Sure, UVA’s all about education, but it’s also quite the savvy real estate company. The University of Virginia Foundation, UVA’s primary real estate management firm, manages $230 million in real estate holdings all over Albemarle County. It’s also the parent company for the Boar’s Head Inn, which is set to add 17,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space in 2007.
The Foundation’s other big properties include Fontaine and University of Virginia research parks, and Morven Farm (a 7,379-acre gift from John W. Kluge worth more than $45 million). That property, in southeastern Albemarle, holds 11 farms and estates and covers 11.5 square miles—bigger than the entire city of Charlottesville. Tack on 31 residential properties, 18 office buildings, three apartment buildings, two chapels and one former hospital, and you’ve got the area’s largest real estate holder, by far.
The Boar’s Head Inn, purchased in 1988, is one of the UVA Foundation’s two hotels. A $10 million addition to be built by R.E. Lee Construction will add conference space and a 6,000 square foot ballroom to the existing Ednam building. Tim Rose, CEO of UVA Foundation, says the addition is a Boar’s Head project. “Any projects are done with bank financing, like a private developer would do, so the payment back to the banks comes from the operating entity,” he explains. Borrowers like Boar’s Head do have the UVA Foundation’s name behind them.
In total, UVA Foundation has put over $20 million into updating the Inn, including $7.5 million last year for the Boar’s Head Sports Club, used by UVA’s tennis teams.
The Boar’s Head and UVA’s Cavalier Inn operate for profit, Rose says. For-profit ventures make up 12 percent of the foundation’s holdings. Other properties—especially spaces leased to the University—are nonprofit, so the proceeds go back to UVA. The UVA Foundation also handles real estate gifts—since 1992, it’s processed over $60 millon in gifted properties.
When it comes to real estate, apparently it’s UVA’s county…we just live in it.
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