University Center Sold for $201 Million to Blue Vista Capital Management

In case you missed this last week (via Crains):

Three downtown colleges have switched from landlord to tenant after completing the biggest student housing deal ever in Chicago.

A nonprofit formed by the three schools—Columbia College, DePaul University and Roosevelt University—just completed the $201 million sale of University Center, a 1,729-bed building in the South Loop where their students live, according to Cook County property records. The nonprofit sold the 18-story building at 525 S. State St. to a joint venture led by Blue Vista Capital Management, a Chicago-based real estate investment firm that specializes in student housing.

The deal will free up money for the schools to spend on other purposes, though they now will pay rent to Blue Vista. Under the deal, the colleges signed agreements to lease a "vast majority" of the beds in the property for 10 years, said Blue Vista co-founder and CEO Peter Stelian, declining to elaborate. Another local school, Robert Morris University Illinois, has signed a shorter-term master lease for a batch of beds in the building, too.

That's a lot of money - but we guess it's a pretty big building in a pretty prime location.