The asking price for a residence hall that the University of Iowa wants to sell is $45 million.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that the university has officially listed for sale the 326,000-square-foot Mayflower Residence Hall in Iowa City.
Estimating monthly payments at $306,181, the eight-story building has 523 rooms “built and furnished to house 1,015 residents as a dormitory, with one to four residents per unit,” according to a listing posted on Zillow.com. It is the second-largest residence hall on the University of Iowa campus,
Students will continue to be housing the facility in 2023-34; the university doesn’t plan to vacate the property until next summer.
The sale is part of the university’s housing master plan, which calls for building a 250- to 400-bed residence hall specifically for returning students.
University officials haven’t announced a specific timeline for the new residence hall, they predict it will cost $40 million to $60 million, part of which come from the Mayflower sale.
By ridding itself of the Mayflower property, which UI bought outright in 1982, the campus will shed deferred maintenance costs associated with the building — which are part of the UI’s current $1.2 billion backlog in building renewal needs.
The university has decided to sell Mayflower because it is more than a mile from the main campus and amenities like dining services and classes. It also is the “last chosen” and “first transferred from” residence hall by first-year students, given its location.
The building had been an apartment complex, and in 1979, the university began leasing portions of the building to help ease crowding. the university bought the facility outright in 1982. In 1999, it spent $1.5 million to renovate the building.
