Umpqua Community College invests in student housing in downtown Roseburg

Students at Umpqua Community College in Southern Oregon may soon have some new options for housing. The college is converting three historic buildings in downtown Roseburg into student dorms and apartments. College leaders hope that providing housing will help attract students from around the region and that bringing students downtown will add vibrancy to the city’s core.

UCC President Rachel Pokrandt joins to talk about the role the college hopes to play in revitalizing downtown Roseburg and alleviating the city’s housing crunch.

Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Jenn Chávez: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Jenn Chávez. In Southern Oregon, three historic buildings in downtown Roseburg are being restored with a new purpose – to be home for students of Umpqua Community College. The hope is not just to provide new school housing options and attract students from around the region to UCC. It’s also to benefit the wider community by helping to alleviate the city’s housing crunch and playing a role in revitalizing downtown. Rachel Pokrandt is the president of Umpqua Community College, and she joins me now to tell us more about the college’s investment in this new housing. Rachel, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Rachel Pokrandt: Great to be here. Thanks Jenn.

Chávez: UCC, as I mentioned, has chosen downtown Roseburg – which is a few miles away from campus – for this new student housing instead of, say, creating new on-campus housing. Can you start by telling us a little bit about Roseburg’s downtown, and how it’s been evolving in the past few years?

Pokrandt: Yeah, downtown Roseburg is super cute and amazing and awesome, like many rural communities. You know, beautiful old Victorian buildings and a great business community that is  working hard to make sure that people can come downtown and shop and eat and really have a great experience. Roseburg has a lot of history, and we’re really trying to capitalize on that past, as well as forge forward into a new future. And this isn’t a story that’s necessarily unique to Roseburg. There are many smaller towns in America, really, who are looking differently at their future, and what does the future of a downtown look like, given that you can go shopping at these big box stores all over the place. But what is unique about a downtown, and what is the flavor of your personal community that makes it somewhere people want to be?

Chávez: I know UCC students are already an active part of the special downtown scene and vibe you’re talking about. What role have they been playing in the neighborhood?

Pokrandt: Our students are beloved in Roseburg in general, but definitely in our downtown, because we’ve been renting a lot of different apartment buildings and facilities in the downtown for some time. And we have a big volunteer program here at the college. So, our students are required to do quite a bit of volunteer time. And they tend to be the folks who work the parking situation at big events and have booths downtown for our Bloktoberfest event. And they’re really the volunteering-est students. They’re beloved, folks love to see them out and about and around. And so it was really the natural progression to locate our housing downtown.

Chávez: I think people often think of community colleges as commuter schools ‒ schools that students already living in the area drive to and from every day ‒ versus moving to the area and living in student housing. But I gather that UCC is a bit different. How so? Why do you think that is?

Pokrandt: Well, first of all, I think sometimes people don’t necessarily know who our students are. So, we have this beautiful mix at many community colleges, that’s everybody from a two- year-old learning to swim to a 70-year-old getting a degree, and everything in between. And our students at Umpqua are often the local workforce, as well as being a student. So if there’s any workforce housing crunch, our students are experiencing that as well.

So we’ve got that demographic, and then we also have some unique programs in our athletic program that bring in students from all over the country, and even some international students, so we do have some unique needs. I think we have incoming students this year about 13 students from around the world who are going to be athletes at our institution.

Chávez: Oh, fantastic. I want to mention the three locations being renovated for this new housing. They are historic buildings. I personally love learning about historic buildings. There are a lot of them in my neighborhood here in Portland, as well. Can you tell us what these buildings were in their past lives?

Pokrandt: Yes, one of them that we are now calling the Hawk’s Nest is the former armory in Roseburg, and it kind of looks like a castle. It’s this really fun-looking old building.

Chávez: So cool to say that you live in a building that looks like a castle, too.

Pokrandt: Exactly. Yeah, obviously the armory has a connection to many folks, and then it had been used as a gym for a while. So I’ll run into people who say, “Oh, yeah, I learned to do gymnastics in that space.” So that’s a really cool signature building that everybody recognizes in town.

And then the second building is a former department store on Jackson Street, which is our main shopping area in Roseburg. And again, lots of great stories. People will say, “Oh, yeah, I remember standing at the layaway counter with my mom,” or, “There used to be a soda fountain in there,” and it’s got quite a few nods to that old department store feel that we’re gonna definitely keep. So again, another building that people have a real heart connection to in our community.

The third building, which I… you’re not supposed to have favorites, probably, but it’s my personal favorite. It is the original post office in Roseburg, and it’s this beautiful brick building that was built in 1912, and it’s got a gorgeous marble staircase and original Douglas fir trusses in the ceiling, and it is really a gorgeous, gorgeous building that just needs a little lipstick and some fix-up and she will be beautiful.

Chávez: A little lipstick. I love that. So, you’ve chosen historic buildings. The process of restoring and renovating old historic buildings can sometimes get complicated, but you’ve chosen it, nonetheless. What was special about these places to you? Why was the college drawn in particular towards using historic locations in Roseburg?

