Professor May Mei remembers what it was like to relocate from Orange County, California, to Granville.
“I moved across the country in a sedan,” said Mei, Denison’s mathematics department chair and current faculty chair. “I came with no furniture. First priority was to get a mattress from a place that did same-day delivery.”
She was fortunate to move into a Denison-owned home on Prospect Street.
“When you start a faculty job, you may be moving across the country to someplace where you don’t know anyone or the area,” she said. “Having a landing pad is just one fewer thing to worry about.”
At times throughout its history, Denison has offered faculty and staff housing of various sorts, but nothing quite as ambitious as the project rising northwest of campus on New Burg Street.
Later this summer, the college will open the first of two planned phases in a townhome-style faculty and staff community. The 31-acre parcel, long owned by Denison, has been designed to accommodate about 60 units total. The first phase includes 29 units and will be finished in spring 2025.
“We’re on track to be done with Phase 1 by the end of May,” said Drew Mascioli, Denison’s manager of capital construction and planning.
The development is geared toward providing new hires with an affordable, well-built housing option replete with community greenspaces and linked to campus by a half-mile walking path.
The first tenants are expected to have moved in before classes start in Fall 2025.
David English, Denison’s CFO and vice president for finance and management, said planning for the project began in earnest around 2019 to address the rising prices and low availability in the Granville housing market.
“We were hearing from more faculty chairs saying they had some people turn down offers because they couldn’t find an affordable place in the Granville area and they didn’t want to live 30 miles away from campus,” English said.
“We wanted to make these nice places for people to live, at reasonable rents,” English said. “We’re not targeting a profit margin on these. Our goal is to have employees who are happy to live in them, and for us to just break even.”
The idea is that new hires could stay in the townhomes for up to four years, giving them ample time to become settled in the community and find permanent housing. The staggered turnover should free up units on a steady basis for newer arrivals.
“We wanted to be very supportive of our faculty during that early career stage,” Provost Kim Coplin said.
“This is truly a talent-acquisition and retention project,” Mascioli said.
The 1- and 2-bedroom units were designed with a mix of higher-end touches, such as crown molding, large windows, electric fireplaces, and cathedral ceilings.
“We’re not building this as inexpensively as we could have, because we want it to reflect well on Granville and Denison,” English said.
Front porches and common greenspaces were included throughout to foster a sense of community.
“We’re hoping people will sit on their front porches or go out on the common green and meet their neighbors,” English said.
The development is geared toward new faculty, but Denison will consider interest from other employees as well.
“We’ll see how quickly they rent up,” English said.
He said the development underscores Denison’s commitment to forging bonds among employees and with students.
“This project is reflective of the strong financial position we’re in, and the success we’ve had that allows us to double-down on making sure that we’re reinforcing mentorship opportunities for our faculty and staff,” English said.
“Denison is about mentoring relationships, and that requires individual time,” he said. “Logically, you’re going to have more time to interact with other people on campus, including students, if you live close to campus.”
Mei cherishes her connections with students — “I think it’s the highest honor to be invited to one of my students’ events,” she said — and values the bonds that come with living close to campus.
The new development should help new employees build those bonds from the start, she said.
“It facilitates connections to the other humans there,” she said. “It facilitates connections to the place. Anything that brings people together and keeps them near campus, I am for.”