Accent on luxury at Royal Oaks apartments - WVU Football, WVU Basketball, News

Dave Coughenour describes himself as a “projects kind of guy.”

His current project: Putting the finishing touches on a 106-unit apartment building, the latest addition to an upscale housing development perched on a hilltop overlooking U.S. Route 60 between Huntington and Barboursville.

Beginning in 2008, in the midst of one of the nation's worst housing markets ever, Royal Oaks at Pea Ridge has taken shape in stages. First, Coughenour and his partners — Dave Tarter and Pat Hootch — built 16 apartment units. They followed that with 48 more units and then another 32. Now, a new three-story building will double the total available units to 202.

Nearly all the apartments are leased, including those still being finished up, Coughenour said. And he and his partners are readying plans for more construction on the nearly 14-acre site.

“This is an excellent market for apartments,” Coughenour said.

Born in Tennessee, Coughenour and his family moved to Huntington when he was high-school age. He graduated from the former Huntington East High School and took classes at Marshall University and West Virginia Institute of Technology at Montgomery.

He was in the restaurant business for a while, but he had always been mechanical-minded and wanted a line of work where he could build things. At first, he built decks and painted houses. Then, he and his partners got into student housing. They kept adding units by the dozen, and then took a huge gamble — investing $10 million to build University Courtyard, a 224-unit student apartment complex at Sixth Avenue and 21st Street near the Marshall campus.

What Coughenour and his partners were doing attracted the attention of national companies and soon one of them made the Huntington partners an offer they couldn't refuse — an offer to buy all of their student apartments and then contract with them to continue managing the apartments. The partners said yes to the sale and then used the proceeds from it to get started on their Royal Oaks project.

Coughenour said the apartment complex has a mix of tenants: students (including a number from Marshall's medical and pharmacy schools), young professionals and empty-nesters no longer interested in mowing lawns, shoveling snow and the other responsibilities of home ownership.

“We anticipate that the average tenant will be with us for two or three years, with a few perhaps longer than that,” he said.

Royal Oaks has a mix of one- and two-bedroom units with real hardwood floors, crown molding, nine-foot ceilings and top-of-the-line appliances, including washers and dryers. There's a fitness center, a game room with TVs, a pool table and shuffleboard, two outdoor pools, a fenced-in dog area, a picnic shelter with grills and a basketball court.

Tenants in the new building's apartments that face north have a commanding view of Interstate 64's 29th Street interchange below and the hillsides of Ohio in the distance.

For details about living at Royal Oaks, call 304-733-0021 or visit royaloaksatpearidge.com.