Spencer Finley

Politics Editor

sjf5814@psu.edu

The UGates Apartment complex near Behrend was  recently acquired by new owners. In January 2022, Politics Editor Spencer Finley and Editor-in-Chief Claudia Rivera were given the opportunity to interview the new owner, Sidhartha Singh, and property manager Angela Weaver. 

Singh is a businessman. He told us that he grew up in England, and he went to New York University to get his MBA. He said that after he earned his MBA, he started working for UBS Investment Bank. After that, he worked for Goldman Sachs. After working at Goldman Sachs, he and one of his former coworkers went into business buying distressed loans.  He said that in about 2012 “we wanted to go different directions.” He continued that “I started buying distressed debt that was backed up by real estate.” He says that “The deal sizes have slowly gotten bigger over time.” 

Singh has been interested in buying UGates for quite a while. He went into a brief history of the property, including its construction in 2008 and its repossession from its previous owner by the bank. He said that “Our company actually owns other property in Erie and Erie County, and I’ve always liked University Gates. There’s a lot of things to like about it, it’s a nice property overall.” He continued that “I think it’s really good for the students, and I think it’s a good option for students who want to live here. So we tried to buy it from the lender a handful of times, and we’d always been denied, and then in December of 2021, this was put on the auction block, and basically we won it at auction, and we’re very happy that we ended up acquiring it.”

When asked about plans for the property, Weaver said that “We have made some minor upgrades to units.” Singh added that “There’s 132 units, with 485 beds. I think that about 35 of them have been newly renovated. We’re looking at going building-by-building over the next several years. I don’t know exactly what the timeframe is going to be yet, but we are going to be over the next few years to have all of the units renovated.” He continued that “The intent is to have it, honestly, upgraded for the next step away from campus. We don’t want it to become just a dorm, exactly the same as it was.” Weaver added that “We don’t want it to have a dorm feel because an apartment when you’re in college- I mean, from my experience, once I started to leave campus and I did rent- I mean, I wanted it to feel like an apartment, and like my home, and not a dorm.” She continued, “I think a lot of students can relate to that.” She also elaborated on other improvements that they were looking at making. She said that “We have UPS, USPS, FedEx, Amazon delivering packages, and it has become a part-time job to disperse packages, which is silly in the world of automation that we live in now.” She continued that “We’ll be doing something like Luxer One- they have package lockers.” She continued that “So our delivery services instead of dumping it in our offices, they’ll come up to this machine, they’ll scan the box, a locker will pop open. Then our attendants will get an email saying ‘Here’s your six-digit code, go retrieve your package.’ Then they have access to get their stuff 24 seven, versus ‘the office is closed, I can’t get my package until Monday.’” 

When asked why students should choose UGates, Singh said that “The truth is, college is a very finite time. You make some amazing memories, you make some amazing friends. Yes, you’re a full-time student, absolutely, that is your first task.” He continued that “I just think that Ugates is such a natural step when you feel that ‘I don’t want to live on campus, but I want all the campus activity.’” This encapsulates the credo of UGates- the conveniences of on-campus housing without any of the hassle.