Want to spend the whole year in Miami? Care to live within the boundaries of campus without technically living in the residential colleges? Are you at least junior standing?
If your answers to all of these questions are yes, you could well be one of the first University of Miami students to bask in the glory of University Village, UM’s latest gem, overlooking the peaceful shores of.er.um.Red Road.
What could spell disaster for the school’s newest housing project is the fact that its greatest strength could also be its greatest weakness: location. So, students must be cautiously optimistic when hearing that a representative for JPI (the company operating University Village’s progress), says housing will be competitively priced for the area.
What “area”? University Village sits awkwardly in a proverbial no-man’s land, by what will eventually be the “old” School of Nursing. On the one hand, its within earshot of beautiful, quaint, decades-old Coral Gable houses. On the other, it’s just a stone’s throw from a much less “ritzy” area.
There is no doubt the University will point to its superb security to justify any pricing concerns, but other issues remain. Will the “community assistants” be rule-enforcing chaperones, as is the typical role of a resident assistant? Will the walk across San Amaro be safe at all hours? Will the parking situation become more complicated, with other students being angered by University Village residents taking “their” parking spaces?
UM can’t answer these concerns for now. But if these, or any other problems arise once the village is built, we’ll find the idiot.