Students can expect many different housing opportunities both on and off campus with the completion of student-oriented apartment complexes and new dorms.
The two apartment complexes, which are a type of comprehensive community, are Twenty-One Apartments and Lakeside Place.
Twenty-One Apartments, which caters its amenities to students, is a complex very different than anything else available in Starkville, general manager Nandra Jackson said.
“We’re actually taking the students’ needs and encompassing them in all of our management responsibilities,” Jackson said. “We provide fully furnished apartments, electricity allowances, water, cable and high speed Internet connections. Everything is fully functional when you move in.”
Twenty-One can be compared to a residence hall with more independent residents, Jackson said. The complex is gated and will include a swimming pool, game room, media center, fitness center, computer lab and study rooms. The apartments are not meant to compete with housing on campus, however.
“I think [Twenty-One and MSU housing] are going to complement each other really well,” Jackson said. “The students that are renting with us are upperclassmen. We aren’t targeting freshmen at all. Mississippi State does a fantastic job, and they offer a different type of resident lifestyle. We are just kind of continuing that on for the upperclassmen.”
Lakeside Place, developed by Place Properties, is another off-campus housing development that sets its sights on student residents. Jessica Nix, director of public relations for Place Properties, said Lakeside Place is drawing in different kinds of residents than Mississippi State.
“Our intention isn’t to clean out the dorms,” Nix said. “I just don’t think our place in the market is going to be head-to-head against the dorms.”
Lakeside Place will contain fully-furnished apartments and include cable, water, electricity and high-speed Internet, she said. The community will also offer a clubhouse, swimming pool, 24-hour fitness center, computer lab and a Frisbee golf course.
The most special thing about Lakeside Place, though, is its online reservation system, Nix said. This system will allow future residents to apply completely online without ever having to go to an office. The system will also allow residents to pick a roommate based on an anonymous profile and send blind e-mails to that person to set up a meeting. If a roommate is rejected, it is done anonymously, assuaging any potential confrontation.
Housing on campus is also improving with the construction of phase two residence halls. Ruby Hall is the flagship of this expansion, said Lady Cox, a public relations representative for MSU’s department of housing. Griffith Hall, future location of the Honors Dorm, will house 300 students, as will the other two dorms going up near it, which have yet to be named.
“These dorms will have top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art amenities,” Cox said. “Rather than having keys, everything is done with your ID card. There are bigger lobbies and computer labs that are already built in.”
The new residence hall will also include improved kitchen areas and cafܬ-style areas for future growth, Cox said.
All three of the residence halls, as well as Ruby Hall will have rooms for upper- and lowerclassmen, he added.
“The dorms schedule programming all the time,” Cox said. “With multiple lobbies and more space, they have a lot more room to have fun activities for residents.”