New apartments expected to be completed by first day of school at ACC
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ALPENA -- Another 34 students will not have to worry about where they're living as they start or continue their degrees at the Alpena Community College.
Construction on the new College Park apartments which will house those students began last fall. The new addition will allow a total of 106 students to live on campus, The News previously reported.
The ACC Board of Trustees toured the new apartments Thursday prior to the start of their regular board meeting that evening. The trustees seemed impressed with the new addition to campus, with many comments made about how nice the apartments were compared to their own living situations in college.
The apartments will be mostly completed by the time students move in next week. It is expected that six of the eight units will be ready for move-in, ACC President Don MacMaster said.
Six of the units house four students and two of them house five. The two units with five bedrooms are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Those units have a fifth bedroom and a bathroom on the first floor. The other four bedrooms and a second bathroom are upstairs. Each unit has a full kitchen including a dishwasher and island countertop. The appliances, light fixtures, and exterior all have a modern look.
The project was made possible partly through grant funding and a generous donation of about $250,000 by a former faculty member, MacMaster said.
The grant funding comes from a federal earmark of $1.75 million from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development through Sen. Gary Peters. ACC also received some money from the state for the project.
The college had to fundraise about $3 million to make up the balance. The total cost of the new apartments is around $4.7 million.
"I think we will come in right on that number or slightly less," MacMaster said.
The apartments were built to address a documented need for more units.
With the two existing apartment buildings on campus, there would be about 30 to 50 students each year in need of housing than the college had available beds, MacMaster said.
"It was a multi-year trend that led us to conclude that more housing was necessary," he said.
It's been about a four-year project from the time that the board of trustees said they'd like to see more housing to the near final product Thursday night, MacMaster said.