University leases Valentine Tower to RIT

Valentine Tower is an eleven-story building with 84 furnished apartments and can accommodate 210 students. Once used for graduate living quarters, in recent years it had been used to house undergraduate students. Under the Rochester Renaissance Plan, the planned decrease in the River Campus undergraduate population--entering classes are now limited to 900 highly qualified students, in order to enhance the collegial environment--means that the tower was available for other purposes.

The adjacent tower, De Kiewiet, will continue to be occupied by University undergraduates. Excluding the RIT students at Valentine, the University's residential system is expected to house 4,100 undergraduate and graduate students in the coming year. Another 155 will live in fraternity houses.

The University's offer to RIT to lease Valentine Tower was a product of the Re-engineering Rochester initiative at the University. "This agreement with RIT means that our excess capacity is used, and RIT has an appropriate place to house students as it makes its own renovations," said Richard P. Miller, Jr., senior vice president and chief operating officer. "It works out perfectly for both of us."