"It's a sign of the times for Academy of Art University, the San Francisco-based art college that once attracted students from all over the country and now has many of its students taking classes remotely. Academy of Art may only be familiar to you because of their signage and advertising around town, or maybe you saw their ads in heavy rotation on TV at some point in your childhood."
"For those who have lived in San Francisco a decade or two, the for-profit school became symbolic of San Francisco's perennial housing woes, and became known as one of the city's biggest landowners and a kind of "corporate colonizer" of downtown, gobbling up residential real estate that might otherwise have been apartments. And then in 2016, following reporting on their playing fast and loose with the city's land-use rules, Academy of Art paid out $58 million to settle a lawsuit from the city"
Academy of Art University is a San Francisco-based art college that previously attracted students nationwide but now has many students studying remotely or in hybrid formats. The school assembled a portfolio of over 40 buildings around the city, with about half serving as dorms by 2019. The institution paid $58 million in 2016 to settle a lawsuit and later agreed to a $38 million settlement in 2020 related to removal of affordable housing. The university is marketing a group of 10 buildings as a "generational real estate portfolio" with an asking price around $130 million, including churches and residential properties formerly used for campus functions.
#academy-of-art-university #san-francisco-real-estate #affordable-housing-settlements #remotehybrid-learning
Read at sfist.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]