MOUNT VERNON -- Cornell College plans to build a suite-style residence hall for 46 upperclass students that will be ready in fall 2005, relieving an on-campus housing crunch as enrollment continues to climb.
The new residence hall, projected to cost approximately $2 million, will be built near the college’s 10th Avenue apartments.
The proposed three-story building will feature six suites accommodating seven or eight students apiece. Each suite will have a kitchenette with a small refrigerator, sink, counter space and cupboards; students will take their regular meals in the campus dining halls. Each suite also will have three full bathrooms. The building will have a study room, a small office, a shared kitchen, a lounge, laundry facilities, an elevator and central air conditioning. A parking lot for 51 vehicles is planned nearby.
The facility was approved because of student demand for more personalized living spaces and their desire to abandon the traditional central-campus dorm for apartment-like quarters –- but without the responsibility of utility bills and garbage collection.
“It’s the way many colleges are going,” said John Harp, dean of students.
The new residence hall will be coed, but not within student rooms, and won’t be available to first-year students. Two resident assistants will live on site.
As a residential college, 93 percent of students live on campus in Cornell’s nine residence halls and two apartment complexes. During the 2003-2004 year, on-campus housing was at 98.5 percent capacity, which college officials feel restricts their ability to relocate students when, for example, renovations are needed. Cornell allows a percentage of upperclass students to live off-campus, but on-campus housing is considered more attractive, Harp notes, primarily because the college provides amenities such as convenient laundry and parking, and in the residence halls free cable television and Internet access through the campus network.
Cornell’s enrollment -– projected at 1,150 for classes beginning Aug. 30 –- has been climbing steadily over roughly the past five years and is the largest since fall 1995. Cornell’s last new residence hall construction was in 1966, when Rorem Hall was built.
