ARCHIVES

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Board to look again at campus housing

By Natalie Ragus/Staff Writer

Plans by Hancock College to build campus housing for students may soon be taken down from the shelf and dusted off.

The college district’s board of trustees will consider taking the first step toward building student housing this month when it decides whether to hire a consultant — at an estimated cost of $120,000 — to look into the feasibility of the project.

With the arduous campaign to pass Measure I (the $180 million general facilities bond voters approved in 2006) behind them, college officials said the time has come for Hancock to at least examine the possibility of constructing housing for its students.

“The (Hancock Community College) District is developing a recommendation for hiring a student housing consultant to help us with the process,” Director of Facilities and Operations Felix Hernandez said. “This would be a start ... It’s kind of like ‘stay tuned.’”

Hancock serves students who commute from as far as northern parts of San Luis Obispo County, such as Paso Robles.

Student housing would benefit students in programs like the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts (PCPA) — whom Hancock recruits from across the nation — and student athletes from outside areas such as Morro Bay, college spokeswoman Rebecca Alarcio said.

In 2004, the college hired Capstone West Development, a student-housing development company, to conduct a survey on the feasibility of student housing.

The survey showed there was a shortage of housing in the community, and local students were interested in the concept of housing on the campus.

However, community opposition to housing arose over concerns ranging from maintenance costs to possible student discipline issues. Those, coupled with the launch of the Measure I campaign, forced college officials to put the housing plans on hold.

Two years later, the Measure I dust has settled, and college officials said they feel freed up to explore the possibility of adding student housing on campus again.

The original Capstone survey has become obsolete with the passage of time, and so in order for plans to move forward, the college must shell out for a second survey.

Questions such as how the college would pay for the housing and which student housing consultant to use remain up in the air, Hernandez said.

However, Hancock officials said whatever funds the college would use for housing would not affect any classroom-building projects, and Measure I funds are off-limits because housing was not included in the bond list.

Campus housing have become a hot button issue for many community colleges throughout California.

According to the California Community College’s Chancellor’s Office, 11 community colleges in the state have student housing.

Rural Taft College — a 3,000-student campus approximately 30 miles outside of Bakersfield — is one of the them.

Taft built its first dorms in the mid 1964 “out of necessity ... In our community specifically, there’s not a lot of apartments and available housing,” said college President Willy Duncan.

Approximately 180 students live in Taft’s dorms, which college officials say serve as the center of campus life.

However, while student housing makes sense for Taft, Duncan said it might not work for every community college.

“I think it depends on the individual school and its unique situation in the community,” he said.

Santa Barbara City College President Andreea Serban echoed a similar sentiment when explaining why her school nixed the idea of dormitories several years ago.

“Running dorms is not a simple operation. It’s actually quite complex, and you have to take that into account when you put dorms into place on a campus,” she said, adding that the college does not have the money to either build dorms or hire the vast “infrastructure of people” needed to run them.

Instead, the college will continue to rely on its student life office to help students find housing in the surrounding area, a system Serban said has worked well in the past.

nragus@theadobepress.com