LOS ANGELES — When the University of Southern California’s campus extension opens in South Los Angeles on Thursday, it will not just welcome 2,700 new college students. It will also be an ambitious test of a public-private partnership hoping to remake a historically underserved neighborhood.

The $700 million USC Village is a sprawling addition to the university, extending across 15 acres as part of the school’s efforts to expand the availability of student housing and increase the amount of academic space it has. The university broke ground on the project in September 2014, part of a $6 billion campaign to bolster its endowment, scholarships, research funds and overall investment.

The project’s scale is enormous, adding a total of three million square feet of student housing, retail, academic and green space. When it opens, it will effectively have added a neighborhood’s worth of stores, including 15 restaurants, a pharmacy, a Trader Joe’s grocery store and a Target. There will be more than 250 trees, nearly 500 underground parking spaces and about 1,500 bike racks.