I have a friend who lives on Knox Road in an apartment that was built for one, but houses three. One of her roommates lives in a converted dining room, and you can tell: Most college bedrooms don’t have balconies. This isn’t news, you’ll say. Piggy landlords have been chopping up houses to pack in students since college was invented. But, when done well, small fixes can provide a comfortable living arrangement for people who don’t need too much space.
In the San Diego college area, a pair of 20-somethings have made quiet fortunes converting single-family homes into what they call “mini-dorms,” complete with common areas and additional parking. The mini-dorms have racked up complaints about noise and traffic, but have proven incredibly popular with their tenants, who find the six-to-10 person residences less isolating than houses but more attractive than the dorms. Hundreds of these mini-dorms have sprung up in San Diego since 2000, and in 2007, new mini-dorms were required to register with the city.
The success of the San Diego mini-dorms suggests there might be ways to build student housing without putting up more towers like University View, which, for all their perks, are a huge investment for developers and charge higher rents than many students can afford. It also makes me wonder if the concept of converting old buildings for new uses could be further applied in College Park. Within a 10-minute walk of the campus, you can find vacant stores, abandoned schools and parking lots that could be put to better use. These places won’t see major development any time soon because of the economic downturn, but they could have a future through smaller, less ambitious measures.
An example of how this happens can be found in Long Branch, a neighborhood in eastern Silver Spring, just a few miles west of the campus. Here, Hispanic immigrants have taken the formerly abandoned relics of Long Branch’s days as a quiet bedroom community – old movie theaters, bowling alleys and abandoned lots – and turned them into churches, markets and meeting places. A group of small business owners essentially redeveloped their community without huge sums of money or even having to knock down a single building, and though Long Branch may not look affluent, it’s a neighborhood that provides goods, services and plenty of places to hang out within easy walking distance of residences. To me, that sounds like the start of a great college town.
The San Diego mini-dorms and Long Branch prove that committed individuals can improve their communities by working outside the traditional financial and political avenues that most development goes through. As a community, College Park isn’t meeting its residents’ needs, but fortunately we have a population comprised of people who are here largely to make careers for themselves. With increasingly worse job prospects after graduation, this year’s seniors might want to give up on polishing that resume. They’ve got a lot to do – and quite a few ways to make a living for themselves – right here.
Dan Reed is a senior architecture and English major. He can be reached at reeddbk@gmail.com.
