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GREENSBORO — Melanie Bassett enjoys a peaceful coexistence with the UNCG students who rent property in her historic College Hill neighborhood.

What Bassett finds hard to make peace with, though, is the idea of a housing complex planned for more than 700 students just 10 feet from her 83-year-old home.

“It’s massive. It’s towering. It’s a campus,” Bassett said of the project, “and I never signed up to live on campus. It’s not what I spent my life savings on.”

Edwards Communities of Columbus, Ohio, has proposed building the housing complex, The Province.

The primary site the company is contracting for is the Newman Machine Co. on Jackson Street. The $45 million project will span about 10 acres, said Steven Simonetti, vice president of land acquisition and development with Edwards Communities.

“We’re going to come in and remove the entire building,” Simonetti said. “We’re going to clean up all the environmental issues. We’re going to spend $45 million building a mostly brick community. We’re going to maintain the topography. And we’re going to make it a very nice, very pleasant place to live and place to be near.”

But College Hill residents object to the project’s scale and density and say it could return the neighborhood to what they have spent 30 years trying to get away from.

Bassett, who has lived in College Hill off and on for 40 years, said the neighborhood fell into disrepair in the 1970s and became a magnet for transient populations. Millions of grant dollars were spent to help revitalize it, she said.

Today, College Hill is a mixture of cozy bungalows and stately Victorians, single-family homes and renters of various cultures, ages and backgrounds, Bassett said.

It’s one of Greensboro’s oldest communities, residents say, and historic jewels that make it special are sprinkled throughout the neighborhood. Bassett found original brick used to build her home while digging in her garden one day.

She pointed Thursday afternoon to what she said were original brick gutters that also line the curb at the corner of Lilly Avenue and South Mendenhall Street.

Residents maintain their streets by picking up trash, scrubbing graffiti and making calls to public works officials when abandoned furniture is left along the street for too long.

Bassett said 76 percent of College Hill residents are renters. She fears The Province would create a transient population that could force out the 24 percent of residents like herself who own their homes.

“I’ve been a teacher for 35 years. I’m not against students,” Bassett said. “I lend the students next door my garden furniture for their party. But there are three of them. There are not 750 of them.”

What residents like so much about College Hill is also what attracted Simonetti’s company to the property.

“Greensboro has been on the top of our list for over three years of places we’d like to build because of the school (UNCG) and because of the community,” Simonetti said.

“We are anxious and honored to be considered a part of the Greensboro community and a neighbor both in College Hill and for the university.”

Edwards has been developing and managing multifamily housing along the East Coast for more than 40 years and student housing for about a decade. Simonetti said the company specializes in high-end student complexes within walking distance of universities.

The Province would feature town house units that students rent by the bed. Prices will range from $500 to $600 a month and include furniture, cable and utilities.

Company officials have held multiple meetings with residents over the past several months about their plans, and Simonetti said the project was scaled back somewhat to address residents’ concerns. It originally was planned to house 770 students, but that has been reduced by about 50 beds. Buildings next to single-family houses will be limited to no more than two stories, and the company has agreed to fencing to buffer the property from the neighborhood.

Not all College Hill residents are against The Province.

“I can’t wait till they get it done,” said Don Gaston, who lives on Carr Street.

Gaston said in the five years since he bought his house, there has been a lot of talk of updating homes, cleaning up the neighborhood and wanting to see fewer slumlords buying the homes to rent to students.

The new development also will rid the neighborhood of a “super blighted” area that he said attracts derelicts and crime.

“It seems to me that this is the perfect answer for this neighborhood to get a hold of itself again,” Gaston said.

The College Hill Neighborhood Association formed a committee to fight the project. Its members wear “Save College Hill” buttons and have signs peppering their yards bearing the same message.

Residents took an early step in their battle Thursday afternoon when they filed a protest petition with the city. The filing of the petition came more than a week before the city zoning board will have its say about the proposal.

“It basically lets the developer know that we’re not laying down taking this quietly,” resident Ron Walters said after filing the petition.

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 373-7080 or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com