WACO, TX — After years of developing plans and conducting surveys among the faculty and students, the construction for a new $20 million dorm on campus at Texas State Technical College in Waco has begun.
“We get a draw statewide like I said and some out of state as well. A lot of our students come in and they want to live on campus. They want to experience that residential life on campus experience. It may be only two years, but anytime you can get them on campus and linked in, they are simply more successful in the programs,” said Statewide Director of Housing, Jeremiah Bland.
The idea for the dorm began to circulate when TSTC made the decision that some of the old barracks from when the school was originally an air force base needed to be demolished.
The base housing was built back in the 50s and 60s.
“If we just renovated those houses, looking at the cost of that compared to coming in and building a whole new residence hall. I just made since to build new. You get something specifically designed for the student designed specifically for their needs,”said Jeremiah Bland.
The 481 units demolished and replaced with a brand new dorm housing has a good mix of both one bedroom, one bath and two bedroom, two bath units adding up in total to 144 units and 246 beds.
“There is definitely a want for more privacy now a days. They do want that single room. So then we got into how do we affordably make that happen for them,” said Jeremiah Bland.
Even the name of the new dorm was carefully thought out.
“Everybody came back and everybody was like, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What is Griffith Hall?’ And we really looked into it and it was the elite engineer on the suspension bridge was Mr. Griffith. We’ve really, I guess, shifted to naming the buildings for people who have achieved great things in Waco,” said Jeremiah Bland.
Griffith Hall is scheduled to be open August of 2021.
