Some wealthy universities are helping small businesses around their campuses keep afloat as the coronavirus pandemic hits these enterprises’ bottom line, said a Bloomberg report on Crain’s New York Business.
Columbia UniversityFor instance, Colgate University, Williams College and Yale University have waived rent on commercial spaces they own. Columbia University in New York has done the same for dozens of businesses, including for the iconic Tom’s Restaurant, which was featured on the TV show Seinfeld.
The report quoted CoStar Group, a firm that tracks commercial real estate data, as saying that American colleges own about 20 million square feet of retail space.
“Looking across all of retail, these owners and tenants and the lenders also all depend on each other,” said Kevin Cody, a senior consultant at CoStar. “If one of them fails, the other two will be impacted by it negatively.”
