Brown to renovate 12th College Hill house

PROVIDENCE – Brown University will renovate its 12th house in the College Hill neighborhood this summer for conversion to private ownership through a program that allows employees to purchase a home from the university.
All of the houses were tax-exempt prior to sale by the university, under its “Brown-to-Brown” program. The 11 homes sold since 2009 to faculty or staff represent about $5.5 million in assessed value, according to John Luipold, the university’s assistant vice president for real estate.
The latest house to be renovated, at 93 Benevolent St., once was the home of noted African-American artist Edward Mitchell Bannister. In addition to interior renovation, the exterior of the brick building will be returned to the original wood shingles.
The house, acquired by the university in 1989, has been vacant since the mid-1990s, according to the university. Brown began its “Brown-to-Brown” program in 2007, envisioned, in part, as a way to bolster retention of faculty and staff who had expressed interest in living close to campus. Other institutional goals include returning the structures to productive housing again, and converting them to taxable properties, Luipold said.
All of the program homes are in the College Hill neighborhood, almost all along the edge of campus, according to John Luipold, the university’s assistant vice president for real estate. Most of the holdings initially came to the university as gifts, or were purchased by the university in the 1970s and 1980s.
Under the program, the houses are renovated by contractors hired by Brown, then sold at 80 percent of market value to a qualifying faculty member or staff. The value is discounted because if the owner leaves Brown employment or otherwise wants to sell, the university retains the right to purchase the house back, also at 80 percent of its value.
So far, no one who has purchased a restored house through the program has sold a property, Luipold said.
Princeton University has a similar program, Luipold said.
“Every university has different pressure points and goals, and needs,” he said. “We identified a need that faculty and staff would like to have housing close to campus. We identified a supply of housing that was either vacant or under-utilized and at the same time, we knew the city would love to see more taxable property. It made a lot of sense for us.”
At Brown, the university often fields inquiries from homeowners who live nearby, who are interested in selling property. But the university is primarily interested in its immediate footprint in College Hill, and not in houses, Luipold said.
“Particularly in the residential area, we try to respect the edges,” he said. “If you look at the property we’ve acquired in the last five years or so, it’s almost all been in the Jewelry District.”

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