Which UA Apartments Are Closest to Campus? Ranked by Distance (2026)
Which UA Apartments Are Closest to Campus? Ranked by Distance
Distances and drive times below are compiled from each property’s public Apartments.com listing and, where available, the property’s own marketing, cross-checked against street addresses as of publication. We’ve flagged the handful of properties where a reliable distance figure wasn’t publicly available rather than guess. Pricing and availability change often — confirm current terms with each leasing office before you sign.
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If proximity to class is your top filter when comparing student apartments near UA, distance alone can be surprisingly hard to pin down — listing sites quote drive time, not walk time, and marketing copy loves the word “close” without a number attached. We pulled the verified distance for every complex in our apartment review series and ranked them below.
Ranked by Distance From Campus
| Complex | Address | Distance | Drive Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Bluff at Waterworks Landing | 425 7th Ave NE | 0.75 mi | ~2 min |
| State on Campus | 513 13th St | 1.0 mi | Walkable |
| The Walk | 899 12th St | 1.2 mi | ~3 min |
| Here Tuscaloosa | 513 Frank Thomas Ave | 1.2 mi | ~4 min |
| The Preserve at Tuscaloosa | 301 Helen Keller Blvd | 1.22 mi | ~3 min |
| Hub on Campus (The Rive) | 521 Red Drew Ave | 1.3 mi | ~4 min |
| Union on Frank | 530 Frank Thomas Ave | 1.6 mi | ~4 min |
| Blue Haus | 1514 6th Ave E | 1.6 mi | ~4 min |
| The Crimson | 1100 17th St | ~2.0 mi | Shuttle |
| Lofts at City Center | 1345 10th Ave E | 2.0 mi | ~4 min |
| The Cottages at Lake Tamaha | 745 Tamaha Ter NE | 2.31 mi | ~4 min |
| The Mosaic | 800 31st St | 3.1 mi | ~7 min |
| Beacon Place | 4400 Beacon Place Pky | 5.47 mi | ~11 min |
One property deserves a special mention rather than a row in the table above: Canterbury Apartments (1108 14th Ave) markets itself by blocks and steps rather than miles — about 2 blocks, or 315 steps, from Bryant-Denny Stadium. That’s plausibly the shortest walk to any part of campus in this list, though it’s measured to the stadium rather than to central academic buildings, so we’ve kept it out of the ranked table above rather than convert an unverified step count into a mileage estimate.
A few complexes in our review series don’t have a reliable published distance figure — City Heights at Skyland and Lark Tuscaloosa among them — so we’ve left them out of the ranking rather than publish a number we couldn’t verify. If distance is your deciding factor for either of those, confirm it directly with the leasing office or a mapping tool before you tour.
What “Walking Distance” Actually Means Here
Most students can comfortably walk up to about a mile in 15-20 minutes — so anything at or under 1.2 miles in the table above is a realistic daily walk for most people, weather and backpack load permitting. Past about 1.5-2 miles, you’re looking at a bike, a scooter, the Crimson Ride bus system, or a property-run shuttle (several complexes farther out, including The Crimson, build a shuttle into the pitch specifically because the walk isn’t realistic). For a full breakdown of transit and biking options, see our guide to getting to UA campus without a car.
Distance isn’t the only tradeoff worth weighing, either. Some closer complexes charge a real premium for the walk, while some farther-out options are meaningfully cheaper and still workable with a shuttle or a bike — compare against average Tuscaloosa student rent before deciding which end of this list fits your budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
Clay.
As founder of TuscaloosaStudentHousing.com, he combines that local knowledge with hands-on research of the Tuscaloosa rental market to publish practical, honest guides for University of Alabama students living off campus.
