Drive along South Lamar Boulevard through Oxford Farms this fall and you'll pass two addresses that explain more about this neighborhood's next few years than any subdivision brochure. At 2702 South Lamar Boulevard sits Beau Ridge at Oxford Farms, a senior living community that quietly opened in early 2023. A few minutes away at 2572 Oxford Way sits Ivy & Elm, a 504-bed student housing complex that just started leasing for fall 2026. Same 200-plus-acre development. Same master plan. Two completely different generations of new neighbor, arriving three years apart, for the same underlying reason.
If you already live in Oxford Farms, you've probably watched both of these go up without connecting them. One opened before most residents were paying attention. The other spent over a year behind a construction fence under a name that no longer appears on the leasing sign.
The Site That Kept Changing Its Name
The new complex on Oxford Way was first announced as RISE Oxford Farms and has since been renamed. In February 2025, GTIS Partners and RISE announced a joint venture to build what they called RISE Oxford Farms, a 216-unit, 504-bed student housing community located about a mile from Ole Miss's campus, according to their joint press release. By August 2025, HottyToddy.com reported construction crews were actively on site, part of what the outlet described as a wave that could add close to 5,000 new student beds across Oxford in just a few years.
Somewhere between groundbreaking and opening day, the project became Ivy & Elm. The name on the leasing site now reads "Now Leasing for Fall 2026," with units at 2572 Oxford Way listed as available starting August 15, 2026. If your only reference point is the original press release, the rebrand explains why the same construction site you tracked for a year now has a completely different sign out front.
The physical facts haven't changed. It's still 216 units and 504 beds. It's still managed by RISE. It's still built to serve Ole Miss's student population rather than the neighborhood's existing single-family stock.
Grandparents Got There First
Beau Ridge had already been operating for two full years by the time Ivy & Elm broke ground. It opened in early 2023 as an independent and assisted living community, built and operated by a local Oxford family in partnership with Schonberg Care, which markets its approach as a "TRUE CARE" philosophy. The community offers six floor plans across one and two-bedroom apartments, positioned just south of the Oxford Square and inside what Beau Ridge's own materials describe as the heart of the city's medical district, close to Baptist Memorial Hospital.
Here's how the two developments actually compare on paper.
| Beau Ridge at Oxford Farms | Ivy & Elm | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 2702 S. Lamar Blvd | 2572 Oxford Way |
| Opened | Early 2023 | Fall 2026 |
| Residents | Independent and assisted living for seniors | Ole Miss students |
| Scale | Six floor plans, one and two-bedroom apartments | 216 units, 504 beds |
| Behind it | A local Oxford family with Schonberg Care | GTIS Partners and RISE |
Two projects, same acreage, opposite ends of the age range they're built for. Neither is an outlier inside Oxford Farms. The neighborhood's own developer language describes the community as "a hub for all ages," pairing senior living and student housing with single-family homes and the townhome-style developments already sold under names like The Reserve and The Cottages at Oxford Farms. Beau Ridge and Ivy & Elm aren't accidents that happened to land in a family neighborhood. They're the plan working as designed.
The Enrollment Number Behind Both Projects
None of this happens without what's occurring on campus. Ole Miss's enrollment surpassed 27,000 students in fall 2024, an 11.3 percent jump from the year before, according to Yardi Matrix data reported by Multi-Housing News. HottyToddy.com's August 2025 reporting put a sharper point on it: the incoming freshman class that fall topped 5,900 students, the largest in Mississippi history, with total enrollment up more than 10 percent in a single year.
That kind of growth doesn't just fill dorm rooms. It creates the exact supply gap that a 504-bed private development is built to solve. Ole Miss itself is responding at a larger scale. A January 2026 update from the Mississippi Business Journal detailed the university's own partnership with Greystar to add roughly 2,700 new on-campus beds, expected to be ready by 2027, alongside a new $56 million parking garage slated to open this fall and a new mechanical plant behind Kinard Hall opening in spring 2026 to support the added housing load.
Set against that citywide number, Ivy & Elm's 504 beds are one piece of a much larger build-out, not the whole story. HottyToddy's reporting also noted a shift worth remembering if you assumed every one of these projects fills instantly: with roughly 2,000 beds already under construction across Oxford as of last year, property managers were starting to see the panic-leasing pattern of years past ease, with some students able to shop around instead of signing the first lease they found.
Beau Ridge answers a different demand curve entirely, one driven by the same medical-district location that makes South Lamar attractive to an aging population wanting proximity to Baptist Memorial and easy access to downtown. Two different demographic pressures, same corridor, same master-planned response.
What Two New Neighbors Actually Change
If your mental model is "500 more people means a crowded neighborhood pool," the specifics say otherwise. Both new developments are self-contained. Beau Ridge's own amenity list includes a bistro, main dining room, library, and community and parlor areas built for its own residents. RISE's original announcement for the student project described amenities including a gym, swimming pool, and access to the university's shuttle stop, all inside the development itself rather than shared with the neighborhood's existing HOA pool or clubhouse. If you bought into Oxford Farms for its own resort-style pool and walking trails, that amenity package hasn't been diluted by either new neighbor.
What has changed is the calendar. Ivy & Elm's leasing dates cluster around a mid-August 2026 move-in, which means the heaviest new traffic on Oxford Way already arrived with the start of this school year rather than trickling in over months. If you noticed more moving trucks and unfamiliar cars in September, that's the timing lining up exactly as leased.
The bigger shift is what the neighborhood now represents on paper. Oxford Farms was never marketed as a single-generation subdivision. It was pitched from the start as senior living, student housing, and single-family homes sharing the same footprint. Beau Ridge and Ivy & Elm are the two most visible proofs that the pitch wasn't just marketing copy. They're what "a hub for all ages" looks like once the construction fences come down.
If you're weighing what this means for your own corner of the neighborhood, whether you're near The Reserve's townhomes and cottages or one of the established single-family sections, the short version is that the age range of your neighbors just got wider on both ends, without touching the amenities or floor plans that brought you here in the first place.
If you're trying to figure out what any of this means for your specific address in Oxford Farms, whether it changes how your home shows to buyers or whether it's worth watching before you list, Zach Callicutt at Cannon Cleary McGraw can walk through it with you street by street. Book an appointment and bring your questions about what's actually happening on your block.
