This paper examines the development of Notre Dame University in Fremantle Western Australia, in light of Sharon Haar’s work on the regeneration of the city of Chicago through its various university campuses. A nineteenth century port city and now heritage precinct, the West End of Fremantle has been gradually re-made since the early 1990s through the insertion of university buildings and spaces to form the privately funded University of Notre Dame Australia. Since it opened in 1992, the tertiary infiltration in the West End has been controversial, prompting arguments over the perceived privatisation of an urban area, and the loss of vitality this brings. While the benefit of sustained building occupation and conservation work is clear, the effects on the surrounding suburb and local population is yet to be worked through in the long term. The campus therefore provides a unique urban context in Australia in which to interrogate how both the growth of universities and designated heritage precincts have been, in different and often competing ways, strong agents of regeneration and economic and cultural change.