Allison Scheckel watched as her younger brother and grandparents unloaded her boxes of clothes and bedding from the family’s van on Wednesday. The transfer sophomore from the University of Dubuque clutched her yellow fleece Hawkeyes blanket as she opened the door of a furnished four-bedroom, two-bath “dorm” room.
“I’m never moving again,” Scheckel joked to her family.
Scheckel is one of roughly 160 incoming University of Iowa students who will call the Lodge — located nearly two miles off campus — home during their first year at UI.
The apartments are fully furnished and come with many amenities. Instead of a small dresser, she gets a walk-in-closet. Instead of a computer lab, she gets a hot tub.
Earlier this month, faced with a massive increase in the number of incoming freshmen, the UI completed negations with the Lodge, securing an off-campus housing option during the 2010-11 academic year, said Von Stange, the director of University Housing.
It’s the first time the UI has had to take an active role in housing students off campus. In addition to the Lodge, the UI also reserved eight five-bedroom apartments on College Street.
“It was important for us to have an entire building because we want it to run like one of the dorms,” Stange said.
Students living in Building 3 of the four-building complex will pay around $5,600 for room and board — roughly $200 more than the cost of a double with air conditioning in Mayflower, he said.
But students are getting a handful of amenities for their dollars.
“Everything the Lodge offers is available to students,” said UI sophomore Sarah Owings, the leasing agent for the complex. “We want to make them feel welcome.”
Students will have access to a fitness center, hot tub, basketball court, and media room among others.
Owings said the UI’s move to the apartments forced around 45 existing Lodge residents to be moved because university officials will only oversee the activities of those living in Building 3.
Students who choose to live in the College Street apartments answer to landlords, while those at The Lodge are under UI dorm rules.
Stange said at least three residential advisers will be on hand in the building to monitor students. In addition, he said nonresidents won’t have access to the building.
Housing officials wanted only transfer and international students living off campus, Stange said.
“We didn’t want freshmen to come in and get the feeling that they were away from campus having to fend for themselves,” he said.
Even with these alternatives, roughly 180 students will live in temporary housing on campus, Stange said. With nearly 95 percent of first-year students choosing to live on campus each fall, room had to be made to fit the incoming class.
In addition to Parklawn reopening as a residence hall available to upperclassmen, the UI has expanded living spaces in four of nine dorms.
Stange said students could live in student lounge areas the entire semester, but the goal is to move them into permanent rooms as soon as possible.
Though the housing is temporary, he said, having contractual ties to the Lodge could be a learning experience for the UI. The arrangements might be beneficial if overcrowding plagues future classes, he said.
The state Board of Regents approved in June the UI’s plan to build a new residence hall, likely on the West Campus, as a long-term solution to overcrowding.