Construction @ rice
Making a living New graduate student apartments make life a little cheaper — and a lot more fun For a building that’s the equivalent of a 40-story skyscraper lying on its side, it’s no surprise that the new Rice Village Apartment (RVA) complex is turning local apartment living on its ear. Not only will Rice graduate students who move into the 137-unit, 237-bed residence enjoy close proximity to campus — only one block west of the university in Rice Village — they’ll also benefit from extremely competitive monthly rates, plus amenities like a clubhouse, a laundry room on each of four floors, a study room equipped with computers and even a community herb garden. Apartments, which range in size from efficiencies to two-bedroom, two-bath units, are fully furnished and feature free basic cable and Internet. The complex also offers four handicap-accessible units, although the entire community complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. While the facility has fewer parking spaces than you’d find at a commercial apartment building, there are many more than are typically available at a student housing facility. Still, Rice is hoping there will be plenty of parking spaces to spare. “Rice committed to a robust shuttle schedule and bicycle storage spaces as a means of minimizing the need for residents to have cars,” said Rice Graduate Housing Manager Abeer Mustafa. “We also included a bicycle option as part of an early movein reward program where, in exchange for promising not to bring a car to the apartments or to park one on neighborhood streets, students receive a new bicycle when they move in.” Rice decided to build RVA — its third graduate student residence — in 2005, when the waiting lists for Morningside Square and the Rice Graduate Apartments were burgeoning and the purchase of five lots on Shakespeare Street made the construction feasible. The new lots were adjacent to nine existing Morningside Square apartment
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buildings on the north side of Shakespeare Street, which were in much worse condition structurally than the Morningside Square buildings on the south side of Shakespeare. “With the additional acreage, we had the opportunity to demolish our existing units that were nearing depletion and replace them with a higher-density and better-programmed structure,” said Mark Ditman, associate vice president of housing and dining. “The primary reason we did this was to do our part to strengthen graduate programs by offering a third community that would help attract and retain high-caliber graduate students.” Although the new complex is off campus, it still maintains the Rice feel with a brick-and-stucco exterior reminiscent of Hanszen and Baker colleges. It also follows the lead of other new campus buildings in that it was designed and built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. “We were really conscientious about energy conservation in this building because the graduate students pay their own utility bills,” said Director of Sustainability Richard Johnson, who said the new complex is at least 30 percent more efficient than a standard apartment building. That means that if a student typically pays $100 per month for utilities, they’ll only pay $70 at RVA — which creates substantial savings over the course of a year. “The project team devoted considerable attention to selecting ENERGY STAR appliances, developing efficient lighting strategies and providing ample natural daylight for the apartments,” Johnson said. “By offering apartments that are so energy efficient, we are essentially embedding financial aid into the building itself.” —Merin Porter
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