Quote Originally Posted by MSUguy View Post
UDM and Marygrove need to become less of commuter schools. One of the biggest factors in the turnaround in Midtown was a big increase in WSU students housing. That put more wallets in the area which attracted more businesses and we know the rest of the story. How and where that will happen is an issue given their small campuses and lack of large surrounding vacant parcels.
There's a chicken-and-egg problem to this. Two actually.

First, both of these schools are private [[i.e. no state funding) and neither is exactly swimming in cash. For more people to live on campus there would have to be more, and nicer, places TO live on campus. UDM's newest dormitories are 40+ years old.

Second, the neighborhoods don't really support the students and vice-versa. If it was reasonable to get to Ferndale from either place without a car, that would be a help, but it isn't and it isn't going to be in our lifetimes. I mention Ferndale because that is the closest place to the UDM campus that the kids hang out. The Livernois businesses serve the neighborhoods but aren't in any way student-focused; the last that really was, ABC Bookstore, closed a good many years ago.

If you look at the neighborhood around a mid-size college in any other city, you find lots of businesses set up specifically to take advantage of the student population. These things existed around Marygrove and UDM once, many, many years ago, but not anymore.