Towering above the passers-by of Columbus Avenue is Northeastern University’s newest addition to student housing. The LightView apartments, located across the street from the Badger and Rosen Squashbusters Center, are slated to open in August 2019. The 20-story, 825-bed residence hall will be available exclusively to third-year students and above.
Although still under construction, LightView is raising the bar for student housing. The state-of-the-art apartment complex will feature 24-hour concierge service, a cafe, a spacious gym, a game center, multiple study spots for both group and individual work, and even a 90s-inspired room with record players and vinyl. Students will also have access to free wifi and free printing. The building’s interior design will be modern and adorned with contemporary decor.
The apartments appear to be as impressive as the rest of the building. Each apartment option—regardless of what the student selects—will have a living space surrounded with floor-to-ceiling windows, a kitchen with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, a dining space, bedrooms with generous closets, and in some cases, private bathrooms. The apartments will also come furnished with leather sectional sofas, barstools, TV stands, dressers, and full-sized beds.
The apartments come with a hefty price tag. The “economy” or “standard” options that students typically observe in Northeastern housing are unfortunately not offered. Even the “enhanced” rates of West Village and Davenport are considerably cheaper than LightView. To compare West Village and LightView with one another, a private bedroom in West Village is approximately $6,960 per semester—which translates to $1,160 a month—whereas LightView can be upwards of $1,589 per month. However, there is no broker’s fee, which is a fee most students need to consider when leasing their off-campus apartments. Even though leasing an apartment through LightView is binding, students can break their leases without a fee if they need to go on co-op.
LightView is approved Northeastern housing, not owned and/or operated by Northeastern. This means that LightView will not be part of Northeastern’s on-campus housing lottery. Instead, American Campus Communities, or ACC, will manage the building upon opening. ACC, one of the nation’s largest student housing developer, has developed similar projects across the country. This will be their first project in Boston.
On September 8, members of the Northeastern community were invited to a topping-off ceremony featuring live music, Amelia’s Taqueria catering, and a $10,000 scholarship giveaway. Students could tour an apartment model located within the LightView office building. Some students even had the opportunity to sign leases.
“It was cool to finally see what has become of the LightView construction,” said Grant Denmark, a third-year cell and molecular biology major who attended the event. “I definitely think the event was a good opportunity to learn more about the apartments.”
Northeastern’s decision to partner with LightView arose from the need for more student housing. Many students are calling the Lightview apartments “a necessary addition” to Northeastern’s infamous housing crisis. Students continue to be housed in the Midtown Hotel regardless of promises made to increase availability for on-campus housing. Last semester, Northeastern housing claimed that they would not offer the Midtown Hotel as an option in the future, but as many as 80 students continue to live there. Furthermore, many transfer students face similar housing situations. Because they are not guaranteed on-campus housing, transfer students usually resort to off-campus options, some of which are so far away that commuting on the T is unavoidable. As a result, many transfer students feel isolated and out-of-touch with the rest of the student body.
Because of their proximity to campus, the new apartments will allocate more options for students to live on-campus. Students will no longer have to commute 45 minutes on the T from the Commonwealth residence building and no longer have to occupy rooms in the Midtown Hotel; they can have more of an on-campus presence.
However, Pippa White, a second-year English major, has other feelings towards LightView. Lightview’s high housing rates are often at the center of debate, some arguing that the apartments’ price tags are not worth it. Although she agrees that LightView’s convenient location to campus will allow many students to feel connected to Northeastern, she claims that the price tag is a huge trade-off, even for off-campus housing.
“I think the new dorms do nothing to deter me from living off campus next year. Living off campus is just a way more affordable option especially considering you can end up paying half the price of what we now pay for on-campus housing,” said White.
LightView will not only benefit the students at Northeastern but also Boston as a whole. According to a Northeastern news article, the new residence hall will allow more families to live in the Roxbury, Mission Hill, Fenway, and South End neighborhoods, where rent is typically expensive. Because many students occupy residence in these areas, rent prices rise, thus precluding affordable housing for others. Boston’s efforts to pull students back to campus are ongoing. The city plans to create 18,500 new undergraduate student beds by 2030. This would reduce the number of students living off-campus in Boston by 50 percent.