News & Insights
Photo courtesy of: Greg Land
Enrollment is exploding at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Over the last five years, the university has seen a breathtaking 20% increase in enrollment, with a near 4.5% increase since the Fall 2024 semester alone.
With thousands of Volunteers flocking to Knoxville each school year, the city’s expensive housing market – tightened by the university’s success – has experienced a strain like never before. And at the same time, UTK was reckoning with a substantial portion of its housing inventory coming to the end of its useful life. During the previous 10 years the university had torn down and replaced nearly 3,000 beds, but even with these efforts more than half of its inventory was still at least 55 years old.
University leadership could see that the combination of the tight housing market and the need to place students in near-end-of-life facilities would soon start to undermine the high-quality Volunteer Experience that was drawing students to the university. UTK needed a new strategy to replace and grow their housing inventory at the required pace. “The university needed housing, and they needed it fast,” said B&D Director Kevin Mara. “We helped the University of Tennessee to strategically craft a partnership model that would help the university build quality housing quickly.”
As a result, the university entered a public-private partnership that was first-of-its-kind for the state of Tennessee. This partnership focused on schedule certainty, affordability for students, and strategic risk transfer.
“The university wasn’t looking for an easy button to achieve their institutional goals,” said Mara. “B&D’s process was structured to bring key stakeholders together, allowing them to make important decisions quickly and to move forward in alignment with their institutional goals.”
Teamwork, collaboration, and mission-alignment were the not-so-secret recipe to the university’s success. And in Fall 2025, approximately 1,950 new beds were available to students at substantially less than the cost of a typical off-campus rental. A second phase of 1,020 beds are on schedule to open in Fall 2026. From master planning through ribbon cutting, the University will accomplish in four years through this partnership as much as it did in the decade prior, all while transferring risks related to financing, schedule, budget, and maintenance.
“The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is thriving, and the development of these new residence halls will help us build a more dynamic on-campus student experience and meet the needs of a growing student body while providing our students with affordable campus housing options,” said UTK Vice Chancellor for Student Life Frank Cuevas in a press release.
B&D was proud to serve as advisor and strategic partner to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, providing housing master planning, procurement strategy, partnership negotiations, and implementation oversight for the university’s housing expansion program. B&D is also partnering with the university to transform the land around Neyland Stadium into a vibrant, high-value mixed use district.
