On Wednesday, in a 4-2 vote (with one abstention), the Nashville Industrial Development Board agreed to issue up to $180 million in bonds for the development of a new student housing complex near Tennessee State University. The project — called the Cobblestone Village Residence — will be developed by Cobblestone Development and Consulting, a firm headquartered in Sugar Land, Texas. Construction is projected to begin in June and finish by the fall semester of 2026.
Cobblestone Village Residence will be next to the campus at 1200 W.H. Davis Drive. Two six-story buildings will hold 155 units with a total of 280,000 square feet. Three-bed, four-bed and five-bed floor plans will bring in 719 total beds. A 10,500-square-foot bioretention system will also be incorporated.
Move comes as comptroller's office issues audit reports including findings from 2019
To develop the project, Cobblestone — a Black-owned firm — is partnering with Lamar Johnson Collaborative (planning and design), Mesirow Financial (underwriter), AECOM Hunt (program management and construction), Cardinal Group (property management) and the National Development and Infrastructure Corporation (bonds issuing).
“This [public-private partnership] deal is a monumental stride in our continuous efforts to elevate the TSU campus and student life,” says Cobblestone CEO and managing partner Odis Jones in a release. “By meeting the pressing demand for quality student housing, we are not just investing in our university's infrastructure, but also in our students' well-being and success."
The housing comes during a tumultuous period for TSU. President Glenda Glover is retiring, and the historically Black university's board of trustees was recently vacated by the Tennessee General Assembly’s Republican supermajority. These lawmakers pointed to issues at the university that were outlined in a 2023 report from the state comptroller. Student housing was included among those issues, and indeed the university has had to send some students to hotels when there wasn’t enough student housing.
TSU advocates point to decades of underfunding surpassing $2 billion as the root cause for some of these issues. In 2022, the state allocated $250 million to TSU, which has been used for infrastructure improvements not related to student housing.
