The partnership of Alum and Legends will develop facilities with residences, private clubs, meeting and event spaces as well as restaurants and, in some cases, pool clubs.Courtesy of Alum
Paul Brenneke was drinking whiskey out of a Solo cup at a Holiday Inn thinking to himself that he, a financially successful person in his late 40s, could do better. He should be staying in nicer digs. The only issue: In Boulder, Colo., where Brenneke was attending a college football game (his daughter attended the University of Colorado), he really couldn’t do much better.
The seed of what became Alum was born in between the sips from that very college-appropriate drinking vessel. This week, the Alum real estate brand announced a partnership with Legends to develop buildings in America’s college football hotbeds that contain residences, private membership clubs, meeting and event spaces, restaurants and, in warmer climes, outdoor pool clubs. A services agreement between Legends and Alum will see Legends operate the year-round membership clubs and restaurants and help Alum develop relationships with the college athletics world.
Alum is offering a home-share program in which owners’ residences can be rented out when not in use, with Alum handling everything from booking to cleaning and maintenance.
The concept is a collegiate affinity club crossed with a beach house.
“There are bits and pieces of this all over the place — not one place where this all comes together,” said Alum Chief Operating Officer David Vialli. “All the pieces that you have to go find for yourself, if they exist, we’re just putting it all under one roof.”
Alum, founded three years ago in Portland, will develop buildings containing roughly 90 to 100 condominium units, constructing them from scratch in, for example, Eugene, College Station and Tuscaloosa, where the first Alum will break ground this summer and open in either late 2025 or early 2026. The target is to develop 25 to 30 Alum locations nationwide, costing roughly $80 million each, at a rate of roughly three per year.
Mike Behan, president of Legends College, said the upper crust of college fan bases have been raising their hands asking for a better bookend to the four-hour game-day experience, especially those that regularly visit their alma mater.
Legends will operate year-round membership clubs and restaurants in each market.Courtesy of Alum
“It certainly plays off the need to create more sophistication around the entire athletics environment,” he said, as well as “fans’ expectations and desires to have an elevated experience.”
Each Alum property’s apartments will feature elevated design, flexible layouts and architecture specific to the site and reflective of the region. Alum’s condo unit pricing will vary by market.
Alum memberships will cost between $149 and $200 per month for access to the restaurant, club and event space and amenities, and priority booking for units (when they become available).Non-club members also will be able to rent the units.
Following his Boulder experience, Brenneke, a real estate and hospitality industry investor, and Vialli hopped in a car and drove around the southeastern U.S., visiting and studying the region’s college football hot spots and their markets. They teamed with Legends about two and a half years ago and have owned some of the sites under development about as long as that.
Alum is in various stages of planning for future locations in some of the country’s most revered college towns: Columbia, S.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Columbus, Ohio; Athens, Ga., Auburn, Ala.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Norman, Okla.
Alum is contributing upfront capital — as well as securing land, construction debt and entitlements — but wants further investment, i.e. the limited partners, to come from the local university’s donor base and alumni. That’s an area where Legends is expected to contribute, helping arrange those connections between Alum and locals.
“We want the locals to own this,” Vialli said. “This is their clubhouse, for all intents and purposes. The club already exists, we’re just putting together the clubhouse for them.”
Alum properties will exist in parallel to college sports, but there won’t be direct ties with universities or their athletic departments, at least initially.
That’s a long-term goal for Legends. That means identifying future markets for Alum developments through feasibility studies of markets and fan bases, as well as finding potential investors for those Alum projects (not to mention operating the club and restaurant when an Alum location opens).
“As we were putting together the Alum concept and looking for accretive ties, folks that had deep ties to the athletic community, to the ADs,” Vialli said, “we really saw them as the best partner to leverage their connections to the athletic departments and universities.”
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the Alum concept could feature tighter involvement with athletics departments in the future, especially if the Alum building was part of or connected to a new stadium or arena project. And Legends’ recently announced partnership with Blueprint Sports could come into play, creating name, image and likeness opportunities for student athletes and college athletics collectives at the Alum membership clubs, such as meet-and-greets between athletes and Alum members, for example.
“These are tangential to the universities,” Behan said, “but there are opportunities to integrate them more closely and we intend to look at those.”
