Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Campus Housing Consultants Launch Strategic Planning Service

  • By Matt Jones
  • 06/26/24

Scion Advisory Services recently launched its new Strategic Housing Planning Service, a cost-effective and collaborative process that provides colleges and universities with a method to align its student-housing offerings with its institutional mission, according to a news release. The service takes into account the needs, hurdles, and possibilities across a full campus housing system, as opposed to the single residential facility that tends to be the focus of many feasibility or demand studies.

“We created this option to go beyond the limitations of a traditional single-building feasibility study by providing a complete assessment of a campus housing program,” said Scion Advisory Services Senior Vice President Jay Pearlman. “Significantly, for an institution not needing a full facilities condition assessment or a design exercise, a Strategic Housing Plan can provide the value of a full housing master plan at a reduced cost and in a much shorter timeframe. Our team is ready and eager to serve the higher education community with these new customized consulting services.”

The planning walks colleges and universities through their responses to critical issues like whether the current housing program supports the institutional mission; how to improve existing facilities to support current students’ needs and anticipate future ones; how to address aging facilities; how to discuss the relationship between aging facilities and student experience to university leadership; how to prioritize buildings for renovations, decommissioning, and reconstruction; how these moves could impact departmental cash flow; and available strategies and financing options to pay for repair, replacement, and construction, according to the news release.

“The COVID-19 pandemic caused many campuses to rethink the role of residential life. The Strategic Housing Plan addresses a notable void in the market for student housing planning services,” said Pearlman. “Our approach has been shown effective at institutions concerned with current conditions of housing facilities or the quality of the student experience, or who are working to improve their competitive position among peer institutions or with the off-campus market. A Scion Strategic Housing Plan provides a framework for future housing investments and could serve as a key first step in evaluating the viability of alternative financing, including public-private partnerships.”

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Wold Completes Geothermal Projects at Two Minnesota Schools

    Wold Architects & Engineers recently announced that it has completed two geothermal expansion projects for Mounds View Public Schools in Shoreview, Minn., according to a news release. The work at Highview Middle School and Irondale High School serves the district’s long-term goal of reducing energy costs and dependency on non-renewable fuel sources, as well as improving building performance.

  • St. John Fisher University

    Classroom Revitalization – Basil Hall Room 216

    Established in 1999, the Education Design Showcase is a vehicle for showing off innovative — yet practical — solutions in planning, design, architecture, and construction. St. John Fisher University's Basil Hall Room 216 Classroom Revitalization has been recognized with an EDS 2026 Project of Distinction award in the category of Spaces.

  • Texas District Breaks Ground on Second High School

    The Waller Independent School District in Waller, Texas, recently held a groundbreaking ceremony for what will become its second high school, according to a news release.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.