Beautiful area, beautiful campus, lots of temptations.  

Oil, natural gas or electric?

Personally, I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't buy any property that doesn't cashflow, at least if you're early in your investing career (like I am) or don't have a number of cashflowing/appreciating properties to offset potential losses while trying to buy only for natural appreciation.

Skylights are an easy addition to my renovations; they provide plenty of natural light (i.e. kitchens, bathrooms).

It was a beautiful home on the side of a mountain overlooking the city.

In the Carolina's, I have found a beautiful micro-niche market for fix & flips that will generate $200K+ per flip. 

For a project of this nature, I would never recommend hiring a civil engineer unless they are very dynamic otherwise they will not see the bigger picture of the project, and usually aren't established to take on a project of your type with many other non-civil disciplines. 

As a Landlord, I would naturally suspect you, someone in your family, or a contractor you've hired.

Beautiful space.

Furthermore SD is a beautiful, wonderful place but the more I look for investments (over 5 units) the competition is fierce, Owners dont care about whether the cash flow works or not.