By SAM GAUNTT
Courtesy of the University of Maryland
University of Maryland (UMD) graduate students will have a new housing option when the college’s planned Leonardtown apartments become available near downtown College Park in two years.
The 465-unit building, which will be located on the site of the now-demolished Old Leonardtown apartments on the east side of Baltimore Avenue, will offer another housing option for some of the university’s more than 10,000 graduate students. The development is slated for completion in August 2026 and will create a new street, Graduate Way.
Some city leaders said the project will have a positive impact not only on the university’s graduate students but on the city as well.
College Park City Councilmember John Rigg (District 3) said he’s enthusiastic about the project near Norwich Road and Rhode Island Avenue.
“It’ll be a vast improvement over the status quo,” Rigg said. “It’ll provide much needed housing at below market for some of our residents who have the most financial needs.”
The development will join two other graduate student housing complexes near campus: Graduate Gardens, on Rowalt Drive, and Graduate Hills, on Tulane Drive near Adelphi Road. Both are on university-owned properties and are operated by an independent management company.
The Courtyards, an apartment complex near the Xfinity Center, houses undergraduates and has some units reserved for graduate students as well.
Varaa Kukreti, the new president of the UMD’s Graduate Student Government (GSG), said the project is a “step in the right direction” for graduate student housing.
“The demand is very high for affordable housing or places which are relatively cheap, like Graduate Gardens and Graduate Hills,” Kukreti, an engineering and cybersecurity graduate student, said.
Kukreti added while the new Leonardtown apartments will not be as affordable as graduate students would like, the addition is still a plus “because we already have a scarcity of enough housing options for grad students.”
According to Edward Maginnis Jr., UMD’s assistant vice president for real estate, studio apartments in the Leonardtown development will rent for around $1,350 a month.
Some UMD graduate students earn stipends ranging from $26,304 over nine months to $36,446 for a year to conduct research or teach while they go to school.
City Councilmember Stuart Adams (District 3) said the Leonardtown project is “absolutely the type of development that we’ve been asking for in College Park.”
“I think it’s pretty much a home run in terms of aligning with what the community, both university and long-term residents, are asking for,” Adams said.
The university initially sought to build a graduate student housing complex, Western Gateway, on the south side of campus.
That development was slated for a parcel in Guilford Woods, just below campus. The plan was derailed when students and community members protested the deforestation of the woods. The university announced in October 2021 that it would not develop the land.
At that time, UMD President Darryll J. Pines and former GSG President Tamara Allard said in a statement that the university would “continue to listen, learn and adapt plans to address the critical need for graduate housing.”
Adams said the Leonardtown development shows the university is listening to the students and residents who want more affordable housing that is close to the campus and the Metro station, but doesn’t require deforestation of the designated site.
Rigg said bringing another graduate student housing complex to the city may help local businesses with what he called the “eight-month economy.”
During academic breaks over the summer and winter, Rigg said, many local businesses struggle when undergraduate students leave College Park.
“I think it will increase the number of residents who are living in the town year-round, which is a long-term goal of the City of College Park, to kind of increase that 12-month population,” Rigg said. “I think this helps in that regard.”
In a May 7 presentation to the city council, Maginnis said for a long time, the university has had only 750 beds for graduate students in its housing complexes.
“The graduate student community has been underserved in that way,” Maginnis said during the presentation. “This is a really fantastic product.”
The Leonardtown development will include more than 200 parking spaces, multiple charging stations for electric vehicles and 120 spots for bicycles.
“We’re heading in the right direction,” Adams said. “It seems to be very much appreciated by the grad students in the community. It seems to align with what the community is looking for as well — the larger community.”
