BLACKSBURG -- Former Hokie football star and newly inducted NFL Hall of Famer Bruce Smith, taking a run at the land development game, has completed a 284-unit apartment complex geared for students and a 137-room upscale hotel a couple of minutes west of campus.

Crews labored for 21 months before completing Smith's Landing and the Hilton Garden Inn Blacksburg -- projects that, judging by appearances and reports, came out as nicely as planned. Smith, who lives in Virginia Beach, was in Blacksburg last week to cut a ribbon for the hotel project.

Resident John McMahon, a senior in bioinformatics, complimented the apartment complex for a clean, attentively landscaped exterior and a full set of working appliances. At the last student housing complex where he lived, his dishwasher quit and fellow tenants habitually left out bags of trash.

"I have no complaints [about Smith's Landing] -- no serious, legitimate complaints," McMahon said. "My medicine chest in the bathroom is a little crooked. That's the biggest problem I can see."

Earlier, Smith's Landing faced financial issues and delays in delivering units to tenants -- challenges not unheard of in deluxe real estate ventures.

Just as she was ready to begin graduate school in the fall of 2008, Amy Yuan was irked to learn that her Smith's Landing unit would not be ready in time and she would be placed in a hotel. After first bedding down at the Super 8 in Christiansburg, she was moved to a Comfort Inn for what ultimately was a six-week displacement until crews finished their work.

Yuan was annoyed and angry. Her 75-pound, live-in dog "was pretty stressed out," she said.

Yuan said she is pleased to have finally moved in late last year and finds her unit attractive and quiet. There must be something extra solid in the walls, she said, because she can't even hear her neighbors, which is a good thing since she is a studying to become a doctor at the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

With the apartment complex partially occupied, crews continued working through last winter and into the spring, when they finished the fourth and fifth of five apartment buildings at a total project cost of $31.5 million. The hotel was finished at midsummer at a cost of $16.4 million and opened Aug. 12. Rooms rent for $129 to $249 a night.

Blacksburg building official Cathy Cook said she has signed off all components of the project, which was a joint effort by Bruce Smith Enterprise LLC and Armada Hoffler, whose namesake official took Smith under his wing to get him started in real estate investing.

The land, formerly a Red Lion Inn, is leased from the Virginia Tech Foundation.

In a sign of the project's success, nearly all the apartments are leased, said Chelsea Koonce, the leasing agent. Rent ranges from $750 for a one-bedroom unit to $1,295 for a three-bedroom unit. Residents pay for their own electricity. Cable and Internet cost extra at a discounted package rate negotiated by the management. Water, which had been free as a concession because of construction delays, is or soon will be additional.

Tuesday, several students patronized the Smith's Landing community building, The Lodge, with a few in the study room and one in the exercise center. It is open all night. Mornings, pastries and cookies are free while they last. Coffee is a quarter.

When the weather cools off, residents can sit before a stone fireplace or, as spring break gets closer, slip under the lights of one of two tanning beds at no charge.

Meanwhile, project owners have satisfied a slew of mechanic's liens filed last fall by subcontractors who claimed in Montgomery Court Circuit Court that they had not been paid.

Danya Bushey, with Armada Hoffler, said her company saw that the bills were paid, including a lien by a painting contractor this summer.

"Everything's been resolved," said Gary Sims, branch manager for Salem's Virginia Fire Protection Inc., which no longer has a lien.