AMHERST -- The University of Massachusetts Amherst will seek a developer to build housing for 1,000 undergraduates on what's now a series of parking lots on the south side of Massachusetts Avenue.

The project would also include the rebuilding of North Village Apartments, on the other side of campus at 990 North Pleasant St. Plans are to replace North Village Apartments on its current site and do the work in stages.

The 190-unit North Village Apartments was built in 1971 and is so worn out that many of its apartments are unrentable due to their condition and not worth the effort of repairing, according to university officials.

The university wants to do the projects as a public/private partnership, said Tony Maroulis, executive director of external relations and university events. Maroulis and Ed Blaguszewski, executive director of strategic communications and special assistant to the vice chancellor for university relations, briefed reporters on the project Wednesday afternoon as the UMass Trustees Committee on Administration and Finance voted in Boston to issue a request for proposals from interested developers.

That RFP would yield specifics like the cost of the project, but it won't hit the streets until January, and UMass probably won't get the proposals back until sometime in 2020.

Amherst Town Manager Paul Bockelman also briefed the Select Board on the project Wednesday night.

Maroulis, who once was head of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, said the undergraduate housing gives Amherst what it wants: more on-campus housing and fewer undergads living off campus. It also achieves the town-gown goal of blurring the lines between UMass and Amherst, bringing undergrads to downtown businesses and inviting the community on campus.

But Bockelman is not so sure. The site is parking lots now. And it abuts the Fearing Street neighborhood. Residents on Fearing Street and its side streets don't like UMass students walking through their neighborhood.

"There are undeniable impacts from that," Bokelman said during a separate interview before the meeting. "We will be watching this project very closely."

Maroulis said the university wants to work with Amherst. But when pressed, he said the proper zoning is already in place. UMass doesn't need the town's approval to do what it wants to do.

Blaguszewski said research UMass has done on its student body shows that students want to live close to the main part of campus. The Massachusetts Avenue site would do that.

Maroulis said that if UMass builds space for 1,000 undergrads, it would pull in about 600 students who otherwise would live off campus, according to their research. The remaining 400 beds would give the university wriggle room to shut down existing dormitories temporarily and make much needed renovations.

The Massachusetts Avenue construction would be in apartments: studios and one- or two-bedroom units. The university would not build traditional dorm rooms, which have fallen out of favor with students.

Maroulis said there is a possibility that the Massachusetts Avenue complex could contain some retail. But it wouldn't need a dining commons as it is close to three existing cafeterias.

He said the housing would be managed, either by the developer or by the UMass student housing system.

The broad outlines -- and that's all there is publicly available at this point -- come form a formal request for information UMass issued in July 2017. That document was a way for the university to gauge interest and raised the possibilities of building not just housing but also retail, restaurants or a medical clinic, a second hotel on campus and improvements to Warren McGuirk Alumni Stadium.

At the time, UMass was looking at four sites. North Amherst and University Drive are no longer in play.

"The responses we got back showed the interest was clearly in housing," Maroulis said.

This would be the first public/private partnership at UMass Amherst, but it would follow the partnership project that built UMass Boston's first ever student housing. That housing opened this year. A similar partnership is in place for a dormitory and dining commons at UMass Dartmouth that is now under construction.

Under the partnership, a developer would build and own the housing and make its money back and its profit from renting it to students. The developer could lease the land from UMass or some other mechanism could be used, Maroulis said.

The university would get the buildings at the end of the term.

The partnership gets the building built and keeps it off the university's balance sheet, Maroulis said, and it won't count toward the 8 percent debt cap set by trustees.

UMass has 13,000 beds for undergraduates, Blaguszewski said. In raw numbers, that gives the Amherst flagship the third-largest undergraduate on-campus living population in the United States.

UMass' newest housing is the Commonwealth Honors College Residential Community, with 1,379 beds. It opened in 2013.

Total undergraduate enrollment is estimated at 22,000, up from last year's 21,766.