by Brianna Crandall — February 19, 2014—The University of California, Merced, which opened in 2005, is launching an exemplary public-private partnership initiative to identify a master development team to design/build and potentially finance a mixed-use, master-planned development that would nearly double the size of the 10th University of California campus and help meet strong admissions demand.
Global financial and professional services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which is the university’s development advisor, asserts that public-private partnership capital is key to bridging the $3.6 trillion infrastructure spending gap in the United States, and holds up UC Merced’s initiative as one way to carry that out.
As part of its 2020 Project, UC Merced will open a competitive process in early spring 2014 by issuing a request for qualifications (RFQ) for one or more development partners. The selected private development team will design/build and potentially finance a 1.5 million-square-foot campus expansion that will provide new teaching, research and residential facilities on a 219-acre university-owned site adjacent to the existing campus. The university aims to have a team in place by year’s end and begin construction in 2017.
Enrollment at the newest UC campus, which opened in 2005 with 875 students, has surged to nearly 6,200, creating severe space limitations on campus. The 2020 Project is a critical step to accommodate rapid growth in enrollment, which is expected to reach 10,000 students within the next six years. When fully developed, UC Merced is expected to enroll some 25,000 students in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines.
Campus planners envision the expansion consisting of mixed-use facilities built in compact clusters to save development time and money for the university, which serves as a base of advanced research, a model of sustainable design and construction, and a stimulus to economic growth and diversification throughout the region. The university has won numerous awards for sustainable design and construction and is reportedly the only campus in the country to have earned LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for every one of its buildings.
UC Merced is the first new UC campus in 40 years and the first American research university of the 21st century. Dedicated to increasing college-going rates among students in the San Joaquin Valley, the campus has the largest percentage of first-generation college students, students from low-income families, and students from underrepresented ethnic groups in the 10-campus UC system.