More residents choosing to live farther from downtown area

Whether it's due to problems associated with college students, older houses with smaller amounts of land or traffic congestion, more and more Centre Region residents prefer to live outside the downtown State College area.

In 1956, Park Forest Village in Patton Township became the first large suburban development outside the borough. The village was completed in the early '90s. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the village had a population of 6,703 in 1990, comprising 67 percent of the township's population.

A decade after Park Forest began, Toftrees became the next major development in the Centre Region. The development, which includes apartments, hotels, homes and other structures, was one of the first planned communities in Pennsylvania, according to a Patton Township profile.

With a population increase from 1,289 in 1950 to 9,971 in 1990, Patton Township is just one of five area townships experiencing growth. College, Ferguson, Halfmoon and Harris Townships are also all attracting new residents.

And while the borough still houses staples such as Schlow Library, several post offices and a high school, the townships seem to represent the homes of choice for many Centre Region residents.

An increase in the number of families that prefer to live outside the borough has resulted in a rapid growth of the number of suburban developments in the surrounding townships, said Wendell Williams, co-owner of Prudential Williams & Associates Realtors, 2214 N. Atherton St.

"Those people that move to the Stormstown area, for example, just want a little more land," she said.

While there are developments in other townships not included in the Centre Region, Rupert said the State College Area School District is a major selling point for real estate in Centre Region developments. "It always has been, and it still is," she said.

But while the outlying townships are experiencing a growth in residential developments, they are also seeing an increase in University undergraduate student housing.

State College Park in Ferguson Township opened in 1991, and last fall the Jefferson Commons and University Commons apartment complexes opened there. These three complexes alone house 2,140 people -- mostly students.

Some housing areas in the borough still appeal to family home-buyers, Williams said, citing parts of College Heights and an area near Sparks Street.

And with many new residents still coming into the area, borough officials and residents are trying to preserve nonstudent housing.

"There's been a lot of pressure from neighborhood groups to preserve the single-family housing in the downtown area," Williams said.

However, he said there is equal pressure from student housing organizations that represent students in need of housing.

"That's also a legitimate need," he said.

Convenience to downtown, schools and parks is one of the reasons Rupert said families choose to live downtown.

Rupert said she thinks the downtown realty market has stayed the same over the past couple decades. "I don't think that it's changed a whole lot," she said. "Some people prefer to live in the borough (of State College) and some don't."

Rupert said the townships are experiencing growth only because those areas are where the available land is.

"In the outlying areas further away it's expanding only because there's no land left to build downtown."