New dorm gives CBC students a home away from home

Heading to Columbia Basin College? There’s a room for you.

Space is still available in the new $7 million, 126-bed residence hall near 20th Avenue and Argent Road in Pasco.

The building, which is slated to open Sept. 1, is the result of a partnership between Sigma Financial Group of Kennewick and the college.

While the 44 units in the building are being referred to as apartments, the living arrangements are closer to a traditional residence hall, said Dan Quock, the college’s director of residence life. The apartments come in singles, doubles, triples or quadruples.

The yearlong lease ranges from a high of $950 a month for a one-bed apartment to a low of $535 a month for a bed in a quadruple. Each student has an individual lease.

Ranging in size from 240 square feet for a single to 550 square feet for quads, each of the rooms comes with a kitchenette and a mount for a television.

The inside of each room will be furnished with enough beds for each of the students, either in the form of bunks or singles, depending on the needs of the students; a desk for each person; and a wall mount for the TV.

Each room has a wi-fi router, so students aren’t fighting with their neighbors to get onto the internet.

“I’ve seen it happen in a residence hall at a previous school and students were always complaining,” Quock said. “(The connection) is included in their rent. The idea is students can move in their belongings and be ready to go to class.”

The design also limits a different type of competition — the race to the restroom. Each room is connected to a bathroom and shower.

The college pushed to bring on-campus housing to the college after studies in 2007 and 2015 showed a demand. People interested have ranged from athletes to students looking live closer to campus.

One of Quock’s projects is to make the building more than just rooms with beds.

“I’ve been mostly working on getting the applications and processing those, but having worked at the University of Illinois for five years as a resident director, I’m hoping to bring in some of those programs,” he said.

Quock will have two resident advisers help him apply it.

Along with offering social events so students can meet each other, they hope to educate the residents about life skills as well as offering academic help. Quock would like to partner with the college’s Academic Success Center to bring tutors into the building.

It is joining eight other community colleges in the state that offer campus housing to students, including colleges in Yakima, Wenatchee and Moses Lake.

Applications are available through the college’s housing website, housing.columbiabasin.edu.

For more information, call residence life at 509-542-4803 or email housing@columbiabasin.edu.

This story was originally published August 26, 2017 at 2:14 PM with the headline "New dorm gives CBC students a home away from home."