Rutgers Newark Developing Honors Living-Learning Community With RBH Group

Ron Beit, founder of RBH Group, is collaborating with Rutgers-Newark on the Honors Living-Learning Community project

NEWARK, NJ—Rutgers University-Newark and RBH Group , a Newark-based social impact development company, are creating a state-of-the-art learning and residence facility with dining, recreational, and academic spaces that will house upwards of 400 talented undergraduate students. The approximately $70 million, 400-bed Honors Living-Learning Community will be a mixed-use development that will include residences, classrooms/work spaces, street level retail and parking, as well as a vibrant, open space that will be a gathering place for RU-N and the surrounding community. The estimated 320,000-square-foot project will include 30,000 square feet of ground floor retail. It will be located on the block bounded by New, Washington, Halsey and Linden Streets in downtown Newark. Perkins Eastman , an international architecture, design and planning firm, will design the project. Construction is expected to begin in late 2016 and be completed in 2018. The Honors Living-Learning Community is a transformative college access and success program that fosters the academic, social, and personal development of talented students from all walks of life with a desire to make a difference in their communities and beyond. With an innovative curriculum centered on themes of “Local Citizenship in a Global World,” the HLLC is an innovative RU-N initiative that is revolutionizing the notion of “honors” by creating intergenerational and interdisciplinary learning communities comprised of students, faculty, and community partners focused on tackling some of the nation’s most pressing social issues. The current, inaugural cohort of 30 students will be joined by 60 more in fall 2016 who were selected from over 750 applicants. HLLC cohorts are planned to reach a steady state of 100 students per year by 2018, including first-year students and community college transfers. The University selected RBH Group as the developer of this exciting urban learning community based on a number factors, including its commitment to social impact development in Newark and other emerging urban centers, as well as its development of Newark’s Teachers Village , a national model for transformative urban living and learning. Teachers Village is a mixed-use development comprising 204 workforce-housing units, three schools, an early childhood learning center, and over 60,000 square feet of retail space. “We see the creation and development of the Honors Living-Learning Community as the physical embodiment of our aspirations for higher education—not only how we need to get much better at identifying and cultivating true talent in students, but in how faculty and staff both nurture and learn from that talent, and therefore advance and increase the impact of their scholarship and professionalism,” says RU-N Chancellor Nancy Cantor . “This unique living space will catalyze all of that and we could not think of a better partner than Ron Beit , and RBH Group , with whom we clearly share a deep commitment to leveraging Newark’s tremendous assets—first and foremost its people—to continue driving the city’s and region’s revitalization.” “The development of the HLLC complements our mission to develop projects in Newark in partnership with a full range of community partners,” says Beit, RBH founder and CEO. “We are dedicated to creating affirmative social good by developing innovative and sustainable spaces in urban cores.” “The HLLC builds on our ongoing work with urban colleges and universities throughout the country to ‘engage the city,’ and our continuing commitment to match pioneering programs like the HLLC with innovative design,” says Perkins Eastman’s Eric Fang AIA, AICP, LEED AP , principal-in-charge of the project. “This project will create economic opportunities and prosperity for Newark entrepreneurs through the construction process and the retail stores it creates,” says Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka . “It will also provide housing and classroom facilities for more than 400 of our very best undergraduate students, who will use the facilities to tackle major issues that affect our City, state, and nation, and write the plans and agenda by which we will build our future.” The leaders of the HLLC include executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer Shirley M. Collado , senior advisor to the chancellor and associate dean of Arts & Sciences Sherri-Ann Butterfield and HLLC associate dean Marta Esquilin .