part of Purdue Fort Wayne’s plans.
It’s becoming more common for universities to choose public-private partnerships for real estate options due to their cost effective nature.
Public-private partnerships are agreements that leverage both public and private resources for a project. These agreements are commonly used for capital projects like PFW’s housing development. Other examples of recent public-private partnerships in the Fort Wayne area include Electric Works and the Ash Skyline Plaza.
The new facility, which is expected to open to students August 2026, represents a long-planned step forward for PFW under the university’s 2018 master plan, created following the campus’ split from Indiana University. Prior to 2018, the university operated under the guidance of both Purdue University and Indiana University.
The plan centered on growing PFW’s total enrollment to 15,000 full time students, nearly double the school’s class size at the time, over 30 years. PFW has had an overall decrease in enrollment for over a decade – going from 14,000 students in the 2021- 2022 school year to less than 9,000 enrolled in the fall 2022 semester. In order to counteract this fall and encourage growth, the plan cited a need for a “programmatic paradigm shift”.
“[PFW will] need to consider a cultural shift from a traditionally commuter campus to a more residential, student-life focused campus,” the document states.
Purdue Fort Wayne has been a commuter campus since its inception, by merit of its location in Fort Wayne. On-campus housing wasn’t offered at all until the 2004 addition of the Waterfield Campus – the only current on-campus housing option. Over time, more students have chosen university-sponsored housing and currently about 22% of students live in either on-campus housing or off-campus apartments leased through the university, according to an August 2023 report in The Journal Gazette. Waterfield Campus has been full for the last 7 semesters.
In exploring the need for new housing options, PFW’s master plan emphasized the importance of so-called residence halls in addition to apartment-style living for PFW students..
“While [apartments] are ideal for independent and upper-class students, they are currently being used to house incoming first year students who benefit from a greater sense of community offered by traditional residence halls,” the master plan states. “This situation creates isolation for first-time students who require additional support networks and easy access to campus resources and student life activities.”
Purdue uses a “student housing spectrum” where the ideal housing options for students become more independent the farther along they get. The purpose is to offer new students the support and inclusion necessary to establish connections, while offering older students more independence as they transition into the post-collegiate world.
PFW’s master plan suggests this more community based style of housing will combat PFW’s struggles with student retention – the school only has a 38% graduation rate in comparison to the average 47% in their Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System comparison group.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System collects information on “every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs”, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“The University has retention issues, particularly with sophomore and junior year students,” the plan states. “All on- and off-campus housing choices are apartments which can cause isolation compared to traditional residence halls. Overall, the campus struggles to support a true student-life focused community.”
In contrast to the master plan, the new facility will continue to only offer apartment style living. It’s unclear why PFW decided against building a residence hall, as well as why there are currently no plans to build one in the future.
The majority of PFW’s housing is on campus through their Waterfield Campus housing. These buildings were all built between 2004 and 2010, with no major renovations since. The quality of these dorms has been called into question by students, with some questioning whether funds set aside for student housing projects include updates to the university’s existing accommodations.
“It’s like they don’t care about the students in housing,” says Andrea Scott, who lived at the Waterfield campus from Fall 2020 to Spring 2023. “Every maintenance issue you put in took at least a month to be responded to.
Beyond long wait times on repairs, Scott always said the communal laundry machines in the building often experience maintenance issues and are frequently out-of-service. She also recounted issues with university’s responses to inter-roommate issues and what she described as a general lack of care put into responding to student concerns.
“If you can afford to get an apartment off campus, get an apartment off campus,” says Scott. “Living on campus definitely isn’t worth it.”
For those who want to live away from the on-campus life, PFW also offers leasing agreements through nearby apartment complexes, specifically Canterbury Green and The Arch. These options have some of the convenience of campus housing – shortened leases, fully furnished units, and utilities included, while offering the freedom of off-campus living. PFW also offers a shuttle to and from campus from both complexes for all students, which also provides weekly transport to Walmart.
While these campus housing options offer convenience, they also come with a price. The most cost effective housing option is a four bedroom, two bathroom with a shared bedroom, averaging about $674 per student per month. For students interested in a one bedroom apartment, living on-campus comes to about $1,323 a month. Housing experts recommend a household spend no more than 30% of its income on housing, and many students choose to pay for housing through student loans or savings accounts.
PFW rental options come in at an average of 38% higher per person, per month when compared with nearby apartment complex pricing. Even when adding in the average utility costs, usually only internet and electricity, PFW students still appear to pay more per month for housing options that often require more roommates, less space, and stricter rules than non-student tenants.
According to leasing information available through Canterbury Green’s leasing portal, , the average two-bedroom apartment leased through the complex runs about $1,150 per month, or $575 each if the tenant lives with a roommate. Renting a Canterbury two-bed two-bath through PFW runs the student $5,225 per semester, over $1000 per student monthly.
Through The Arch, a three bedroom, three bathroom apartment comes to $559 per month per resident, renting through the campus raises this cost to $984 per month.
These costs appear to be rising, as well. Between the 2024-2025 and the 2025-2026 school years, PFW plans to raise on-campus housing prices by almost 11%. Off-campus options are expected to see an average 6% increase in cost, as well.
It’s part of a nationwide trend that has seen rental prices increase year over year. Nationally, there’s been a 1% increase in rent prices from 2023, The Washington Post found earlier this year.
Costs and fees have remained at the forefront of many students’ minds this academic year, especially after student residents were presented with a charge of $660 for students to stay in housing over winter break. Those fees were met with outrage and a petition from the students, who had never been charged to stay during breaks in previous years.
While the housing contract did warn there would be fees associated with access to the apartments over break, the fees were not explicitly laid out. The university chose to waive the fees this year in response to backlash, but it’s expected the cost will return next year.
PFW’s master plan indicates that the new apartment complex will solve the university’s shortage in on campus housing options, but questions remain about whether the development will fulfill the goals from Purdue’s masterplan to engage student life and increase retention. It is also unclear what, if any plans, PFW has to update the existing Waterfield Campus units.
Attempts to reach PFW officials seeking comment for this article were not immediately returned.
This piece was done in conjunction with journalism students (Dezaray Clawson) taught by Heloisa Sturm Wilkerson (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) Assistant Professor of Journalism in the Communication Department of Purdue University Fort Wayne.
This content is distributed in a partnership between Purdue University Fort Wayne and the Fort Wayne Media Collaborative, a group of media outlets and educational institutions in Fort Wayne committed to solutions-oriented reporting.
For more information visit www.pfw.edu/news-center
For more information visit fwmediacollaborative.com
