• Manzanita Village Blooms
  • Convocation Today Unites Newcomers
  • Gifts Rise to $51 Million Despite Economic Woes
  • Guide Lauds Campus as 'Hot'
  • UCSB Remembers Courageous Lives
  • Lucas, Rose, Herrera-Sobek Form EVC Team
  • State Audit Shows Only Part of Picture
  • Mighty Savings from Microturbines
  • Rare Plant Achieves Sexual Maturity
  • Social Justice Concern Runs in Her Family
  • New Campus Policy Alerts Parents to Offsprings' Alcohol Infractions
  • We Do Windows, etc.
  • Rockin' the Academics
  • Campus Notes
  • Credits
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    Manzanita Village Blooms

    By VIC COX

    Manzanita Village, UCSB's first new student housing on the main campus in more than 30 years, welcomed initial residents this past weekend to its bluff-top perch overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

    A Mongolian grill is one of Carrillo's new features
    Seventeen residential three- and four-story units, christened with a mix of Chumash and Spanish names, now house 800 undergraduate students on the southwestern edge of campus. They are grouped around three separate quads linked by a central plaza to the adjacent, upgraded Carrillo Dining Commons. To the north is high-rise San Rafael and to the east is the Campus Lagoon.
    "Some of the views are just spectacular," said Chuck Haines, resource planning coordinator for Housing and Residential Services (H&RS) and project leader for Manzanita Village and the Carrillo expansion. He has been with the $65-million construction project since before the UC Regents gave it the green light in early 1998.
    "Manzanita Village is going to have a tremendous impact on the campus," said H&RS Director Willy Brown.
    More important than the views, to Brown and Haines, was boosting UCSB's student housing inventory by almost 20 percent while enhancing the homelike quality of the 17 residences. Each building has a lobby, a lounge with view terrace, a study room, and a laundry room among its mix of single and double bedrooms. Some have full kitchens. The basic design allows a bathroom for every four students.
    "We've achieved a much more human scale in housing," said Haines, adding that "this was a goal of the director right off the bat." In this first year, building occupancy will range between 41 and 63 students, with only 12 to 16 per floor, he said. The average in each residence is 45 to 47.
    Besides the residential study areas, academic life is reinforced through two computer lab-equipped resource centers on different sides of the bluff. In the second year, Haines said, "We would like a faculty mentor, if not living on site, certainly holding office hours on site." In fact, an apartment in one of the buildings has been designated for a faculty member in the future, but is needed for head staff this year.
    Manzanita is also helping the housing program accomplish seismic renovations in nearby San Rafael. Due to the work, about 300 beds in the high-rise tower are temporarily unavailable this academic year, so those students were offered spaces in the village. This means that the full impact of the 800 new beds will be felt next year when university-owned housing will total 4,966 student bed spaces, Haines said.
    Previously, the last student housing built on the main campus was the San Rafael-Carrillo Dining Commons complex in 1968. Phase 2 of the 200-unit Santa Ynez Apartments for single undergraduate and graduate students, off El Colegio in Isla Vista, was finished in 1981, noted Brown.

    Earlier this summer workers started to landscape Manzanita Village, the first student housing built on the main campus since 1968.