QU President: Northern Hamden Will Be a "Collegiate Neighborhood"

Quinnipiac University envisions turning the northern section of Hamden into a "college town" by increasing its student population from the current 7,000 students to 10,000, buying up houses along Whitney Avenue and converting that road into a boulevard, according to an interview with university President John Lahey in the school's student newspaper.

The Quinnipiac Chronicle reports that Lahey terms relations with the town as "hot and cold" over the past two-and-a half decades as the school has experienced expansion of its campus and programs. But that growth also has benefited the town, he said, and especially its businesses.
 

• “We’re the most significant economic driver for the town of Hamden," he told the student newspaper. "That helps everyone and I think the business community is very appreciative of that. The business community, I can tell you, in Hamden has been thrilled with our growth, so is North Haven,” he said.  

According to Lehey, the university is working with state officials "to convert the area of Whitney Avenue into a boulevard, in hopes of making northern Hamden a college town," the Chronicle reports.

• “We want to turn that whole strip along Whitney Avenue into a very much collegiate neighborhood,” he said. "With the strip, the university plans to add a Quinnipiac Inn, a Quinnipiac theater for the theater program and more attractions such as Starbucks and Barnes and Nobles," according to Lahey. “It’s improving, but it’s not what I would say an esthetically beautiful collegiate sort of strip there,” he said. The university is also in the process in buying “as many of the houses along Whitney Avenue there are possible,” Lahey said. If the university obtains these houses and decide not to use them for housing, the university plans to use them for administrative purposes, the radio station, QU Online or other activities, according to Lahey."

The university also has no intention of requiring students to live on campus, Lahey said, something the town has advocated for and was raised as recently as this month at a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.

• “We’ve said absolutely not,” Lahey told the student newspaper. “We have consistently said that that’s not a policy we can adopt, and it doesn’t make sense for our students to do that. It will be particularly limiting to students who do internships and have jobs, and who are seniors, in most cases, who are 21 and would prefer to live with fewer rules.”

Lahey says the university will continue to build dorms so room will be available to students who do want student housing. But Quinnipiac attorney Bernard Pelligrino said the university currently has hundreds of empty rooms in older dorms that students don't find attractive enough to want to live there.

The students recently arrested at off-campus parties are subject to the same disciplinary process as those living on campus, Lahey said. But if there are more students living in off-campus housing than zoning regulations allow, "that's not a Quinnipiac problem."

• "...it may be Quinnipiac students, but we don’t have more than four people in a university-owned house, and we own over 100 houses, none of those are problems," he told the newspaper. "That’s the town’s responsibility, not our responsibility."

But the university comes down hard on students who violate rules of conduct, he said: 

• “I would say the overwhelming majority of students living off campus are very responsible, very good neighbors and don’t have issues,” he told the Chronicle. “And the few that do, we certainly, and the town knows this, when we find a student who violates that, we’re tough; we’ve thrown students out of dormitories, university housing, we’ve thrown them out the university, we’ve been sued and won in court some years past for throwing students out for running an illegal bar.”

 
Read the Chronicle's story here. The video attached to this story is by Q30 Television.