Pokrandt: Well, as we face this housing crunch here, we had a choice – whether we were going to build more traditional student housing on campus, or invest in this way downtown. And really, to the board and to the leadership of the college, it felt like a no-brainer. We have the word community in our name for a reason. We are not just an educational institution that sits separate from the community. So investing in the downtown means that we are investing in the economic future of Roseburg.

So, it seemed like the right place to put our dollars, and then our students really have had a great experience living in downtown Roseburg. They are really drawn to that environment. They, as I said, volunteer a lot. They’re also much of the workforce in our downtown. If you go out for dinner, you are quite likely to be served by one of our students. So it’s this great synergy that just seemed perfect. And then the actual choice of the buildings was really just an opportunity at the time when we had the capital to go ahead and make those investments.

Chávez: Rachel, as you mentioned, so many different types of people attend community college – different ages, life experiences, income levels. Students with families, students with jobs and so on. What kind of housing options will be offered in these buildings to meet students’ different needs?

Pokrandt: We have this really interesting mix, and we’ve done a lot of talking to students and prospective students about what they would be looking for. We have everything from something that  resembles a barracks, with maybe five to six students in one larger room, which is a really low-cost option and appeals more to our students who are in that 18 to 20 range. And then we have single-room occupancy opportunities for students. We have a bit more of a traditional dorm style that is like a quad with a bathroom in between. And then, as we start to really get working on that old post office building, we will be creating more apartment living and studio living that we are hoping really appeals to our students who our parents.

Obviously, there’s a little more to navigate there. But how can we create spaces where folks who are in their thirties, who’ve already started families, can have a secure place to live while they study? And also, as I said, they’re probably also holding down a couple of jobs, so they’re also our workforce for Douglas County. So it will be this really interesting mix where we hope there’s something for everyone.

Chávez:  And I know you’re hoping for, I think I read 250 new units total in these buildings. You mentioned affordability. How about that – the affordability of the units for students? What is the college shooting for, in terms of rent?

Pokrandt: Right now our price point is about $425 per bed. So we actually count beds, you said 250 units. For us, it’s 250 beds. So, it’s a really affordable price point, and we work with a lot of information to come up with that cost level, too. Obviously, we don’t want to be significantly less expensive than the rest of the community because we don’t want to be in competition with landlords out there. But we also want to make sure that in the equation that is figuring out how to go to college, that our price point fits within the Pell Grant amount that our students get and the Oregon Promise, and all of the other funding streams they’re able to capitalize on in order to invest in their future.

And the other piece of that, obviously, is we are like many other communities in Oregon and across the country, really facing this housing crisis where there’s just not enough availability of units. So having this housing, we’re hoping to really invest in that housing ladder that we all want to see in our communities, where there’s various types of housing and folks can move up when they’re ready. So we hopefully will alleviate some of the pressure on the already taxed housing market here in Roseburg.

Chávez: Oh, I see. So, by creating new student housing, then students who are using other housing will potentially move into that, and free up more housing outside of student housing. Is that what you’re saying?

Pokrandt:  Exactly.

Chávez: Okay, got it.

Pokrandt: A lot of students that are moving into our units are already living in the community. So, if they’re moving into a unit that is supported by us, they’re freeing up a unit for somebody else to come in and take a great job, or move up that housing ladder.

Chávez: Absolutely. When will students be able to move into this new housing?

Pokrandt: Well, they’re already in a few of our buildings. The Hawk’s Nest, which is that old armory building, we have students moving in this Saturday, and a big barbecue, on Sunday.

Chávez: Oh, fun!

Pokrandt: I just found out – so, super fun weekend for us, for move in, and we’ll have about 55 students in that location. And then our Hawk’s Hideaway – as you can see, there’s a theme here – which is the old department store; those units will be finished up by the end of September, and we’ll have another 27 students moving into those units. And then the college did actually already own a building a little bit out of town, maybe just a half a mile. And that’s called the Hawk’s Landing. And we have 60 students who will be moving in there in the second week in September.

Chávez: Fantastic. Before I let you go, I’m wondering what you’ve been hearing from Roseburg residents and city leaders about this new housing so far?

Pokrandt: Oh, everybody is super excited. We have so much support. We are very fortunate in our community. The businesses and our elected officials are just so excited about this work. Really, the only controversy is parking and that’s, probably again, one of those things that every small town in America faces, but we’re working really closely with the city to make sure that our students have parking and that all the businesses feel like they have adequate parking for the folks who are visiting their businesses, as well. But other than that, we are full steam ahead and tons of community support.

Chávez: Well, Rachel, thank you so much for joining us and happy back-to-school to you and your colleagues and your students.

Pokrandt: Thank you so much. We can’t wait to see all the River Hawks back.

Chávez: Rachel Pokrandt is the president of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg.

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