Despite the Covid-19 crisis, Bowie State University is on track to complete its new $42 million entrepreneurship hub and dormitory building by summer 2021, President Aminta Breaux tells the Washington Business Journal.
The new project, dubbed the Entrepreneurship Living-Learning Community, is expected to come online in July and aims to serve as a “gateway” between the growing historically Black university in Prince George’s County, Breaux said.
“For many years we were very understated in what we do here,” she said. “Entrepreneurship is just one of those assets we can provide the larger community. That building is designed to link us even more.”
The 168,000-square-foot building will be the first thing folks arriving at the school will see, as it will sit at the campus’s entrance at Laurel Bowie Road and Jericho Park Road. It will act as a residence hall, student-business incubator and a platform for the university to partner with the businesses and communities in Greater Washington.
The building will be home to the Bowie Business Innovation Center, a nonprofit business incubator founded by the city of Bowie in 2012. It will also house the university's growing Entrepreneurship Academy. The program was initially a minor within the university’s school of business, but has since been expanded to have a presence in nearly every discipline. There are now hundreds of students with in the program. The building will serve as a place to showcase student work, said Breaux.
The ground floor will also include some 6,000 square feet of retail space. Breaux hopes the storefronts will give some of the thousands of motorists passing on Route 197 a reason to stop and be curious about the school.
“I believe that building will afford us new opportunities to bring other commercial enterprises to the campus and afford space for our students with startups to test out some of their businesses in that space,” she said.
Bowie State hasn't announced any retail tenants for the building yet. The pandemic has affected both retail space and commuting patterns in Greater Washington, which could have an impact on leasing.
Regardless, the housing is needed. The university has seen a sharp rise in enrollment over the last few years. It currently has 6,300 students, almost 1,000 more than four years ago. Before the pandemic forced the transition to mostly online learning, Bowie State used apartment complexes in College Park as overflow housing and shuttled students to its campus.
But housing as many students on campus as possible is part of Breaux's long-term plan to continue to build up Bowie State's already improving graduation and retention rates.
If students are on campus, they are more likely to take advantage of additional services that can help them graduate, she added.
In a post-virus world, the new residence hall will house roughly 500 students, bringing the total number of students housed on and off campus to more than 2,100. Currently, due to the pandemic, only first-year students are living on campus.
An earlier version of this article misstated the founder of the Bowie Business Innovation Center. It was started by the city of Bowie.
