Enrollment at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is up this fall from a year ago, leading the university to lease a new apartment complex near the downtown campus to handle the demand for student housing from incoming students.
UTC Associate Vice Chancellor Chuck Cantrell said the final count of students won't be official for another couple of weeks. But he said housing demand was such that UTC couldn't handle all of the student dorm requests with its own facilities, which can house about 3,500 students.
UTC contracted to lease the 36-unit Palmetto Place Apartments to provide housing for another 72 students when its own dorms couldn't meet the demand.
"We had a greater demand for our campus housing than we were able to fulfill with what we had available," Cantrell said. "But we were able to rent the entire Palmetto Place and treat it just like any other UTC dorm."
UTC's enrollment last fall totaled 11,533 and the student count is expected to be slightly higher this fall. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said he wants to see a bigger share of Tennessee adults going to college to boost the share of workers with some type of post-secondary certification or college degrees from about 35 percent up to at least 55 percent by 2025.
"That is critical to having our workforce prepared for the jobs of the 21st century economy," Haslam told the Chattanooga Rotary Club this week.
The new apartment complex at Eighth and Palmetto streets was completed in early August and is among several new apartment complexes built near UTC to accommodate students wanting to live on or near campus.
Last fall, the 691-bed Douglas Heights Apartments opened near campus and a handful of other smaller apartment complexes have been added along Vine, Houston, Eighth and Lindsey streets near the campus downtown. Next fall, UTC will open its own 600-unit West Campus dorm at Vine and Houston streets.
"We've had several years of not being able to house all of the students wanting university housing in the fall, so we certainly have seen the need for our new dorm," Cantrell said.
Construction of Palmetto Place began last year and four months of expected building time turned into eight months of construction with 48 rain days after construction began.
"The workforce in Chattanooga is extremely overwhelmed," said Steve Lance, site superintendent for Berry Construction, which built the apartments. "Keeping the project on track with the excessive rain season and high demand on contractors in our city created some hurdles, but we are here now and ready to see all the hard work come to light."
Rip Connell, Jonathan Connell and Jerry Rutherford own the Palmetto Place Apartments. The apartment complex includes the Mockingbird Oasis, which stretches the full length of the building in the basement common area with sofas around a flat screen TV, a snack and beverage station, meeting space and study areas.
"We had a serious time crunch on our hands with the delay of the project, but with some creativity and filling the needs of students searching for a great place to call home, we were able to completely occupy Palmetto Place," said Camille Stone, property manager of Palmetto Place. "It's nice to start out heading the right direction."
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340.