EAST ORANGE, N.J. - ONCE a place of higher learning, later a place of less-lofty activities, a 21-acre site here is about to be transformed into a slice of the good life, say city officials and the developers chosen to do the job.

It is to be a new upper-middle-class neighborhood called Woodlands at Upsala, composed of 51 three-, four- and five-bedroom homes and a row of 17 attached town homes. A model home has opened to sell the houses, whose prices start in the low $400,000's. They will be located throughout the rolling property on lots of at least a quarter acre each. Many of the huge trees that grace the site, formerly the Upsala College campus, will remain.

The college went bankrupt and shut down in 1995 after 81 years in operation, giving its 40-acre property just west of the Garden State Parkway to the City of East Orange and its Board of Education.

Subsequently, the eastern half of the site was rebuilt, using some of the existing college buildings, to become East Orange High School. But the once-elegant structures on the western half of the wooded property sat vacant and were damaged by vandals and vagrants, deteriorating to eyesore status.

The western campus was declared a site in need of redevelopment by the city in 1997. The Alpert Group of Fort Lee and the Applied Development Company of Hoboken were named several years ago as co-developers of the project. The college buildings were demolished last summer, and a company recently put some of those buildings' architectural elements up for sale online, at www.recyclingthepast.com.

But it is only now that construction of the $17 million project is under way, beginning with the single-family homes.

The development meets the city's wishes, said the city's director of policy, planning and development, James A. Slaughter: "Market-rate, high quality housing consistent with the existing neighborhood - not a gated community, not something separate, but blended in."

A sales office opens this week in the model home, at the corner of Park Avenue and the beginning of a new southerly extension of Woodland Avenue.

Joseph Alpert, president of the development company bearing his name, called Woodland Avenue "the most beautiful street in East Orange." He said that when city officials proposed extending it through the Upsala property - curving it so as to avoid making the road a cut-through to the high school - developers were thrilled.

"This way it really does integrate the new neighborhood with the older one," Mr. Alpert said.

The existing neighborhood, which is north of Interstate 280, has both single and multifamily homes, many of them well-kept Victorians, set back behind manicured lawns and canopied tree branches. The streets are lighted with gaslight-style lamps, and Mr. Alpert said that theme would be carried through in the new neighborhood.

Even as the sales office prepared to open, Mr. Alpert said, prices had not been set beyond the starting point in the low $400,000's for the smallest houses, which will have 2,123 square feet. The model home, a three-bedroom design with an open first floor that has both a living room and a parlor, features an extra room, over the two-car garage, that is available on all four different home designs.

Every house will have atrium entranceways and 10-foot ceilings, a gas fireplace, hardwood floors, a wood staircase, a deck and a full unfinished basement.

At the model house, Mr. Alpert showed details like a glass-enclosed shower, a powder room with a marble floor, detailed garage doors - there are windows in the garage, too - and a chandelier. The model house has bedrooms decorated in pink for a girl, and blue for a boy.

The largest homes, with five bedrooms, will be set on half-acre lots, he said, and various custom options will be offered. The town houses will be two stories tall, with four or five bedrooms, Mr. Alpert said.

There have already been 200 inquiries from potential home buyers, Mr. Alpert said.

Both Mr. Slaughter and Mr. Alpert said that initial interest in the houses was coming not only from people in East Orange, but also from those in other areas, including New York City, which is a short commute away. There is train service from East Orange to Penn Station in Manhattan on New Jersey Transit's Morristown line.

"Some people have been priced out of Montclair and South Orange and Manhattan," Mr. Slaughter noted, because "you can't find a house in those places for less than $700,000 or $800,000, or more in the case of New York."

In East Orange, Mr. Slaughter said, the average home price is $300,000 or more. There are homes priced up to $500,000 in the area around Woodland Avenue and in a nearby neighborhood known as the "Presidents' Section," where streets are named for former occupants of the White House.

The Woodlands at Upsala is designed to be a family-oriented neighborhood, with a traffic-calming layout to the streets, sidewalks and fenced yards.

Mr. Slaughter said that several developers tried to persuade city planners to agree to much denser development, with more apartments and taller buildings, but city officials held fast to their idea of amplifying on what currently exists.

"It is going to be exactly what we wanted," he said.