If you haven’t been to Centennial Campus lately, you’re missing out on a few things. First, the new Hunt Library is taking shape and is slowly turning into the center of campus. It looks very impressive from the outside and I’d love another tour of the facilities to see the progress. But there is a new project that recently broke ground on Centennial Campus that will bring a new dynamic to the area: student housing.
The project is called the Centennial Campus Apartments and is intended to be a loft-style housing option for graduate students. It will be a 550,000 square-foot facility costing $129 million and is scheduled to open in Fall 2013. See all the project details and three live web cameras.
The project, which will be located near the Hunt Library, will add an important element that is currently lacking on Centennial Campus: on-campus dining. While we don’t know the extent of the dining options, those who currently go to class and work on Centinnial Campus will attest that the dining options aren’t as diverse as say downtown Raleigh or Hillsborough Street. A recent coordination of food trucks has improved food options on-campus, but there is still a long way to go.
There is also an interesting element that ties into the recent Raleigh Innovation Summit (although unrelated from a planning perspective) that will really help build and foster the research community. The project includes an entrepreneurial village which claims to be a university living and learning community.
“The Entrepreneurial Village will be a partnership with the University’s Entrepreneurship Initiative led by Dr. Tom Miller,” said Tim Luckadoo, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. “University Housing currently has nine living and learning villages where students with common interests live together and interact with faculty and staff through formal and informal activities. The Entrepreneurial Living and Learning Village will be located in one of the Centennial Apartments buildings, next to the site of the future Entrepreneur’s Garage. Students in this village will represent a variety of majors and they will work with faculty, staff, and partners to learn how to become successful entrepreneurs. They will work together in teams to create products, business plans, marketing campaigns, etc.”
As far as we know, this is the first student housing project located on Centennial Campus. It will add 1,200 beds and be the start of an on-campus community that will feed a future mixed-use town center project.