A new high-end apartment community has opened in Patton Township.
Highwoods at Toftrees held the official ribbon cutting on its luxury apartments last week.The Berger Rental Communities property includes two buildings with 48 units each. The first building opened to residents in July and the second in August.
Regional property manager Katherine Smith said Berger has had a presence in the Centre Region since the late 1980s and owns seven of the sub-communities — the majority of homes– in Toftrees. She said Berger identified a demand in the local market for high-end housing for graduate students and professionals, and for Penn State alumni looking for a secondary residence.
‘We’ve been a part of the community here… During the process and being a part of the market for this long we noted that there is a lack of that kind of housing here in the area, so we found it would be best for us to gear toward that when we built these new buildings,’ she said.
Berger, which is based out of Wayne, Pa., purchased the property off of Toftrees Avenue for Highwoods in 2014. Site work began that fall and construction by contractor The Forino Co. got fully under way in the spring of 2015.
Among the features and amenities of the one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments are granite countertops, wood floors, high efficiency lighting, energy-efficient heating and cooling, and balconies or patios accessed from the master bedroom. Residents also have access to the community clubhouse with a fitness center, pool, lounge, business center, outdoor grill, and fire pit area.
Leasing for the apartments opened in January, and by the time the buildings opened this summer the units were fully occupied. Berger has a waitlist for potential openings in the summer of 2017.
Smith said the resident response has been positive.
‘Every single person has come in and said it’s the nicest place they have lived,’ she said. ‘This is what they’ve been looking for. They’ve been waiting for things like this in State College to come up. People are very very happy with it.’
In addition to graduate students and professionals, the apartments have proven popular among Penn State alumni who want a residence of their own when they visit Happy Valley.
‘We have a lot of alumni that this is not their primary housing. They use it for secondary housing,’ Smith said. ‘There are a lot of people who have season [football] tickets and instead of paying for weekend rentals find it’s more economic to have year-round housing. And because they love to return to the area during non-football season anyway its a nice thing for them to have. We did a fair amount of leasing at Highwoods for that but we also have a significant amount of rentals at the Toftrees community for alumni.’
Smith said there are no immediate plans for Berger to expand further, but the company is always looking if space becomes available.
‘We would love to continue to expand in this direction with more housing of this type,’ she said. ‘We will also look to continue our capital improvement plans on our existing homes here and perform upgrades.’
Highwoods at Toftrees was financed by Fulton Bank.
