Development firm sells the Marshall student-housing complex to Syracuse University

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The firm responsible for the towering student-housing complex at 727 South Crouse Avenue near Syracuse University (SU) has sold it to the university.

Elmwood Park, New Jersey–based Aptitude Development announced the sale of the Marshall, per a news release. It didn’t include financial details, including the price SU paid to buy the complex.

The Marshall opened in 2018 and is named after the well-known street located just south of the complex. It was built on the site of what Aptitude Development described as a “dilapidated strip mall.”

It now houses almost 300 students and has businesses that include Five Guys and Kung Fu Tea, the developer said.

Syracuse University graduates Jared Hutter and Brian Rosen are the co-founders of Aptitude Development. Hutter and Rosen started their business by building in Syracuse, “purposefully” constructing their first two projects within the campus to “invest in and give back to the school that fostered their original idea” of developing student housing, per the release.

“We are proud Syracuse alumni and we hope that the university takes pride in our collective story and that it helps inspire current students to pursue careers in development,” Rosen, principal at Aptitude, said. “We will leave the market in Syracuse knowing we left it in a better place than we found it and that future generations will benefit.”

The Marshall is the second building Aptitude has sold in the Syracuse area. The first building, UPoint at 404 University Ave., was sold to Austin, Texas–based American Campus Communities (NYSE: ACC) in 2016.

“Marking the end of an era spent in the Syracuse area following the sale of the Marshall,” Aptitude Development says it is already expanding to markets across the U.S. The firm has also opened multiple projects at the University of Louisville, Coastal Carolina University, and the University of Arkansas. It also has construction projects in progress in Ithaca and in Birmingham, Alabama with “more than 10,000 beds on its drawing board from New York to California.”

Aptitude Development tells CNYBJ that the project in Ithaca is called the Ithacan and will serve students from Cornell University and Ithaca College.